Fans of Stott's labelmates Demdike Stare, and all the other goth-n-screw artists out there at the moment, will be happy to gnaw on these bones.

It's a colossus of an album, the product of a band that was thinking huge, pushing itself to its limits, and devoted to breaking open its own understanding of what rock music could be.

(together) is borderline unlistenable taken as a whole.

There's little on Lioness: Hidden Treasures that sounds throwaway, or like it should have never been released; but there's equally little that sounds absolutely essential.

His art is 144,487 times less remarkable than his first week sales numbers would have you believe.

This is the product of a dynamic and assured vision, one that retains an alluring sense of mystery.

What makes Last Day of Summer engaging has as much to do with White Denim's potential future as it does its roots.

It's all lovely and certainly more immediately engaging and compact than Jónsi's mostly-instrumental Riceboy Sleeps multimedia project from 2009.

On the whole, Stage Whisper is enjoyable, but the live portion is dispensible, and the new studio tracks, which will likely please anyone taken with IRM, are the real draw.

When they go for manic instead of mellow, Canyons do bring something new, even if it's just intensity, to the 80s retro party.

Like their namesake, Quilt's music feels handmade and stitched-together, as though its creators were sifting through a collection of musical hand-me-downs and collating the bits that spoke to them into something new.

Tumble Bee is a welcome addition to contemporary children's music, not only because it's sufficiently involving to appeal to adults, but also because it further demonstrates that songs for kids don't have to be cloying or sanitized.

This isn't the Roots' most accessible album, and it's definitely their most downbeat, but it comes from a place that isn't always easy to dwell.

Ward's real saving grace on Parodia Flare is the guitar, which he utilizes in unexpectedly welcome ways to propel his compositions, keeping them from dissolving into murky keyboard washes.

Pinch & Shackleton is a welcome return to each artist's peculiar roots.

t's a strangely affecting synthesis of sounds and marks Holy Other's short debut out as a darkly oppressive but ultimately rewarding piece of work.

Radiant Door is exactly as its title suggests--the brighter side of one of America's best psych-pop bands.

The dense weight of verbiage on No Kings actually welcomes uninitiated listeners, rather than siphoning them out for not being advanced enough on some impenetrable ultra-battler s***.

As so often when it comes to dance-music full-lengths, Bias' good ideas get lost in the sea of makeweight stuff, and his attempt to please just about everyone results in a frustratingly spotty album.

Bronson's biggest strengths are a goofy sense of humor and a refreshing lack of self-regard: at its best, Well-Done is like spending 45 minutes with the affable, roly-poly guy who cracked you up at your high school lunch table.

The second Bangs & Works is a marked improvement over its predecessor.

What makes Pan Am Stories worth returning to is the scope Knight works within, where elements of prog, folk, and psychedelia blur in and out of focus.

While Glover's exaggerated, cartoonish flow and overblown pop-rap production would be enough to make Camp one of the most uniquely unlikable rap records of this year (and most others), what's worse is how he uses heavy topics like race, masculinity, relationships, street cred, and "real hip-hop" as props to construct a false outsider persona.

The riffs are glam-nasty, the lyrics sublimely knuckleheaded, the basslines nimble and bombastic, the mood frivolous and fun and unabashedly corny.

For these 53 minutes, they also offer a barrage of the unexpected, relighting doom from the strangest corners.

These songs are fiercely internal, which also makes them remarkably hard to shake--here, Roberts is singing about the no-place of everyplace, the desolation we all know.

The most impressive aspect of 200 Years, especially considering it as the debut of a new collaboration, is its overall aura of cool confidence.

Outside the sagging middle section, the subject matter and production will be nothing new to those familiar with Yela's music; his voice and perspective remain sharp and unique, and he certainly hasn't lost any of his technical skill.