As it stands, remaining at that upper register with every word and line, the album’s 39 minutes feel much longer, leaving one high and dry.

Listening to Complete Surrender, you get the sense that Taylor and Watson would be just as happy making music for, and with, each other in their spare time, revelling in their companionship.

In a humbler, warmer, more openhearted way, Reigning Sound have risen above themselves--as well as the garage-rock idiom that spawned them--while spiritually hewing true.

At times the intricate arrangements come across as a means of covering up unmemorable songwriting.

Sutherland is a massively charismatic character, and it’s hard not to get caught up in the elation that he so obviously feels when he gets from finding the perfect groove. That feeling permeates every corner of the album, but it comes through strongest on two particular tracks.

The switch from acoustic to electric has a lovely lamplit effect on the songs.

Wantonly skipping between sounds with a dilettante zeal, Wolves in the Throne Room seem woefully under equipped for this music.

In a way, it's a shame that Third Time to Harm came out in 2014: in 1980, this thing would've been a mainstay in teen boys' tape decks everywhere.

With L’Aventura, he’s done a fine job of sticking the landing.

Quinn and Donaldson may be getting somewhat longer in the tooth, but they’re sounding younger. And whatever darkness lurks within Family Crimes is swallowed back down with a wise, dreamy smile.

The headspace it produces is calming but frequently, dreamily surreal, and it often seems like a better place to live than the world outside it.

As humble, tastefully appointed psych-pop goes, the Proper Ornaments surely have their hearts--and heads, wooden or not--in the right place.

Braid don’t have the athleticism or explosiveness of their earlier days, but in a Tim Duncan way, they’re craftier, better about picking their spots.

A well-polished album that sometimes feels perplexingly one-dimensional.

This is an album that asks you to sink into its sounds, takes a left every time you expect it to take a right and moves slowly most of the time, letting things happen rather than forcing them.

Though We Are Only What We Feel plods through similar tempos and uniform textures, Wäppling sings with enough character to keep the record from fading into the background.

This album can't be written off purely as a repetitive mess--this is the sound they were going for, after all, and when they rely less heavily on repetition, drones, and electronics, they find some decent material.

A startling and inspiring record. Eno’s been involved with quite a few of those in the past, but it’s especially nice to experience a new one that reaches us in the present moment.

A record too tart for beauty and too well reared for intractability.

It's easier to listen with fresh ears and hear these strange sounds as something playful, unfamiliar, and approachable, qualities that Gamel definitely possesses.

For now, Careers stands up as a testament to the power of serendipity and a decent first effort from a blooming young songwriter.

It’s better to conceive of Ex holistically, rather than as seven individual tracks—in part because the album's distinct parts tend to blend into one another, with little to differentiate them.

As an entry point into two of the distinct faces of Cabaret Voltaire, #7885 is an undeniably valuable document, and one that’s as much about the importance of growth and change as it is about the birth of a sound.

Too many shards of ideas are shoved into the long songs, and Fickeisen’s flash sometimes borders on showmanship, a glaring incongruity for a spartan outfit like Trap Them.

It's a record just as baffling as it is beguiling.

The bulk of Neon Icon resists coherence or purpose.

Even with their most aesthetically orthodox track, Total Control's total message is radical.

The Atlas Moth hope to be heavy and heavenly, aggressive and accessible, to exist in worlds of light and dark simultaneously. In this instance, they wind up in the shadows of their own intentions, hidden in flat gray instead of beautiful white or harrowing black.