Cleaner and more elegant [than previous album, Does You Inspire You], buffing their crisp electronic pop to an immaculate sheen.... Truly great.

"Ash on the Trees (The Sudden Ebb of a Diatribe)", [is] the real reason this set of reissues is worth the investment.... It's a terrifying maze of tangents, like the early works of Nurse With Wound cronies Current 93 and O'Malley's own Khanate remixed by some actualization of evil.

You get the sense they're shooting for something epic, something that would sound just as big as the pop bangers on radio, but the results are goofy.

Even in this beatless world, he brings his techno producer's instincts out, dropping just enough in the way of fleeting, right-place-right-time hooks to catch your ear when it's ready drift away from the song.

The Drexciya reissue rightly returns the spotlight to the original electro's signature rhythms and analog palette.

While it's nice to finally hear these two follow up on a promising debut, Hymns isn't likely to capture many people who weren't taken with the original Cardinal record.

Edwards often sounds lost in these new songs.

More than just chart her progression as a singer and songwriter, CYRK also sees Le Bon and her four-piece band developing into a crack psych-rock outfit that consistently leads the songs into unexpected places.

Where the Big Pink previously sounded invincible, nearly every attempt to intellectualize or streamline their sound makes Future This come off as timid and malnourished.

It's one of his best, a mostly single-minded return to the on-the-mic fierceness and computers-go-tribal rhythms that first made his name.

There are few standout tracks; instead, the most arresting moments emerge out of layers of increasingly damaged sounds that set an uncompromisingly bleak mood.... It doesn't quite work as a standalone experience.

For every bit of overcompensation--he actually cracks a bottle over a dude's head in "Raw"--there's something vividly rendered and honest.

Think of Glimmer as a little symphony, just with singles, and made by a musician who can't decide between the roles of producer or composer. Really, he shouldn't anytime soon.

While the collection speaks highly of the Cure's professionalism, it never catches spark, save for a performance of "The Caterpillar", reportedly their first since 1984.

Though much of Spills Out seems to zip by in a blur, it's assembled with enough care to never quite spin out from its center.

It's a record that marks the time when the "Gucci Gucci" rapper's homegirl became notorious enough to do an album with Gucci Mane, and when Gucci Mane had fallen far enough to decide to go along with it.

His new record is another collection of effortlessly gorgeous ruminations on hip-hop expressed through thermal updrafts, babbling brooks, and cracking twigs.

Like many spinoffs from the Odd Future machine, it's a small piece of a larger puzzle, useful for obsessives concerned with keeping their catalogs up to date.

More often than not, the contradictions between the band's knowing appropriations and its calls against jaded cynicism resolve themselves in the album's intricately rewarding attention to rich and unexpected sonic details.

Spotty, strange, all short songs and shitty sound, it's got the collagist careen of Bee Thousand and Propeller and the tumbling tunecraft of Alien Lanes and Under the Bushes Under the Stars.

A strong finish to Tesfaye's first trilogy, providing just enough closure to satisfy, and just enough mystery left to entice us back for the next round.

At times the music can get sentimental and even sappy, but it's never heavy-handed.

Thug Motivation somehow feels both airless and over-inflated, the sound of an artist trying to revisit something gone.

The new mastering job, by Frank Arkwright working with Marr, actually is really good: loud but not bomb-level loud, clear, and airy. (Hatful of Hollow, in particular, is dramatically improved from its previous incarnations.) On the other hand, Complete is a profoundly inaccurate description of this set.

Aside from one surprising flip of "Be My Baby", Papich doesn't seem as interested in transforming his source material as much as just presenting it.

Feels like music I've been subconsciously craving without even knowing it exists.

Even if the fusion initially seems unorthodox, LIVELOVEA$AP is exactly the sort of record you'd expect to hear in 2011 from a New Yorker who was 13 when "Big Pimpin'" came out.

Hazed Dream has some heady moments--the languid guitar intro to "Incense Head" and the head-nodding chords of "Mexican Wedding"--but the songs are just too mellow, understated, and lyrically anonymous to move the needle much.