What Schaff's everyloner routine lacks in subtlety, it makes up in a certain fraught, occasionally uncomfortable relatability.

A polished assortment of tidily global-sounding, mid-tempo pop tunes that seem to end before they ever kick off, strung together by a checklist of semi-impassioned capital-K Keywords: Youth, Machine, Riot, Fame, Freak, Pirate, Keepers.

There's a natural path forged between all the shifts, a sense that the abstraction feeds off the structure and vice versa. As such, Black Is Beautiful nears something that could readily be branded as Blunt and Copeland's aesthetic.

As a once-in-a-half-decade demonstration of Talbot's vital signs, The Ghost isn't necessarily compelling enough to make you want to hang around for a follow-up, but the vitriol of a line like, "If you let them burn books, you'll let them burn bodies," is a strong sign of life at least.

This is one of those albums that creates its own little sound world, and a lot of its appeal has to do with qualities like texture and atmosphere.

Pluto is Future's album and no one else's, and though it will sound instantly recognizable, his personality, voice, and skewed take on pop-rap make it instantly different. No Stargate beats necessary.

By presenting a more rounded portrait of Guthrie in which politics is only one subject among so many, The Complete Mermaid Avenue Sessions shows just what Guthrie was fighting for and provides a persuasive rebuke to anyone who might whittle the man down to just one dimension.

It might not be perfect, but "chamber techno" probably shouldn't work as well as it does on the best moments here.

Horse Feathers are quick to set a mood and diligent in sustaining it, but it's pretty much the same mood they've struck on all their albums.

The production on The Block Brochure series roams a little wider and farther than the Revenue Retrievin series did, which helps when approaching such a seemingly undigestible block of music.

The production on The Block Brochure series roams a little wider and farther than the Revenue Retrievin series did, which helps when approaching such a seemingly undigestible block of music.

The production on The Block Brochure series roams a little wider and farther than the Revenue Retrievin series did, which helps when approaching such a seemingly undigestible block of music.

The innovation on R.I.P. is to put as much effort into making things clean as making them dirty, and the result is a sense of contrast: Fog gives way to clarity; fat, puffy synthesizer sounds play off pinprick-sharp ones. Like all good contrasts, it's simple and eureka-like.

The richly produced, melodically generous Candy Salad is plenty to chew on, but one can't help wishing its songs could be as vibrant as its sounds.

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

If any Screaming Females record has suggested they may someday become a group worthy of cataloging in a book like Azerrad's, Ugly is it, igniting a classic punk sound with a friction that falls somewhere between SST and PJ Harvey's Rid of Me.

It's not just a collection of hits; it's an album, one that gives the project's familiar nocturnal foreboding a new sense of grandeur.

There's no getting around the fact that June 2009 acquires most of its value, if not all of it, in context with Causers of This and Underneath the Pine.

The machines on 120 Days II are so holographically vivid that the human element can't help but seem wan.

Death Grips appeals to the knuckle-dragging troglodyte and the smirking smart kid in us: thick-headed goonery and bookish, viscera-free nerdiness, making beautifully misanthropic music together.

For an EP as flat and, well, just plain stuck as Our Love Is Hurting Us sounds, playing catch-up would've been preferable to taking a promising but not wholly memorable debut and simply offering it up a second time

On Rock and Roll Night Club, he gets weirder and churns out an unsettling brand of soft rock.

Let the People Speak feels utterly passionless and perfunctory.

Largely devoid of lyrical texture and detail, the universe conjured by World often feels bland to a fault.

There's enough of a sweet spot in the clean, backward-leaning production and offbeat samples to allow the record to distinguish itself as more than a sum of disparate parts.

Meluch and Irisarri have crafted a genuine, coherent album that conjures immense shadows and immense depths worthy of its namesake.

Harmonicraft is not without its moments; its just that, sometimes, spans of monotony and predictably make remembering or caring for those moments more work than they're worth.

The Shadow Gallery hits so strong and so true, staying this particular course for a little while longer shouldn't bother anyone.