The guys' commitment to music-as-fun and big, croon-y hooks (Goddard's velvet vocals sound as good as ever here) keeps it enjoyable throughout.

Porcelain Raft borrows liberally from both the shoegaze and dream-pop playbooks, and so we get layers of sonic gauze shot through with delicately strummed acoustic guitar patterns and Remiddi's reedy, rather androgynous voice.

For all of its coos about love and devotion, it's the album equivalent of a faked orgasm-- a collection of torch songs with no fire.

He's probably not going to be a break-out star, but it's hard to imagine that there will be many more original or satisfying rap long-players this year.

Strangely, pairing with just Mt. Sims on U&I appears to have resulted in less-focused output, with the duo gradually circling a grimy musical plughole, only managing to pull themselves out via less cluttered material in the back half of the record.

America Give Up is inconsistent and derivative yet promising, and not nearly as impressive as some early adopters would have people believe.

That atmosphere helps hold up Vodka & Ayahuasca's sense of anarchic, altered-state unease when the lyrics don't quite cut it, though the tolerable-at-worst punchlines and metaphors are easier to stomach the less dead-serious you take them.

MU.ZZ.LE might be a transitional point on Gonjasufi's path and it shows just one face of an eclectic, multifaceted performer. But it's also that rare album that feels meditative and cathartic all at once.

It's a kitchen sink-like flood of sound, always on the verge of resembling a gigantic curveball being forced down your throat, but with Vibert pulling back from the humor brink at all the right moments.

Clear Heart is just good enough to keep us listening.

Lamb of God's general lack of adventurousness makes them mostly indistinguishable from their heroes and, budget excepted, the bulk of their contemporaries.

For the sisters' part, their voices are steadier now, and richer.

The songs are fine but largely feckless, and what could be an animating contrast between glum lyrics and upbeat music is too often hobbled by clunkers both generic ("I am lost in my mind when you go to sleep") and specific (something about tarot cards).

As an accidental concept album affirming the enduring power and purity of early emo (as defined by Dischord, Deep Elm, and especially Jade Tree), Attack on Memory feels above all necessary, a corrective for indie rock making allowances for everything except music that actually rocks.

The disc ought to have the proud, few Loincloth faithful weeping with joy, but more importantly, it leaves room for a broader audience to hear what the fuss was all about.

Cleaner and more elegant [than previous album, Does You Inspire You], buffing their crisp electronic pop to an immaculate sheen.... Truly great.

"Ash on the Trees (The Sudden Ebb of a Diatribe)", [is] the real reason this set of reissues is worth the investment.... It's a terrifying maze of tangents, like the early works of Nurse With Wound cronies Current 93 and O'Malley's own Khanate remixed by some actualization of evil.

You get the sense they're shooting for something epic, something that would sound just as big as the pop bangers on radio, but the results are goofy.

Even in this beatless world, he brings his techno producer's instincts out, dropping just enough in the way of fleeting, right-place-right-time hooks to catch your ear when it's ready drift away from the song.

The Drexciya reissue rightly returns the spotlight to the original electro's signature rhythms and analog palette.

While it's nice to finally hear these two follow up on a promising debut, Hymns isn't likely to capture many people who weren't taken with the original Cardinal record.

Edwards often sounds lost in these new songs.

More than just chart her progression as a singer and songwriter, CYRK also sees Le Bon and her four-piece band developing into a crack psych-rock outfit that consistently leads the songs into unexpected places.

Where the Big Pink previously sounded invincible, nearly every attempt to intellectualize or streamline their sound makes Future This come off as timid and malnourished.

It's one of his best, a mostly single-minded return to the on-the-mic fierceness and computers-go-tribal rhythms that first made his name.

There are few standout tracks; instead, the most arresting moments emerge out of layers of increasingly damaged sounds that set an uncompromisingly bleak mood.... It doesn't quite work as a standalone experience.

For every bit of overcompensation--he actually cracks a bottle over a dude's head in "Raw"--there's something vividly rendered and honest.

Think of Glimmer as a little symphony, just with singles, and made by a musician who can't decide between the roles of producer or composer. Really, he shouldn't anytime soon.