Much of Similes is more standard, wordless Eluvium fare: the rumbling piano-based "In Culmination", the slow-burning "Nightmare 5" and "Bending Dream", and most of all the long, flickering closer "Cease to Know".

It's an album you can spend time with and understand as a whole work, and one that grows on you with each listen, revealing yet more detail and nuance.

Let's hope Magic Chairs is as much terminal as it is transitional, meaning that next time, they'll get all of that grandness right.

It's the Brian Jonestown Massacre album that's the least informed by the usual parade of 1960s mod/psych influences, opting instead for flirtations with disco rhythms, drum loops, boom-box beats and house-diva wails. In a sense, Newcombe has simply replaced one form of repetition (droning/jangly guitar jams) for another (dance workouts).

It doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know about Cash in his final months, nor does it sound like an attempt to re-brand an icon or re-shape a legacy.

New listeners will be immediately confronted with a couple of very catchy, horror-laced new wave anthems about fatal beatings and bulimia, and make that perennial first-Xiu-Xiu-experience decision: Do I buy this?

You can feel roots going down and an edifice being built. Her voice has gained depth and she sings with more force and clarity, so that's part of it. And the arrangements are more judicious and draw less attention to themselves (some tracks are just harp, others add horns, strings, and percussion, but with a lighter touch). But the bigger difference seems to be the overall mood, which is expansive and welcoming.

Work finds these former Next Big Things railing against maturity while tacitly embracing it.

American Gong is also blessedly free of typical Quasi jams-- which work live, but can drag on record. There are still lurching, aggro guitar solos and hints at foundations for what will become showcases for improv on tour, but the album's arrangements are simplified and mostly serve their vital hooks.

Snakes for the Divine shows that metal, in its most basic and elemental forms, still has plenty of visceral thrill left in it--as long as it's done right. And High on Fire do it right.

It's disappointing that Clem Snide seem to have nestled into a very comfortable, moth-eaten place, and it's sadder still when you can hear Barzelay's sense of humor worming it's way in.

Luck in the Valley is so vibrant, engaging, and alive, it's hard to overestimate it.

The Magician's Private Library isn't an attention-grabbing debut in the plain sense. The best moments drift along naturally and without hassle.

Not only do they add urgency to familiar psychedelic rock templates, but they pay just as close attention to the quiet moments as the raging ones--each track on their self-titled Thrill Jockey debut displays a careful layering of sounds and atmospheres.

Tapestry of Webs is an encouraging, welcome surprise-- a clear sign that the musicians involved are pushing themselves and searching for something new.

As much as Tidings rides high on it's own brand of sweaty juke-joint appeal, its finest moments are a grab bag of genre detours.

As with generations of Swedish popsters before them, Sambassadeur excel at picking up sounds from the U.S. and UK and refining them to their catchy essence.

You get the feel of two of the world's greatest musicians in a room together, having a conversation and creating a document that will carry their legacy into the future. It is not challenging music. Anyone can approach it easily, and it is the perfect initiation to Touré's talents for listeners who haven't yet heard him.

Constellations begs for more rather than delivering all of the goods all of the time. Perhaps that's an old-fashioned concept-- demanding the sort of patience and attention that technology's made obsolete. But at this point, it's exactly the move Balmorhea needed to make.

Every hoedown on Sigh No More-- every rush of instruments in rhythmic and melodic lockstep-- conveys the same sense of hollow, self-aggrandizing drama.

It leaves a very hazy, almost spectral impression when it ends. But it's also warm and in some ways comforting, and it improves the more you listen to it and tease out the details in the songs.

Alternately inspired and frustrating, it addresses themes of lost love (and lost chicness) with Queen-size 70s-rock pomp, neoclassical interludes, and one ukulele-based chamber-pop song.

Though there's a nice sense of humor throughout, there's just not enough meat on the bone to inspire any sort of real investment in the majority of these songs.

Kollaps Tradixionales makes no apologies for this shift, but it does defuse 13 Blues' sometimes oppressive air by reconciling the band's current incarnation with its more graceful earlier output.

Measure is, if nothing else, a truly crafted record.

As it is, Peace & Love sounds like a rough draft full of rookie mistakes, rather than a veteran defiantly going it alone.

The Stimulus Package would work better as an album if Free had a little more help directing his skills, or if he just decided to rap hard on every song instead of tying himself to concepts. But even the goofiest songs here are still fun listens, and a few tracks come close to capturing his old brilliance.

At first listen that seems off-- the chops and compositional sense here are the most immediately impressive part of the album. But dig deeper and you realize Local Natives never lose sight of the pleasures of being a youthful rock band-- right down to themes of wanderlust and discovery.