At the outset, This Machine seems like an apt title for a record that surges forth with a wiry, motorik momentum; by the end, it becomes an all-too-fitting descriptor of a band going through the motions.

Backed by locals like Highlife's Doug Shaw and the band Skeletons, An Letah follows 2010's Bubu King EP with a whiplash 14 minutes of electrified bubu that presage what will no doubt be a watermark year for Nabay.

It's got some of his best pure songwriting yet, but no earth-cracking riffs. Still, as a treatise on loss and its schizophrenic aftermath, Blunderbuss is a purposeful success.

It's easy to get the sense that the intent is to let the jangling shoegaze wash over you, and if some of the lyrics stick, that's fine. But that's the thing-- they rarely do, and neither do several of the songs.

The fact of the matter is that Lineage isn't the first record to sound like Lineage.

by focusing on the range of music inspired by this movement, Listen, Whitey! allows so much of the confusion, outrage, anger, emotion, humor, and even optimism of this music to resonate anew.

Their 2010 self-titled debut [was] all hummable melodies, clap-along rhythms, and poignantly turned phrases. Europe maintains these qualities and improves upon its predecessor in almost every way.

The individual entries on Grinderman 2 are all over the map quality-wise, from inert and utterly ignorable... to half-brilliant reframings of pretty singular material.

When Wainwright falters, it's for familiar reasons, usually some combination of overindulging and oversharing.

Like any poseur worth her salt, she can make a superficial costume seem compelling without drawing too much attention to the fact that the person inside of it may not have a whole lot to say.

It's a record so enjoyable and expertly sequenced that it demands repeat listens before it's even over.

It's a thrilling look inside his brain, a microcosmic version of this peep under the hood that Battles have allowed with Dross Glop, showing off the constituent parts that now make their machine a smooth, assured, and always giddily exciting ride.

Illusion is a slight effort by any standard, even the most fair: the bar set by the prior work of the band members themselves.

Whether or not they've produced anything that justifies the time away they could have spent producing something better, more consequential, by themselves? Well, the jury's still out there.

Imikuzushi feels like the work of artists looking down from a mountain rather than laboring to climb it.

There's a purposeful simplicity to its narrative approach and a concreteness to its imagery--even when our narrator sounds less than engaged.

This is probably the most uplifting album of his career... Exhilarating.

It's probably his most immersive single release--or album, or mixtape, or emanation, or whatever--in a year and a half, better than both Based God Velli and I'm Gay.

It displays the boundlessness of her vocal talent but finds her tethered to a frustratingly limited aesthetic.

On the evidence of Mr. Impossible, they still sound like no one else and they're still thinking hard about music and texture. When you're craving something trashy and tripped-out in this very particular way, they still deliver the properly damaged goods.

From the first shudder of the keyboard and crack of drums to that last, celebratory walk through the village of the virgins, Iyer, Crump and Gilmore keep things spellbinding.

Compared to the wool-sweater warmth of those early recordings ["Crocodile Rock", "Babies"] Oberhofer's sad-sack persona and yelping vocal ad libs come off here as less endearing and more desperate, like someone trying to oversell simple songs with eccentric affectation.

Quakers is kind of a mess, and odds are that a not-insignificant number of people are going to find the beats more consistently entertaining than the verses... But ambitious messes are the best kind, and riding out the less-interesting moments is worth it in the long run.

New Build's arrangements are impressive and uncomplicated throughout.

The band's debut was kind of a crumpled, nicotine-smudged affair, but Atlanta feels brighter, less muddled, not polished but certainly tidier around the edges. Smith's voice remains a friendly, mid-range yawp-- emotionally precise if not always entirely on-key.

Voices From the Lake is a triumph of care and exactitude, the kind of well-executed work of art that feels effortless despite its obvious complexity.

Listening to M. Ward is nowadays perhaps more deeply pleasurable than it ever has been, with glistening strings and big slabs of piano occupying more and more of the terrain once almost entirely populated by his nimble fingered guitar, trashcan percussion, and creaky room noises.

Even more so than their promising debut, Staring at the X proves them to be a commendably ambitious band with the chops to carry out even their most far-flung ideas.