Ratking's greatest success is confidently offering a sound that feels untethered from expectations and bristles with the exhilarating energy of trying something new.

July Flame is ultimately a record that's easy to get into and just as easy to stay with.

McLamb seems to be relishing the chance to get outside of his head, making music that is gorgeous and unashamedly fun.

In the progression of addiction, we’re past the “fun with problems” stage and right into “problems.” The tuneful first half of Aftering could blur this distinction, but Thomas’ chipper melodies add insult to injury, a mocking reminder of what it felt like to get your hopes up in the first place. ... Aftering’s second half of ambient tone poems puts Thomas in direct comparison with guys he’s been tangentially evoking over the span of the trilogy: Mark Kozelek and Phil Elverum, mercurial, prolific songwriters.

Careful listening reveals that the album’s welcoming facade is an invitation into a tantalizingly complex world, like a perfectly manicured hedge maze guiding you through concentric pathways.

At 50 minutes, it's maybe a bit too long: when you're working with coiled energy, you can't afford to lose momentum. That said, when they're in the zone, there's not much like it.

In the past, Rossen has tended toward cryptic minimalism, but emotional honesty suits him. The warmth of his voice counterbalances the darker moments he recounts.

The alternate takes and the lively banter plop you right there in the studio as the artistic process unfolds. It’s what differentiates Freedom Jazz Dance from past volumes of this enthralling series, which were all live concerts that showed how Miles’s groups evolved on the bandstand.

These sweetly sad songs are the ones that linger, and they’re served well by their earliest incarnations as home recordings and demos that serve as bonus tracks on both the double-disc reissue and companion 5-CD/2-DVD edition.

For an album I approached ready to shrug off as sheer novelty, its humor and candor give it a fair amount of staying power.

She makes even the most immovable feelings open up with just a little time and space.

With an opener as strong as Destroyer of the Void, you could be forgiven for being disappointed that it is the collection's sole foray into spacey prog-pop territory and not the tip of the iceberg in a likeminded collection.

With sharp lyrics and copious breathing space, Amici lands somewhere between Flying Nun-style jangle and the extreme minimalism of Young Marble Giants, all while sounding uniquely of Melbourne’s current, thoughtfully witty art-punk moment.

The record is not only catchy as all hell, but it’s also sweet and openhearted and not one bit cynical.

It is easily the most solitary record Simon has made since his early solo work. The restraint is the point; just as he’s found inspiration in wide-ranging rhythms and textures from around the world, he now seems thrilled by just how much quiet he can conjure.

Deep into their career, Dieng at times reveals the advanced stage of its players. The songs are taken a step slower, the rhumbas show a consideration for the pulse as well as the spaces between them, and the themes in some manner or another touch upon mortality.

As strong and unusual as The Law of the Playground is, especially out of step in 2009, it never quite feels as inspired, as fraught with conflicted beauty, as past songs 'Paper Cuts' or 'Be Gentle With Me' or 'Monsters.'

It’s an album that humorously but honestly explores the tensions that arise in any long-term relationship, however in this case, the pressures--financial, political, or otherwise--seem to be coming more from without than within.

The thrills of The Path of the Clouds are far richer than most true crime fiction, but like the best examples of the genre, it leaves you breathless.

As is the case on most of the album, Hill's distorted vocals can sometimes seem like an afterthought, but perhaps they are intended to be just one of the many ingredients squashed into the album's vibrant mixture, to be heard as one final act of creation-through-destruction.

It is an easy, thoroughly enjoyable sell, abounding in the band’s signature blend of grit and gratitude.

A Los Campesinos! Christmas is a record for those who want to spin a seasonal record that's both crushingly isolated and humorously self-aware.

Sure, it's nowhere near his incredible run of the seventies, but it is probably his best album since 1992's Harvest Moon.

Whichever end of her spectrum Lee swings toward--the harshly noisy or the hypnotically meditative--her sound always commands attention, making Ghil the biggest surprise in a career already full of them.

Trouble covers a lot of ground musically, moving through decades and subgenres of pop and rock with each track. But those who listen closely will find a few consistent points of imagery that loosely connect the work: locks and keys, bodies of water, and the telephone.

Transferred and restored from S&M Recordings’ original LPs and tapes by Emmons himself, How Far Will You Go?'s 16 tracks are threaded together by deft production details and a forthright sense of humor that posits the duo as unsung heroes of those glam, pre-punk years, which, in essence, they were.

Her tracks might be improvised or labored upon. They feel both sui generis and tossed off. You can hear her hand, and it makes you wonder, and in that way her recordings are empathy machines. They warm and flatter as they fill the air around you, silk scarves just out of reach.

It’s in these songs—softer and sweeter than anything in Chat Pile’s catalog, gloomier and more foreboding than anything in Pedigo’s—that their mutual empathy radiates strongest.