While she makes some big strides here as an artist, she’s also made sure to keep one foot planted firmly in the style that some of us consider nearly perfect.

Airy and danceable, There Is No Love in Fluorescent Light revives our faith in Stars.

Brief and assured at 10 tracks, E3 AF is the first time since 2007’s Maths + English that Dizzee has managed to tread the extremes of both his underground and mainstream iterations convincingly on a single album.

Rather than muzzle their ferocity, the band's tight, tense dynamic amplifies the fuck-off stridency of their fourth LP, Castle Talk.

Taken as a whole, it is an album about unstable unities, things that cannot easily hold together, wholes breaking to pieces and being put back together again in new and unfamiliar shapes.

Da Mind of Traxman is notable in part because it's an album more concerned with footwork's past than its future.

The result is a more accessible version of Dum Dum Girls, bolstered by terrific harmonies (three of the four girls contribute vocals) and a crisper rhythm section.

On Culture, their world is richly rendered, full of hopes and paranoia and unbridled joy.

It's just satisfying to see a band trim the fat and wind up even bigger.

The widest ranging of any of her covers collections yet, Covers pushes beyond the habitual melancholy that has marked much of her work. In bold colors and vivid relief, it illustrates her talent for radical reinvention.

Still impossible to pigeonhole, his hybrid of classical, chamber pop, baroque, and jazz is as thrilling as ever, while the newly stripped-back arrangements heighten the intimacy of a songwriter seeing himself clearly.

Santhosam could use more songs with this level of intentionality—songs that reach beyond proclamations of self-love or dancefloor hedonism to meet the richness and complexity of Ragu’s sound and aesthetic.

Part stage-managed pop crossover and part pretty-good gay Sheryl Crow record, BITE ME never quite convinces you that it’s got something new to share.

Ashworth takes us on a joyride with a succession of mostly doomed outlaws and derelicts, with a couple of side excursions into familiar disaffected-slacker-ballad territory. It all adds up to easily the most mature and thematically ambitious Casiotone release to date.

Where Walker sings more naturally, with easier tones, Cleaver's shy, young-old voice is a reassuring presence beneath the music’s astral blanket. That they both sound overwhelmed by Forever Sounds’ vast scale is in fact the record’s saving grace; as ever, Wussy’s proximity to ordinariness is precisely what makes them lovable.

These are novel variations on the familiar Clinic sound. Some, like the queasy synth refrain in “Rubber Bullets,” work less well than others. And some of the melodies seem rather thin, considering the band had six years to generate them (looking at you, “Mirage” and “Rejoice!”). That’s an ancient weakness of the group, and Wheeltappers and Shunters is nothing if not steeped in the past.

One Life Stand is their most consistent and most complete record.

Lemonjelly.ky's nine tracks consist largely of samples from atrocious Nana Mouskouri songs and soundclips nipped from 100 Strings mood music albums. What binds these samples together is a series of predicable hip-hop beats and root-note basslines.

If his eccentricity was tamed and the pained attempts to hop genres were avoided, Luke Steele could just produce something close to sublime. As it stands, Lovers is a fairly pleasant application of some charming reference points, but please, let's stop pretending that that's good enough.

The record's conceptual brilliance lies largely in Bejar's ability to craft deeply moving passages out of ostensibly artificial and contrived elements, subtly suggesting that all music, if not all human expression, is in effect some sort of artifice.

These songs rarely sound lived in or personable; rather, they're more like museum dioramas where he can pose figures like Calamity Jane, Casey Jones, and Casey at the Bat in stiff tableaux.

Live at the Gluepot is more immediately impressive [than the new compilation], just in terms of sheer speed and momentum.

Lord Steppington is just the latest remarkably solid offering from Alchemist and co. and the artists involved clearly think of the endeavors as fun and games.

Vollebekk laces his capacious, meandering music with a ’60s folk-jazz sensibility. As with Twin Solitude, he recorded New Ways directly to tape, allowing each song’s mood to dictate its direction.

It’s one of their most contented and effusive albums, and as a result one of their most immediately accessible.

The ideas on Death Jokes, his self-produced sixth album, are clearer. He is blunter and more forceful with specific meaning on this album than ever.

Wincing the Night Away is a lovely and well-executed album and-- for the first time in the band's career-- nothing more.

Now, you can only hear faint echoes of their past greatness underneath the lard-laden production; it’s something that will please the fanbase.