Despite its problems, Oblique to All Paths is the kind of commendable idea that feels like a way forward.

Range Of Light is the first album that defines Carey apart from his bandmates and contemporaries, as his developed, earnest, Midwestern glow bursts through the album's cracks.

Yep, it's the face of a guy who just recorded an accomplished, cohesive debut, one that should please fans of "blog house" and Swedish pop alike. Now if only he owned a razor.

Ultimately, Sean's a likable character.

This band lives or dies by its hooks, and in truth most of Hideaway’s are only OK. They’re straightforward to a fault, and short on those small, sometimes barely even perceptible deviations from expectation that distinguish a sublime hook from a routine one. Williams’ greatest strength and weakness as a songwriter is that he always follows the path of least resistance.

In spite of its flaws, To the Races charms with its somber atmosphere.

Anyone following Half Japanese's albums over their long stay in the rock arena has to enjoy the project's increasing comfortableness with complexity and craft. Hello demonstrates this sophistication to terrific effect, letting Jad's charming quirks take flight with more complex backgrounds.

Fifth follows the same Bacharach/Gainbourg/Motown thread as its superior predecessor, 1999's Playboy and Playgirl. But nothing new happens here, not even within the duo's derivative sphere. The beats are still bouncy as hell, and the string-laden melodies are still layered ear candy. However, this fullness is less Wall of Sound and more Vegas showroom.... What makes Fifth most unremarkable is the fact that it's nearly bereft of the great, catchy songwriting we've seen from Pizzicato Five in the past.

It's musical air-freshener at worst, and inspired homage at best. The dance's themes of infirmity and redemption are writ large in the song titles, but it's Broderick's technique, not the narrative, that captivates.

As slippery and elusive as this album's thrills can be, they'll eventually fall into place, one track at a time.

It's the most cohesive-- and, possibly, the out-and-out strongest-- Islands record yet.

They feel like the pieces that stuck to the wall when he threw everything at it.

Songs usually don't develop past their first five seconds, and the album slides back out of your attention field quickly.

Despite Weird Drift's genre-busting ambitions, the album feels humble and unpretentious.

Kibby's willingness to push boundaries makes In Cold Blood worth listening to—and, who knows, maybe one day its songs will make for some great karaoke.

After 30 years, Esoteric Warfare is a Mayhem album worth talking about more for its sounds than its associated baggage.

Pattern of Excel is similarly idiosyncratic--it feels, in many ways, like a fistful of sketches torn from the notebook and tossed to the wind. Making sense of the ways they fall is part of the pleasure of this quiet, cryptic record.

If the first half of the album has a lethargic sense that record never quite shakes, the last two tracks suggest there may be more for the group to explore in the future.

It’s a perfectly fine album by a guy who wants to be much more than perfectly fine.

Jean-Jacques Perrey et son Ondioline is deceptively experimental music in the lineage of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop or Tomita: lush musical soundscapes that still come alive to modern ears, more than a half-century after they were recorded.

Their second album, Rock Island, shows Palm working harder than ever to unburden themselves of the influences heard on those earlier releases, from Slint and Sonic Youth to Battles and Animal Collective.

The content is memorable, but the melodies aren’t. Still, stronger and more diverse than their debut.

Aided by its dynamic pop-punk flourishes, Trauma Factory glows with earnestness and demonstrates all the good that can come from embracing pain.

SGP's ability to create a quarantined universe explains why Mysterious is often absorbing rather than oppressive.

While I certainly can't hold it against Kweller for trying something different and playing dress-up with a Nudie suit, Changing Horses nonetheless finds his half-assed over-countrification and half-assed under-countrification to be equally ineffectual.

2:54 have built a palatial structure on The Other I, but they still have yet to lay out a welcome mat.

Like their namesake, Quilt's music feels handmade and stitched-together, as though its creators were sifting through a collection of musical hand-me-downs and collating the bits that spoke to them into something new.

The ’90s were a decade very much in its feelings, and the best parts of Wallop are its most emotional.