Mercer's able to fill cavern-like spaces with the might of his many soliloquies. Easy listening or not at all, it's why Skin of Evil--here and gone in just 30 minutes--remains so gripping: Some turns are capable of provoking a physical reaction.

True to its titular subject, Diver constitutes a daring leap for Lemonade, one that, at times, appears destined to result in a belly-flop, but recovers nicely in the end.

The darkness is where Lortz repeatedly returns, and when he does, the album swoons into a near-stasis.

With that frustrating distance between Tiny Rebels' finely tuned sonics and Kelly's uncharacteristically indistinct lyrics, it's hard not to wonder what another week might've done.

More than Lightbody’s lack of cogency, the imperious tone burdens Wildness.

These are talented musicians-- and Vol. 2 is superior to the first disc-- but that development hardly merits owning two full albums of indifferent collaboration.

The new record basks in Endless Flowers' sunny afterglow, but the songs here are brasher, nervier, and a lot more fun.

Byrne and Slim never misstep here, but they also never surprise. At best you may wind up distantly admiring their craftsmanship.

Outside of a distorted vocal on "Not Getting There" and a slowly blooming and surprisingly gripping waltz ("Everything Is Wrong"), the arrangements seem done up like hospital rooms, every sound picked for maximum sterility.

On good nights, the band conjures a singularly eerie vibe. But on Better Luck Next Life, it's not always coming through.

While “Dishes in the Sink” and its companion ballad “Hardly Hanging On” tell a genuinely affecting story of squalor and depression. Despite these peaks, Sisyphus is more fun to ponder than it is to listen to.

Bartos is one of the few people allowed to get away with such blatant mirroring of the past, but it's hard to escape the thought that he's done it all before, and better, and with a little more elegance and wit.

Mimicry is one thing, but at least choose wisely. You see, OK Go decide to impersonate post-Pinkerton, post-catchy, fun-by-numbers Weezer, resulting in an Ivy Leaguer Sugar Ray sound.

Hints of humor are often symbolized in Scholefield's artworks, but here they have an unbalancing effect, only serving to detract from the portentous musical renderings of the uneasy symbiosis between digital glitch and the natural world.

No No No may sound ineffectual after a cursory listen, but it reveals some subtle pleasures if you keep it in rotation.

Much of Until the Earth comes off like the narrator from "Windowsill" still telling these damn kids to get off his lawn.

They remain a surprisingly divisive band, with detractors accusing them of imitating rather than innovating. Desert Skies does absolutely nothing to answer that criticism, but it does provide a useful point against which to measure their later efforts.

She tears into every song with indomitable energy, and usually has production to match. Though it doesn’t quite mesh with the ballad, the twitchy percussion of “Carnival Games” at least livens things up.

Fall's worst moments are queasy and charmless.

So then, what is the excuse for a typically elitist music nerd to bow to Andrew WK's blistering tard-rock? That's right, folks: there isn't one.

Yelawolf sounds like he's just going through the motions instead of actually covering ground.

They keep the music raw enough that it sounds almost-but-not-quite amateurish--again, following in the hardcore/early-thrash tradition--while Marrow’s willingness to indulge in comic absurdity with the lyrics makes Body Count’s preachiness more palatable.

The "Americana" tag sticks thanks to the general country-rock tropes and all the natural imagery, but as usual the group excels at blurring the edges of an already blurry genre with spacey (but never indulgent) psych leanings, controls set for the heart of the sun but anchored comfortably down to earth.

Most everything you'd expect from Cornershop pops up somewhere on Disco and the Halfway to Discontent. You get your guitars, sitars, and Singh's tasty subcontinental breakfast of a voice. But you also get slapped with a dosage of bad opium.... For the majority of its duration, Disco merely simmers when it should be sizzling.

At best, this record is Suicide resurrected as a novelty act; at worst it could pass for an extreme deodorant commercial with swearing.

When the ways Bodan tries to eliminate distance come together--the voice, the lyrics, the rawness of the emotion on display--the final product can induce claustrophobia. The effect is undeniably powerful, but there's a fine line between powerful and overwhelming, and his work should grow more potent as he manages to find a balance between the two.

An EP is often a great place for a band to experiment and test out new ideas between albums, to make mistakes and start again, especially when their trademark sound seems tired. But Little Dragon show none of those desires.

The bad news is that the overwhelming vibe is still that of easy listening digital mush.