The record doesn't abandon the moody sprawl of the band's last few full-lengths, but it does help restore urgency to an aesthetic that seemed in danger of growing soporific.

It's the headphones album of the year from a producer with a long history who has come into his own.

This might be BMSR's most accessible effort, but if you couldn't get past the vocoder and voodoo before, it's unlikely that you will now.

For all its psychedelic tendencies and marketing trappings, Goat's World Music feels as assured and unfussy as folk music.

The best parts of Banks are the ones that most resemble Interpol, rather than the stabs at spooky, old-guy mope-pop that comprise most of the record. In that respect, this album fails as a valid statement outside of the confines of Banks' band.

Though inspired by weightier and more evocative themes [than 20122's Too Beautiful to Work], Animator already feels less memorable-- it seems to constantly evade the listener's grasp.

Cokefloat! is not always admirable but it's emotionally open.

VII pursues no radical new directions for Maserati, but even though you sort of already know these songs, they still have enough engaging motion and kinetic force that if you ever loved them in the first place, you'll love them all over again here.

In the context of Matt & Kim's discography, Lightning is inconsequential. Like an echo of an echo, there's nothing here that Matt & Kim haven't already done over and over again.

At its best, Lost Songs' take on post-hardcore imagines an alternate history where indie rock's first-wave originators got to rule the modern-rock radio landscape of the 1990s, rather than just serve as an increasingly diluted influence upon it.

Unusual musical flairs pop up all over Who Needs Who... [but] the style never becomes the substance. Likewise, the drama behind the album's making doesn't overwhelm the music.

The young British producer Mark Taylor offers a more all-embracing vision of rudely extroverted modern garage, unified by his familiar palette of turgid bass tones, decaying synth riffs and shuddering, syncopated beats.

Yakuza continue to forge a specialized and strange alloy [of metal and experimental music] on Beyul. Don't expect to love all of their recombinations. Do, however, expect to be surprised by them.

You get the feeling their intent was to make a one-take road dog album. At that they've succeeded. But Local Business also marks the first time the band seems like it's holding something back-- like there is a Plan B.

Goulding can certainly inhabit a soundscape. Her next step is to inhabit just one.

Sunshine turns simple words and sounds into something larger.

However convoluted things get, you still wanna pump fist and bang head, even if you're not always sure when you should be doing so.

Bafflingly outdated alt-rock songs that could comfortably sidle between choice cuts from Marcy Playground and Semisonic [circa 1998] and get their asses handed to them.

It makes sense that, at almost an hour, it wants to make good on fulfilling its feature-length ambitions, though even the most devout midnight movie synth-pop fans will still find it a bit much.

What makes Gem feel like a such step forward (and such a straight-up enjoyable romp) is the way it playfully appropriates the debauched excess of glam rock to achieve its own singular vibe.

The miracle of this album is how it ties straightforward rap thrills--dazzling lyrical virtuosity, slick quotables, pulverizing beats, star turns from guest rappers--directly to its narrative.

A restless and sometimes laborious album that attempts to spotlight all of Enslaved's parts in one very overbearing package.

At once striking and enigmatic-- and artfully constructed.

That sense of the ludicrousness of life runs throughout Tragicomedies. It's what gives it its spark and forgives its slip-ups.

Night Moves rely on the sound that got them signed rather than pushing themselves in a new direction, and the results are not as exciting as they could've been.

Their debut does more than enough to stand on its own, not only ambitious in its own right, but leaving little doubt about Hundred Waters' capability of handling wherever their ambition takes them from here.

Department of Disappearance does sound strangely complacent and monochromatic, offering no twists on the technorganic aesthetic he's been plying since Grandaddy were still a bedroom act.

Unknown Rooms is a short album, but its nine songs capture and sustain free-floating fear and menace.