Ultimately, Terrestrials works as a likable listen, a liminal play concerning the push and pull between dusk and dawn. But it serves as a mere footnote or, at beast, an appealing redundancy for Sunn O))) and Ulver.

Whatever the songs on So Long are actually about is up for debate despite their plainspokenness, but suffice to say, they trigger the exact joy buzzers that leave you usually infatuated, perhaps a bit hopefully lovelorn.

After the Disco is a more cohesive record, and that turns out to be the problem: Mercer and Burton's eccentricities have been sanded down to a single, flattened plane.

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

Benji sounds more like Kozelek relating events instead of crafting them, which makes the continuity and reflexivity of the record feel both uncanny and the work of protracted genius.

Moon is plenty fine in its own right, and if this heralds a return to further music from Raymonde as well as getting Dosen a little more attention than previously, then nothing wrong with that in the slightest.

That’s the realm where CYMBALS work best, when they use understated sonic brushstrokes--a flutter of synths here and there--to deepen the mood.

Like the debut, this album is only eight songs, but floaty interludes like "In a Bubble on a Stream" or "Juju" allow attention to drift more freely, closer to TTA's super-limited 2006 ambient excursion Escaping Your Ambitions.

As a literary exercise, it’s convincing; as a listening one, it’s mixed.

Beach House the EP succeeds where the mixtape Beach House 2 didn’t, further commercializing Ty’s sound without sacrificing the meat and potatoes of it, the foul-mouthed, sex-positivity of Ty’s quixotic bedroom capers and the production’s precarious balance between slight, house-informed ratchet music, trap and densely arranged traditional R&B sounds.

This is an album whose every layer seems customized, whose every crease seems deliberate. That calculation doesn’t seem to have mitigated Indian’s power at all. Rather, this is the strongest they’ve ever sounded and the smartest they’ve ever sounded.

Held in Splendor is a good example of a record that successfully executes the tropes of psych--it sounds like it could’ve been recorded in 1967 without directly ripping off any artist in particular--without every truly transcending them.

It’s challenging, then, to appreciate the boldness of No Depression, the extent to which the members of Uncle Tupelo insisted on interdependency, on an American story. We don’t have to do that anymore--folks don’t self-identify in the same way, and hardly anyone loves just one genre monogamously--but there’s still something furious and prideful here, something worth hearing.

Come to Life shows Cities Aviv putting post-punk, Oneontrix Point Never-like samples (“Realms”), and even a little bit of rap into one holistically new blend.

Bibio brings a certain refinement and voice to anything he produces now, but that doesn't change the fact that much of the EP is indisputably ad hoc.

Even the songs here that show flashes of congealing eventually end up falling apart into a watery mess.

The new splashes of color are welcome, and they help to lend In Roses a degree of character that wasn’t always present in Gem Club’s earlier music.

With their third release, the five-song Small Sound EP, Tennis complicate the easy breezy beautiful schtick with some positive results.

These slower songs aren't just mellow, they're mundane, and their inclusion leaves Innocence feeling lopsided, a oft-killer rock record with nasty balladry habit.

Cunningham's perplexing persona has always been overshadowed by his ability to confound us with his records; Ghettoville, disappointingly, shifts that balance.

Lord Steppington is just the latest remarkably solid offering from Alchemist and co. and the artists involved clearly think of the endeavors as fun and games.

The whole album is so impressionistic and free-floating that you'll likely hear something else, as Delt intended.

Trouble covers a lot of ground musically, moving through decades and subgenres of pop and rock with each track. But those who listen closely will find a few consistent points of imagery that loosely connect the work: locks and keys, bodies of water, and the telephone.

There are clichés, and there are exalted clichés, and Dee Dee at her best reminds you of this distinction.

Drowners can’t inspire too much ill will or really any kind of strong reaction and that’s fair enough: it doesn’t deal in hot, dirty sex or catastrophic breakups, mostly drunken hookups and easy letdowns.

O'Neil's certainly made her share of enrapturing, enveloping music. But I'm not sure she's ever made one quite as transportive--or, for that matter, as alive--as Where Shine New Lights.

The band splits the difference between old and new into a compact sound that skews more Sex Pistols than Foo Fighters. It’s comparatively gaunt for Against Me! as of late, but it yields the stage to Grace’s voice, which has never sounded better.

The songs become repetitive, and though the harmonies are well-crafted and the melodies are lovely, there aren’t enough moments that demand attention. After a while, all the sounds on River of Souls run together, a little bland and verging on formless.