For all the missteps, there are gratifying moments littered throughout. For the most part, the production, spearheaded by David “CDOC” Snyder, is patched together smartly and with regard to tradition.

For the most part, though, from robotic-but-rambunctious opener "Runaway" to the late-album one-two closing swoon of "It's You" and "Overtaken", Feel the Sound leans on Imperial Teen's puppyish charm and love for soft-rock's smooth bliss.

It's lovely, it's pleasantly unsettling, and there's a hell of a lot of it.

Friendly and nondescript.

BEAK>> retains the same eerie, claustrophobic atmosphere as its predecessor.

Even where Certified doesn't entirely congeal, Banner gets by on personality and an ever-sharpening focus.

Wiley has kept his formula mostly intact: skittering, hiccuping bounce rhythms, synths that sound like a turbocharged Super Nintendo with a subwoofer attached, and a manic, borderline-toasting flow that plows through everything in its path.

Even while Quaristice is in some ways the most listenable album they've created in a decade, it's ultimately no easier to parse, and can be very rough going indeed if you're not in the mood for their peculiar world.

Rife with suspense, drama, and a grisly cast of characters, Voyager's probably more likely to ignite your inner playwright than get your foot tapping, but it's still a cathartic rush all the same.

For all its wrath and fury, Devil Music feels safe and predictable. It’s a hell of a party, but it’s one we’ve been to before.

As much work as Sweet clearly put into this disc, hearing him glide instead of soar makes it all sound too easy, which sadly makes it that much easier to forget.

This is a cherry on a cupcake.

Doughty is better off when laid bare or with a group of musicians that push him in new directions, rather than ones who simply back him.

The Endless Not features some of the subtlest songwriting of TG's career, playing that knot of tension for all it's worth and all the more disturbing for how pensive and restrained it feels.

Port Entropy is charming and pretty and brilliantly assembled, but utterly two-dimensional, and listening to it even one time completely through yields strikingly diminished returns.

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.

Title TK picks up where Pod left off in 1989, with a jagged sound nowhere near as tight as the Pixies' but a heartfelt enthusiasm for creating music.

The two-hour-plus runtime is gratuitous; probably the idea was to present the complete show (a la Alive by Kiss), but the effect is mind-numbing, and most of the successful experiments are lost in well-mannered gray.

Though some might say that Armstrong's music is powerfully evocative and serene, such people hate music and all its subtle possibilities and intricacies.

If anything, Disappeared reestablishes Spring Heel Jack as drum-n-bass experts, gifted at layered percussion, and erudite at unsettling listeners with an uneasy ambience.

With follow-up Forget the Night Ahead, Graham takes his cryptic musings into a pitch-black place, but he still connects enough to make all the fraught drama worthwhile.

As much as Tidings rides high on it's own brand of sweaty juke-joint appeal, its finest moments are a grab bag of genre detours.

The lyrical setbacks also help emphasize Dreamcar’s greatest strength: It’s a simple labor of love, as opposed to a grandiose spectacle, and in doing so, it sidesteps the usual supergroup cesspool.

Black Sarabande’s calm surface proves illusory the more listens you give it.

American Gong is also blessedly free of typical Quasi jams-- which work live, but can drag on record. There are still lurching, aggro guitar solos and hints at foundations for what will become showcases for improv on tour, but the album's arrangements are simplified and mostly serve their vital hooks.

On Death Becomes Her, Angel-Ho beautifully transmutes any past anguish into a colorful network of global sonics, a bold statement of trans femininity, and a rallying cry for resistance. At once, Angel-Ho shatters binaries and encompasses dualities.

Hawthorne clearly has the ability to integrate and recreate his influences in his own compositions; it would be revelatory if he added more of his own signature sounds and soul into the music.

Yes, the Buzzcocks are doing what they've always done-- writing raucous pop songs-- but there's something to be said for honing and plying one's craft.