The cartoonish brutality of the music is fun as hell, and since Korvette is most often mocking himself during Honeys, it doesn't come off as hectoring.

Fall's worst moments are queasy and charmless.

Even with fewer hands playing fewer instruments, the songs nevertheless sound leaden, ponderous, drowsy. Still, there are some inspired flourishes.

Setting aside the occasional meandering instrumental break, there are enough genuinely charming and well-crafted songs here that you can sort of understand what they're aiming at.

It may not be an extreme reworking of song forms or a sudden return to action, perhaps simply another chapter in the various indulgences he enjoys, but in numerous ways, The Jazz Age is Ferry's most radical work yet.

The precise ecstasy of the production buoys the record through its few sluggish patches.

It's a real trove, and not just because this lineup is relatively obscure.

There's room for Smoke to grow into this new guise, but Wraetlic is too satisfied with its own dissatisfaction to serve as anything more than comfort food for those predisposed to melancholia.

You get lost in it, and if you're wired a certain way that mixture of desire and confusion is easy to map on to the wider world. For 22 years, the only way to get there was through Loveless and its associated EPs; now there's another path, one many of us never expected to find.

In a lot of ways, Country Sleep delivers while still making you feel like it's playing on your vulnerability.

Taken for what it is--a fluffy, animated unicorn flying joyfully to college-rock Pleasure Town--Out of View is a nice 40-minute respite from reality.

When it really hits, as it often does here, the music of Grouper creates a feeling that can only be defined as awe, an uncanny mixture of wonder and dread that nobody does better.

When II is truly on, it's proof that great albums aren't the sole measure of a great band, a subtle advance that puts Unknown Mortal Orchestra right back where they started: something of a mystery, but one that will certainly be interesting going forward.

We the Common's best songs are its most dynamic.

Good as these guys are at mashing up genres on the fly, there's no denying the straighter, fist-pumpier stuff here works best.

While addressing the same themes he's been tweaking for more than a decade now, James adds a new trick to his ever-expanding repertoire: transforming the boundless possibilities of solo creativity into a cohesive one-man show.

Juul's vocals and production are emotive and permeable, always trying to convey something without any sort of coercion as to what that feeling's supposed to be.

While the best work of the Clientele created worlds, The House at Sea charmingly aspires to being a photo album, something to inspire your own travels rather than serve as a substitute for them.

These aren't songs meant to jump out at you, but spend some time with them and little illuminations flicker to life.

The lack of technique gives Reasons to Live an unfinished quality that suggests there's either more depth than there appears to be, or an underlying emptiness deriving from too much feral energy and not enough songwriting.

The guitars are buzzy and loud, the rhythms are quick, the drums crash, the lyrics are densely packed into a short span of time, and Boyer spits them out with punk rock confidence

Yeah Right has its charms, but they're echoes of a band Bleeding Rainbow used to be under a slightly different name.

Overall, General Dome's rewards are equal to its considerable demands, proving that there's more to Buke and Gase than a good story.

It's despairing and unfriendly, but it opens up an entire new world for Sweet to explore, and is richest and most surprising Boduf release yet.

More often than not, however, Mice Parade pushes these songs down paths that don't fit.

So really, it doesn't turn out all that different from the most recent Earlimart, Beachwood Sparks, or Jason Lytle records: perfectly okay, not pushy enough to be even remotely unpleasant, and in a way you're hoping it's better.

The relatively sumptuous presentation of The Flower Lane successfully separates it from the rest of Ducktails' discography. Unfortunately, a familiar emptiness remains.

The Roxette and Cyndi Lauper-referencing, soaring keyboard pop of Heartthrob is a welcome stylistic reconciliation, if one that sacrifices their sonic weirdness.