While most of the dance world continues to view the creation of a solid album discography as strictly optional, Signs Under Test is a strong entry that proves Tejada's quietly building up a legacy of excellence.

Lost Themes is plenty dark and heavy but shorter on inspiration.

Zs demonstrate an energy and urgency here that they’ve never before had, as these pieces leap off the page in exhilarating fashion.

The result is a little absent-minded, with the difference split between gleeful assertion and wanton noodling, the type of album that might sound best when you’re thinking about something else.

As always, that mystery resides in the sounds he manipulates. No one else sounds like Phil Elverum.

He's gradually but noticeably building up a real identity on record. But if that next level's within reach, there has to be one obstacle to overcome: Firsthand truths take longer to sink in when they're delivered with secondhand styles.

For those who grew up worshipping at the altar of such ephemeral sounds, a record like Depersonalisation is a welcome bit of gloom, even if it ultimately feels like a record you probably already own.

As the band churn up sound and fury, we can hear the strident strains of Balliet’s cello, scribbling suicide notes in the background and lending some gravity to an album that sounds, tragically, weightless.

For the more casual, less obsessive listener, it can be a bit of a snooze. The songs are well chosen and certainly revealing, but Dylan and his band play them all pretty much the same, sacrificing any sense of rhythm for stately ambience.

Further Out does successfully sound genreless despite being referential of a half dozen genres at once and is presented as a continuous listening experience.

In its often inchoate roar, We Are Undone bears little resemblance to the laser-focus punk-blues of their earlier work. The songs just aren't as good. The most satisfying callback to Two Gallants' halcyon, mid-'00s prime comes in the album's second half.

ll We Are makes a stylish first impression, showing up so impeccably tailored that you wonder if it secretly fears all of that fumbling human contact that could mess things up.... Meanwhile, the back half of All We Are is filled with slow jams that barely stir from a post-coital heap.

It doesn't require your full attention, but it tends to capture it. I like to imagine what it would feel like to stumble across the piece on the radio, late at night, perhaps in your car, having no idea what you were hearing, or why.

Sullivan, better than singers and songwriters in almost any genre, creates worlds where relationships take on more complex dynamics, but are immediate in their effect.

Musically, it’s the grittiest-sounding track on the album, with eddies and distortion clotting the guitar licks and evoking the more destitute vistas of San Francisco. Lyrically, however, the song sounds entirely disingenuous.

Instead of following his darker impulses or fantastically out-there indulgences, Coombes plays it safe.

On each of his many releases to date, Collins is always trying to reinvent one wheel or another, and even though that's traditionally seen as a fruitless exercise, what he and Desree have ended up with on Silk Rhodes is an invention worth marveling at in its own right.

On Your Own Love Again has more earnest moments, but its unadorned emotional uncertainty is profound and relatable.

It’s still a Napalm Death record through and through--which means shredded eardrums and tinnitus for days. After all this time, we’d expect nothing less.

Range Anxiety goes by in an instant, makes minimal demands, and is remarkably enjoyable for its simple pleasures. It may not have the heft to move you, but it’s gentle and never unwelcome.

Taken as a full-length by two groups that treat the format with some suspicion, You, Whom I Have Always Hated is a remarkably cohesive and singular album. Though it shows signs of both responsible parties, it also proves their inherent restlessness.

A warm, intimate debut album that leaves space for darker contemplation—those stray thoughts that light you up at the end of the night.

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.

Theirs is the rare lead vocalist/backing vocalist dynamic that feels like an equal partnership, with Violet’s injections propelling these songs nearly as much as their rubbery bass lines or pogoing guitars.

It’s simultaneously her most mature feat of arranging and almost psychosomatically affecting.

Ten years deep into their career, the Dodos have never actually steered too far from their roots, but the loose, unselfconscious feel of Individ proves that there is something to be said for recognizing and playing to your strengths, trusting your chops, and simply feeling things as intensely as you possibly can.

"Blissfield, MI", like most of Runners in the Nerved World, is such an effortlessly enjoyable listen that you can miss the tension and ambition emanating from a band that’s chasing greatness as an escape from being Midwestern also-rans.

The Go-Betweens' endless enthusiasm for their own work is what propelled them out of that Brisbane bedroom in the first place, and the richness of context that this box provides makes it a deeper pleasure than its component albums are on their own.