The dividedness of the record is especially plain here. Acher generally gets calm and luscious music, and then all hell breaks loose whenever Dose shows up.

Aesthethica is inventive, alive, and shrieking with more ideas than many bands explore over an entire career.

You may drift through recent Sea and Cake records more than you engage with them, but you still tend to want to drift for longer than a half-hour. Nevertheless it suggests the band is still master of the niche it's carved, and not out of new ideas just yet.

As with their other work with Michio Kurihara, False Beats and True Hearts is a slow bloom, an album whose rewards can become fully apparent only through thoughtful immersion.

On Feel It Break, they've got that creeping cinematic synth-psych style down cold. Moving forward, I'm curious to hear what else they can do.

White's natural eeriness and Jones' diffident eroticism certainly fit a sound built around mystical melodrama and chilly Euro heartbreak, but their voices are such complimentary opposites that they turn out to be what gives Rome much of its distinctness, keep it from being just another record collector (or film collector) exercise in getting everything period-perfect.

There is no scrape, no tension, no noisy bullshit, and Destroyed is eminently un-replayable as a result.

Wild Beasts have remained an act with no intention of blending in. Smother, their third full-length, is just as the above quote promises: completely uncompromising. And that's why it succeeds.

Stylish as Kirk's songs can be, they aren't always well suited by Creep On's contrasting patterns.

The Antlers won't hold your hand through Burst Apart, which will inevitably make it more of a grower, but stick around -- it's all the more affecting for how it allows you to pick your own stumbling, lonely path.

James Pants is his third album, less goofy and party-focused than 2008's Welcome, and a little less brooding and funky than 2009's Seven Seals.

There are still a couple of puzzling decisions--"Backwards Time" is such a pitch-perfect evocation of the Police that it's actually distracting--but The January EP succeeds where the other Here We Go Magic releases have mostly failed; instead of handing you a couple of shiny baubles, it provides you with an inviting headspace to fall into.

Like most of Kilgour's solo work, it has a relaxed and quietly accomplished air.

This is still playful stuff, just more subtly so. But to see WhoMadeWho settle into this mode feels like a significant loss of joie de vivre from a group who were once some of dance music's most flagrant disco clowns.

Celebration, Florida doesn't simply reflect the hubbub of America as the Felice Brothers see it. The album becomes a part of the spectacle, which is surely not what the band intended.

It's a tantalizing glimpse of how great solo Harvey can be, but unfortunately, a good deal of the rest of the album is simply unmemorable.

There's nothing even the slightest bit innovative about Gunz n' Butta, but it does give us Cam, Vado, and Araab, three guys with great chemistry, doing what they do. It's a one-dimensional affair, but that one dimension is pretty awesome.

Earle's albums have been extremely uneven for some time now. Certainly that indicates he's put out a sizable amount of dross, but it also means he's recorded a bunch of great songs that have gotten lost in the shuffle.

His fantasies and lack of filter are still huge roadblocks for many if not most listeners. They're depraved and despicable, tied in part to a long and unfortunate legacy of gangster and street rap. They're also one aspect of a larger, character-driven story -- a license that we grant to visual arts, film, and literature but rarely to pop music.

Past Life Martyred Saints is a fiercely individual record, made by a musician with a fearless and courageous approach to her art. Crucially, the desire to let such raw emotion out in song never feels forced.

It's never boring, and there's certainly plenty to wrap your ear around. But these sweet songs just feel like they would've been better served by either pulling back or revving up, not the slathering on that takes place here.

The best songs on Earth Grid have that quality, burrowing notes far enough into your psyche that you start to crave them.

Ending with what sounds like a tape spinning off its reel, it's a welcome break from the amorousness of the remainder of the album, which is charming, but may have a harder time finding a place in your record collection during the year's colder months.

While Honus continues to prove himself one of rock's best working lyricists, Life Fantastic contains as many musically compelling moments as Rabbit Habits and Six Demon Bag.

Even so, it comes as a relief that the song doesn't end with a big, fiery finale. Instead, the band lets The Rise fray apart on its own, a quiet conclusion to a lyrically and musically feisty album.

Eye Contact-- the group's latest album-- is Gang Gang Dance's finest, weirdest, and most uplifting statement yet.

It's when Wasser puts her voice front and center that The Deep Field collapses in on itself.

XI versions works best as a companion for smitten Black Noise fans, and it offers a couple of nice moments that Four Tet and Animal Collective completists might want to keep in their back pockets.