The music is so immaculately tasteful that it's hard to figure out how they chose such a silly band name. (It's from a song by the Belgian band dEUS, which makes it no less silly.) But they got the album title right--they've arrived.

An album so profusely inventive, so alive to the possibilities of sound itself.

Their record is more interested in the truth of their own pleasures and failures, and in the ways both of those can, on the best of days, connect us more closely with each other.

The more succinct songs on North Star Deserter sound like a return to the dark woods after years in the city.

Juul's vocals and production are emotive and permeable, always trying to convey something without any sort of coercion as to what that feeling's supposed to be.

There's a lot to like here but only a few tracks to love, and for every two songs that sound delightfully out of time, there's one that just sounds out of time.

Yes, Virginia doesn't have the expressive range of the Dresden Dolls' debut.... But what is here is frequently engaging even if-- for a band that thrives on discomfort-- the record sometimes gets a bit too comfortable for its own good.

Somewhere between King Tubby and King Buzzo, Machine may not have the irresistible grooves of 2003’s Pressure or the political resonance of 2008’s landmark London Zoo, but—by thudding leaps and earthquaking bounds—is easily the heaviest, ugliest, paint-peelingest record in an already seismic discography.

Over the course of the record, the resonance of the melodies gradually overrides the initially distracting phrasing, revealing a sometimes exquisite folk-rock album.

Palomo’s previous albums sounded like the ghosts of ’80s memories. On World of Hassle he offers some unforgettable nights of his own.

Though the album doesn’t really step outside of neo-soul conventions, it is nevertheless as stirring and lifting as a memory-triggering scent.

Kirby's fondness for disorder is a perfect fit for this type of material. Dream states rarely make sense until you plunge deep into them, and Dead Empires throws up thousands of different routes to get tangled up in on the way down there.

While it doesn’t break much new musical ground, and plays against Future Islands’ reputation for excess, The Far Field’s breathtaking sorrow is transformative.

Black Sarabande’s calm surface proves illusory the more listens you give it.

In a way, Jenny From Thebes is precisely about the struggle to find the right distance: from the past, from other people, from ourselves. Darnielle is a master of the perspective shot; he is often at his most vivid when writing in the second person.

Houck's impressive effort nonetheless inevitably sends you back to Nelson's originals, only illuminating their brilliance.

Sure, maybe Eremita is sometimes awkward, chintzy, or melodramatic, but for 52 minutes, Ihsahn mostly allows the listener to have a blast, if occasionally and arguably at his own expense.

At its best, Invite the Light manages to bring together Dâm-Funk’s wilder, more experimental side with his newly refined pop side to produce not just some of the strongest material he’s ever made, but some of the strongest material to arise out of the current funk boom.

A Love Surreal is short on big, arcing-rainbow melodies as a result, but one of its joys is watching Bilal warp his voice into improbable shapes.

Such dedication to an aesthetic means Far Side Virtual gets a little tedious: It's 16 songs that aren't all that catchy but aren't exactly ambient either.

Lost Themes is plenty dark and heavy but shorter on inspiration.

Farmer’s Corner is an album about labor and its rewards, about wanderlust and rootlessness, about memory and regret, yet for most of its fifty minutes, its mood is affable and laidback--as though Toth wants to make it all look easy.

He delves deeper into his personal life more but he is just as sharp as been across his last handful of releases. It isn’t so much that these songs are better; they simply render a more complete picture of him, one he’s been working toward.

Throughout, the much-improved vocalist Neil McAdams leads plenty of shout-along choruses.

Lew has a remarkable talent for portraying scenes in the starkest terms.

Return to the Ugly Side is clearly designed to be experienced as a single piece, complete with an opening instrumental overture that recurs later in the album, and seamless flows in and out of tracks.

Hatfield's finest work in a decade.

Pure X may not be breaking new ground, but as far as deadbeat summer vibes done right go, Pleasure is one killer drag.