There's a good album underneath all the filler-- probably the Eels' best since Electro-Shock Blues-- but it'll take some editing to excavate it.

Blastbeats churn and tremolo-picked guitars gnash their teeth. These guys know what they’re doing. Liturgy of Death has its share of weirder moments, too.

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.

A record that finds SMD operating at half-speed when the accelerator is pedal is close within their reach.

It’s Cosentino’s musicianship and knack for melody that prevents these songs from turning to fluff.

Souled Out capably buffs Jhené Aiko’s strengths and shellacks her faults, but the moments where she steps out into the depth of her story transcend the synergy of a group of musicians with good chemistry.

His signature restlessness tends to enhance the Oh Sees’ concussion-inducing material; for the past 10+ years, it’s sometimes seemed like the faster Thee Oh Sees produce, the harder they hit. The approach doesn’t work such wonders here.

With little penchant for bedlam, it’s an album that lacks the exact thing that makes Flume’s music exciting.

The two musicians match well in terms of overall ethos, but at some points it feels like they just stopped listening to each other, and what should be otherworldly comes clunking to the ground.

A perfect party. A perfect soundtrack to your perfect party. You'll sleep like a baby, and inevitably wake to realize that Change Is Coming doesn't play so well by the light of day.

Mr. Love & Justice isn't exactly the musical equivalent of dropping flowers down the barrels of rifles, but there is a certain passivity to the disc, a characteristic magnified by the rootsy approach of Bragg's trusty band the Blokes, who channel the bucolic bent of the Band rather than the edge of the Clash.

This blunt narrative ought to sound contrived, but Hardy’s gift for delicate phrasing is defiantly alluring.

'64-'95 succeeds when Lemon Jelly stick to their bread and butter: pleasant and facile ambience.

Like the rest of his comedy oeuvre, Heidecker pulls no punches. In Glendale arrives as a fully formed beast, equal parts parody and confession of our universal lameness.

Regrettably, no other song here has a lyric nearly as compelling as "Andalucia"-- a major flaw for what is essentially a pedal steel-enhanced singer/songwriter album.

XI versions works best as a companion for smitten Black Noise fans, and it offers a couple of nice moments that Four Tet and Animal Collective completists might want to keep in their back pockets.

After the maze-like worlds conjured by Age Of and Garden of Delete, Love in the Time of Lexapro plays it disappointingly straight.

Fear of the Dawn is fucking weird: not obligatorily weird or try-hard weird, but genuinely, imaginatively weird.

No particular melodies, images, or moods really stick out from the vast, dreamy atmosphere that washes over you while you're listening.

While A Place to Bury Strangers take the brave step of allowing the distortion to dissipate, the unfettered view isn't always flattering: Ackermann's lyrics can sound like they were torn out of a bored, trench-coated high-school kid's notebook, with the cyber-punk fantasia of "Mind Control" and I-want-to-die miserablism.

Oliver Appropriate, with its clap-along drumming patterns and stripped-back production, sounds like an elder statesman of emo gathering his fellow washed up frontmen around a campfire for a story or two. It’s a fitting ending for a band that always stood a step or two outside the scene, pointing and laughing.

The rest of the album doesn't sustain the highs of its first two tracks. At their best, the remaining songs are soothing, if unremarkable. But, at their worst, they plummet into less tuneful and more lyrically cloying territory.

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.

Cut and Paste is hooky and appealing; with a gear change, he could easily move into a realm where people are actually paying attention. For now, he's a very sweet stream in a cultural backwater.

Prophet's widescreen music is wonderful to listen to; it's just hard to really feel.

On an album full of radio experiments, some succeed--“100 Letters,” “Walls Could Talk” and “Alone” demonstrate the perennially fertile sound of alt-pop--and some inevitably fail.

While Lithium Burn is an easy album to empathize with, you wish it'd do more to make you root for the band.

On Palms, the underlying parts fit together so smoothly that there's never any friction that could lead to a spark.