TRE3S, their third long-player (released by the Canadian supergroup's Arts & Crafts imprint), finds them continuing to home in on shapes and textures of their own.

This teetering restraint masks the true weirdness of Space Is Only Noise. I could understand someone finding the intensely self-contained Space a bit claustrophobic, but the album is most rewarding when you just grab a seat at the table.

A collection of lesser beats and hooks that somewhat returns to Original Pirate Material's sonics, Computers and Blues sadly trades that record's wonderful sense of place for a foggy vagueness that leaves Skinner's insights mostly impenetrable.

Because Toro Y Moi is so closely linked with the likes of Neon Indian, Washed Out, and Memory Tapes, it's tempting to read into the success of Underneath the Pine as some predictor of those bands' collective staying power, or a direction others might take. But Bundick seems to be following nothing but his own internal compass.

Like their revivalist peers, Cave Singers aren't reinventing a genre here, but they lend their local folkie scene a welcome dark side, and No Witch is their strongest album yet.

Forgoing the bitterness that made 2006's What Are You On sound so tinny and doomed, We Live in Rented Rooms, despite its endtimes stoicism, may be Cornog's highest-fi album to date.

The result is Young Galaxy's finest record, and while it's impossible to say if Lissvik made the band better, he definitely made them more interesting and relevant.

So they've made made a spotty but occasionally quite successful record, complicated considerably by Ramone's take-them-or-leave-them vocals, still the kind of thing only those with their minds already made up could truly love. You expected something else?

Radiohead's eighth record, The King of Limbs, represents a marked attempt to create a considered and cohesive unit of music that nonetheless sits somewhere outside of the spectrum of their previous full-length discography.

Return to the Ugly Side is clearly designed to be experienced as a single piece, complete with an opening instrumental overture that recurs later in the album, and seamless flows in and out of tracks.

The Magic Place, her first album for Asthmatic Kitty, stands above her earlier work in virtually every way.

In the end then, for all of Diplo's good intentions and curatorial muscle, the first volume of Blow Your Head struggles not just as a lesson, or a sampler, but also simply as a collection of songs you want to listen to.

Such persistent tonal shifts theoretically suit the lyrics well, but they lack oomph and often set the duo's songs to meandering when sharper contrasts might've been genuinely thrilling.

That idea, the notion of music as a cheapened, battered object, touches nearly every aspect of Ravedeath, 1972, a dark and often claustrophobic record that is arguably Hecker's finest work to date.

Hotel Shampoo manages to strike the right balance between Rhys' desire to indulge odd whims, lyrical humor, outright pop, and heartfelt sentiment. More importantly, he always makes it sound effortless.

On The Gathering, though, the sonic vista is flattened out, resulting in a dreary, grayscale trudge of an album.

The album comprises expanded and elaborated versions of incidental music crafted for the film, however, even in fleshed-out form, SYR9 can feel frustratingly incomplete, with many pieces coming off as a series of loosely linked fragments lacking an emotional center.

Natalizia recorded Banjo or Freakout with Nic Vernhes at the Rare Book Room in Brooklyn, and Vernhes' naturalistic production style deepens the expanses in Natalizia's sound while maintaining its clean lines and immersive chill.

Housing only a couple of keepers, Fluorescence might initially feel like another letdown after the end-to-end excellence of Citrus, but that overlooks the challenges Asobi Seksu are up against.

The residue of death that lingers on I'm New Here is wiped clean from We're New Here. It's replaced with brightness, an energy, and a historical milieu.

It's no reflection on him, but Go-Go Boots goes a long way to proving him wrong, suggesting a band that knows where all the bodies are buried.

Those out-of-character moments are few and far between, but listeners willing to roll with the lack of punch Little Joy offers will find that shortcoming easy to live with.

If Lerner just keeps on doing his thing, he's clearly getting better at it.

Say hello to Allo Darlin': a welcome reminder that any aversion to cutesy music in recent years may have been due not to the aesthetic, but the quality.

If the results aren't necessarily the kind of up-front and accessible electro that would appeal to their "Hustler"-adoring base, it's definitely an interesting shot at regrouping and concocting a few rapidly refined ideas.

Canty and Whittaker are impressively capable in that respect: they know exactly what will and won't belong in their creepy little mood-worlds, and as a result, Tryptych rarely calls attention to itself.

The number of actually transcendent live records--whether recorded at a radio station or in an arena--is almost laughably small considering how many exist. This one's a gift, the second LCD's given us this year.

That kind of less-is-more approach, where all the clutter is shaved down to a paper-thin framework, is where Ices produces her most affecting material, potentially sketching out a new strain of inspiration for her to follow next time out.