Although its best moments don't reach quite the altitudes of his prior releases, Skyscraper National Park, as a whole, is the most complete and coherent album in Hayden's catalog, a delightful listen from track one through track eleven.

By remembering the pop elements of the source material he uses to construct his tracks, and incorporating that FM-dial ear for melody into even his most adventurous collage projects, Forrest takes the mashup form beyond gimmickry into an entirely new, refreshingly listenable, excitingly shameless realm.

Taken as a whole, the songs on Bobby Jameson play with a startling intimacy. These are among Pink’s simplest, sharpest compositions, sprawling with an intuitive charm.

The word "Hypnotic"'s overused, but the band's spatial know-how and rigorously muted flourishes are more than deserving of the accolade. It's well-deep, blossoming ambiance.

The Antlers won't hold your hand through Burst Apart, which will inevitably make it more of a grower, but stick around -- it's all the more affecting for how it allows you to pick your own stumbling, lonely path.

Opens with a six-track attack that's rare for any genre, especially contemporary R&B.

It's a welcome reminder of this band's current status, because one hopes that Do Whatever You Want All the Time isn't an end, but another new beginning.

What gives this record its internal order, and makes it stand out over previous laptop explorations of immense record collections, is the simplicity of the other genres that he dabbles and draws upon to flesh out the beat.

They're pop in perhaps the most literal sense of the word-- their songs POP out at you, glowing bright blue-green like a Nike tracksuit.

Florine feels bracingly intimate and original, in its hieroglyphic way.

A sprawling, complex, and fascinating document of American indie rock.

Some of the playfulness of their early days is missed on Best of 00-10, the loose analog charm of their earliest songs would have given the collection a little more lift. But these 17 songs collectively are a hell of a strong argument for why you're still reading about Ladytron now instead of, say, Miss Kittin or Fischerspooner or Peaches.

Most so-called "cinematic" records earn that distinction due to some quirk of reverb or their use of space, but the Long Blondes only have modern England's typically confined, 17-year-old-from-Doncaster guitar-dudish sound. Instead, it's the songs themselves, their narratives, and their characters that speak to the band's widescreen ambitions.

Special Moves--which pulls at least one track from all six Mogwai albums, but no more than two--strategically positions the band's latter-day material among the old warhorses to build a set list that gradually intensifies and explodes like the band's best instrumental epics.

When these scientists hit on the right formula of slow-burning anticipation, the bombast that follows has the profundity of a drug-induced epiphany. Previous Wolf Eyes records have struck that magic balance during individual songs or sides, but none have stretched it over an album's length like Human Animal.

Pulp have pulled off yet another remarkable reinvention of their sound and outlook, while simultaneously making their most organic album since their full-length debut, It, was released almost two decades ago.

Sure, 90 minutes of free-flowing instrumental workouts may seem daunting to more casual Can fans who prefer their kosmische musik spiked with more digestible doses of “Vitamin C.” But devoted heads who surrender to the tide will no doubt emerge from Live in Stuttgart 1975 with another Can maxim in mind: I want more.

Even at its most ominous, though, the album never loses its verve or vitality. It's just one quick hit after another, a succession of aural whippets that last long after the record's over.

The common thread [of the new mix] is that the guitars are cleaner, the vocals are clearer, and previously buried fills come to the surface. ... Two outtakes, both of which landed on the expanded Don’t Tell a Soul, are the best thing about the sessions by far—the countrified “Portland,” which is fantastic, and the jittery rocker “Wake Up.” ... For anyone skeptical of Don’t Tell a Soul, the most convincing argument for their vitality is the live shows from this period. ... The [live] setlist is stunning.

Their music stands now as both a crucial piece in the roiling Seattle scene and as part of a noise-rock continuum that includes like-minded outfits such as Scratch Acid and Butthole Surfers.

Even if it won't hit you on the first listen, Bazooka Tooth remains a strong outing from one of underground hip-hop's most talented, thanks to its unprecedented wealth of lyrical depth and truly individual production style.

The three best songs here—“Another Lifetime Floats Away,” “It’s Here,” and “Will You Dare”—are the most unguarded statements Eisenberg has ever made. Each one, at its core, is a paean, a devotional—a love song.

Lady Walton contains the most accomplished and varied music Clogs have recorded to date.

Never mind the retro-gazing moniker-- The Week That Was is a band you need to hear now.

While lacking the close mic’d intimacy of her early work, Out in the Storm is equally immersive, with songs that play like fiery exorcisms.

Fantastic Playroom puts the emphasis on the content, not the trend, and in so doing makes a damn good case for post-punk's matriculation.

A Brief History of Love is a study in the enormity of sound doing just that, each reverbed kick drum, phasers-on-stun guitar, and wastrel vocal refuting the idea that you need to talk about the passion to express it.

This one is just a little tiny bit less perfectly imperfect than [Transfiguration of Vincent], but it's still got all the warmth and gentle disorganization of its predecessor-- with a few more oomphy tracks standing in for Tranfiguration's most introspective meditations.