The separation anxiety that Freaky induces is its unfortunate undoing, though we can least be glad that someone had the good sense not to include dialogue interludes for context's sake.

The music is a clear step up from his nadir on Monsoon, but it's only a lateral move in terms of quality compared to the first two Preston School releases.

The album falters slightly when the music becomes more abstract and inscrutable, but on the whole it is not difficult to relate to Nagano or slip into the mood created by her bandmates.

A huge array of guests help out, representing acts like Disfear, 108, Genghis Tron, and Neurosis. They are too many to list, but the bottom line is, they work. Whether they're yelling, singing, or laying down leads, they fit their songs. And that in itself is fitting.

Trapped Animal is nothing more than an odds-and-sods record being passed off as "business as usual" by a band that doesn't seem to know what that business is anymore.

Geneva's a record with dirt underneath its fingernails and resolute urgency at its heart, and like the place from which it hails, it's worth the bluster.

For an album about a doc about a book about going into the wilds of California, One Fast Move sounds awfully sleepy.

I prefer the more minimal style of Them, which was sharply critical--and deeply personal--without being hectoring or bombastic. But listeners who enjoy picking apart seam-bursting sonic worlds will find plenty to explore here.

El Perro's brand of pop is certainly easy to love, and a cozy sort of organic warmth--characterized by thick, resonant drums and keys, and treated guitars that seem to lurch and lumber with the slightly irregular rhythms of real life--pervades the new record.

If you're able to view it through that lens, then New Clouds has much to offer as an unscripted, decidedly un-pop kind of album: mood music and drug music, yes, but more than that, the uncompromising work of a dude making sounds strictly on his own terms.

The result of Ounsworth bottling this "flow" and working it into a set of songs is an album that showcases the breadth of his talents much more than the limited palettes of Flashy Python or CYHSY.

The interplay here is more complex than You, You're a History in Rust, showcasing restraint and more subtle shifts.

Under Stellar Stream is filled with such fertile repetition.

The songs on III seem to want to be simple folk songs. And unlike on previous albums, the players aren't always pushing each other higher into new celestial realms. Sometimes, they're just getting in each other's way.

With the exception of the lone cover in "Gypsy Davy", Perkins has assembled a small sampling of songs here all with their own very healthy set of bones.

Armonico casts the molten steel of meaningless syllables into machine-gun bursts, sonar echoes, radioactive dirges, and girl-group coos of the group's best work.

The New Moon OST has all the touchstones of what is considered, by many who consider themselves cognoscenti, "good" music-- from Yorke to Grizzly Bear to the more populist Death Cab, Killers, and Muse--but it uses its tastefulness to solidify the borders of what is acceptable, not to broaden them.

What the Temper Trap do devastatingly well is drape post-office-party mistake-hookup tackiness in the lofty imagery of global struggle....Elsewhere, the Temper Trap's pairing of sweeping portentousness with mundane douchebaggery is trickier to overlook.

We can only hope that, as we enter the 2010s, Embryonic portends yet another new phase for the Flaming Lips--one that's equally as improbable and rewarding as the ones that have preceded it.

It's his unhinged vocals that make Christmas in the Heart interesting, and, in some ways, appropriate to its subject.

Complex enough to reward repetitive listening and compact enough to encourage it, Blue Record is one of the year's most generous hours.

Iyer and his cohorts have spun the piano trio format into great art here, acknowledging their contemporaries and their musical ancestors.

Overall, Psychic Chasms is something like a dream collaboration between the Tough Alliance and Atlas Sound, the latter of whose Internet-only Weekend EP shares a delinquent theme with one of Psychic Chasms' best songs.

Know Better Learn Faster is a more mature record, slightly disillusioned with the world, but no less playful and with no less personality.

Rejoicer is a quality album with some especially strong tracks, but as much as it is refreshing to hear a relatively young band nail sounds from a previous era, the record is more enjoyable than it is interesting.

That feeling of being held at arm's length persists no matter how much time you put in with Voidist, and it's the record's only significant shortcoming.

As a musical statement of intent to the throngs of the newly interested, Music For Men shows a clear picture of who Gossip want to be--a New Millennial Madonna for whom Danceteria never closes. But for those who have been following Gossip's career, waiting with bated breath to see how the band will evolve, this new record may feel a little too much like they are still Standing in the Way of Control.

It is so fully formed and thoughtful that it feels like three or four lesser, noisier records should have preceded it. The xx didn't need a gestation period, though xx is nuanced, quiet, and surprising enough that you might.