Wonky has the one-jolt-after-another vibe of a great collection of familiar hits but without the disconnected feeling you get when a bunch of obviously Big Moment singles are slapped together and called an album, rather seamlessly covering a whole lot of musical ground without sacrificing concision or intensity

Flat, rather forced attempts at oddballery give Mouseman a scattered, self-conscious feel it never quite shakes for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

This album still stands out among his recent work, not so much for the leap of faith he took collaborating with Auerbach but because it turned out so damn well.

It's one of her most captivating and immediate front-to-back statements of purpose as a singer.

A little like a greatest hits, a little like a soundtrack, and a little like a collaborative art project, Black Mountain's 51 minutes of music for Year Zero serve as a reminder of how good this band has sometimes been and as a tease of the music they might still make.

Even if Folila is less surprising than the two albums that came before it, it still makes me look forward to seeing where they'll take this fusion next.

Both Lights may be plenty gorgeous, but in Wyland's never-idle hands, that beauty proves fleeting.

While Acousmatic Sorcery is interesting and occasionally even great on its own, it ultimately it feels very much like a hyper-creative and gifted artist trying to figure out what he's doing.

As a benefit for earthquake victims and as an outlet for Batoh's grief and fear, there's plenty to recommend. As a pure sonic experience, it is a very novel, very undeveloped idea mingling with some very old ones.

Earth Has Doors feels like the diametric opposite of "fiddling around."

A lot of the music on Happy To You, their second full-length, sounds excellent. Beats sparkle, synths crest and unfurl with purpose, horns come in at just exact right moment.... [Yet] too much of the time, too much is missing.

Choreography stands as a most impressive debut: one that captures a young rock 'n' roll band buzzing with raw energy and inspiration, while already displaying the sort of rapidly sophisticating songcraft you expect to hear on a sophomore release.

Subject: Matter might be Sandman's best work yet.

Mini departures aside, Wreck is simply another strong Unsane album and another wrench thrown in the idea that an enduring band needs an arc.

awE naturalE, like Black Up, is a pleasantly surprising resurrection of the Pacific Northwest-via-Brooklyn hippie-hop that we never might have anticipated a few years ago.

Best Behavior is a strong record on its own merits, perhaps more so if you feel a sort of investment in Dinowalrus after hearing %, but it leaves something to the listener's imagination in order to make it truly exciting in addition to something sturdy to build upon.

For the most part, though, King Con's an enjoyable collection, one that presents Winston as an artist with a strong enough personality to overcome that dip and to stand out in a scene where it can be hard to make an impression.

Bands like this often aren't lucky enough to find singers this subtle, striking, and strong.

it's more like an endpoint for devoted fans looking to connect the dots. As such, it provides a fascinating coming-of-age story of an artist who came into his own playing styles he knew he loved and others he only thought he hated.

Like all great live albums (Live at the Apollo, Double Live, After Dark), it will make you eternally thankful that someone had the foresight to hit the record button.

Into the Waves is stylized, but its presentation still manages to suit its content.

Howard's Brainfeeder debut shatters expectations, offering an always shifting balance of alien and familiar. [But] It's not perfect.

It's a series of vignettes and at its best it reminds me of amorphous copy/paste artists like Prefuse 73, musicians who wormed their way into a genre by nibbling at its edges.

Mirel Wagner possesses a curious physicality both in her lyrical conjurings and in the confident agility of her guitar playing, which together sound distinctive, specific, and personal even when considered against the decades of acoustic folk music that has come before.

Most of these songs are really pretty damn good. Tanlines have never had a problem with the set-up, but it's in the delivery where the occasionally falter.

Sonik Kicks is a good record, but it doesn't have the songwriting depth and range of its two predecessors, and as admirable as it is that Weller is still playing with his formula and searching for something new to do with it, the electronics here do the songs few favors.

Large chunks of MDNA are shockingly banal, coming across not so much as bad pop songs per se, but as drably competent tunes better suited to D-list Madonna wannabes.

Queen of the Wave just makes you lay prostrate at the feet of Pepe Deluxé in the hopes that you won't mind them relentlessly hammering you with tacky quirks and leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.