As a full-length listening experience, Violent Hearts is a little much-- it runs just under a lean half-hour, but the relative lack of stylistic breadth covered makes a front-to-back spin feel longer.

You may not love all the moves Orcutt makes, but together they quicken your pulse and pressurize the atmosphere, much as a good horror film makes even calm moments seem one second away from shock.

Though some may miss the rough and raw approach of her last two EPs, it's refreshing and exciting to hear music that relies on bone-hard essence rather than gauzy trimmings to create an aura of mystery.

With the Freaking Out EP, Bundick moves from vaguely funky 1980s-tinged makeout jams to more explicitly funky 80s-tinged dancefloor jams-- think Chromeo. The change isn't as successful as his best work, but it still makes for a plenty rewarding between-albums EP.

As a piece of music, it eschews the richness and lushness of those albums, a sound that's felt on the verge of becoming stale. 1977 could be called a palate cleanser, but it's way too torn-up to be that.

What's interesting about the sound they've hit on isn't so much what the two musicians bring to each other's styles, as it is what each sacrifices from his own.

Though Thompson's plaintive wails and the brawny playing of the rhythm section give the impression of relentless and differentiable activity, they're holding patterns all the same.

The album may be scattershot, but perhaps that doesn't matter so much when it's delivered out the barrel of a 12-gauge.

Metals is a vivid evocation of a place that touches on fittingly vast themes about nature, love, and life itself.

The edge that sparked Spank Rock's best moments back in the day either isn't there or flails around without direction.

I do miss the grit, heavy-lifting, and larger excavations of their earlier work--nothing merits tossing around the word "epic" here--but what they do, and what they've become, is fascinating.

It doesn't help that Cole brings the least-flavorful bars of his career to his debut, aiming, most likely, for something more universal than his diaristic mixtapes. The few glints we get of his personal life are intriguing.

While Black Rainbows may represent more of a flickering flame than a raging inferno, it at least yields some evidence that Anderson's once-fiery persona has not been completely extinguished.

This album features perfectly serviceable and perfectly competent, middle-of-the-road punk rock music that probably sounds much better live than it ever could in a recording studio.

The record mixes feelings of protection and safety with the tug of adventure and wraps it in compulsively listenable music that explodes at just the right moments.

Appealing and in tune with admirable influences but ultimately lacking the sort of unpredictability or drama that can make these the songs that saved your life rather than reminiscent of ones that can.

Despite how much better-left-forgotten material is being offered up here as essential, there's still more life in the real Nevermind than anything that's attempted to replicate its attack since.

There's nothing especially bad here, but once the smoke clears from their bland, bassed-out ambiance, HTRK are another band without a sound to call their own.

The result is something that sounds like three session players and lacks the presence of somebody to step up and take this beyond being merely a decent, functional collection of songs.

Scintilli is a disappointingly static record from a duo of born tinkerers.

Only in Dreams isn't a perfect record, but a little while down the line it might end up looking like the beginning of something--the first steps forward for the band, or perhaps a raising of the bar for this entire revival.

Zig Zaj feels like he's straining a little too hard to make every song different from the last, where he's actually become pinned down by the "eclectic" reputation he's accrued, forcing him to make unwise decisions just to keep a certain degree of diversity afloat in his work.

It's a pretty, well-thought out collection--but for all the ideas and layers, Heritage feels somewhat empty.

In the end, what's really impressive is that the mousey quality of their music doesn't work against these nimble, cosmopolitan arrangements. If anything, it makes the songs richer, gives them more of a backstory.

So the weird, winsome Whole Love is certainly Wilco's least consistent LP in a while, but inconsistency has its own rewards.

Celestial Lineage feels like the contemporary American scene's defining statement after San Francisco group Weakling's seminal 2000 offering Dead As Dreams.

There's a striking physicality to these songs, and Guy Fixsen and Ash Workman's production makes every tambourine beat hit with the clarity of a shattering window.