My issue with Copia-- the thing that keeps this record from greatness-- is Cooper's approach to piano.

The most enjoyable High Llamas record in over a decade.

With Ash Wednesday, Elvis Perkins has emerged as an assured, fully-formed cosmopolitan able to merge readily recognizable influences with a sense of theatre too often missing from the legion of similarly-intentioned performers.

Unfortunately, In Advance isn't an EP, and things falter a bit past the halfway mark.

Like Mum on a smaller scale, or a lightly medicated, loose-lipped Four Tet, his introspective songs sway hazily from image to metaphor, between yesterday's folk and tomorrow's digitalism.

She spends so much time rambling about her pain that she never bothers even to try to make us feel it.

Tones of Town may lack the swooning immediacy of its predecessor, but it still sounds like a labor of love.

While these [linking tracks] suggest Schneider's appreciation for the short-form work of electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott, they stop well short of giving Wonder the thematic consistency it seeks (and needs).

When A Weekend in the City comes bursting out at you with a gaggle of second-album upgrades-- new tricks, new scope, new arrangements-- the bulk of them sound like good ideas: They've been executed by hard-working professionals.

There are building blocks for something fantastic in most of these pieces, but only in two of them have they been used to make more than the sum of their parts.

While Lerche remains a promising young songwriter, Phantom Punch doesn't quite fulfill that promise.

This is comfort music, and comfort never goes out of style. And while the aura of dreamy romantic abstraction is the same, Svanängen distinguishes himself from his peers on the structural level.

Certainly they want to expound upon the past, not to replicate it, which makes Like Love Lust their most adventurous album to date, and in some ways their most calculated and self-conscious.

And that's the odd thing about this collection: If it provides people with a bridge into appreciating Ono's work, it won't be by making it more accessible.

Their most focused and fully realized effort yet-- an album that adds an imperial hugeness to the teen noir and garage-y psychedelia of their past efforts-- and one of the better pop records we've heard this year.

There are too many special effects surrounding the messages-- Craig B's penchant for preadolescent vocals included.

In terms of a debut record-- and especially given the weight of expectation placed on her to deliver something special-- Alright, Still isnâ??t anything else but a fantastic success.

If Some Loud Thunder isn't as consistent as the debut, it's an adequate follow-up that contains a handful of fantastic songs, a handful of uneven ones, and a handful of duds.

Maybe some thought Busdriver sounded self-satisfied before, but he used to sound one step ahead of the listener instead of running to catch up.

Excusing the album's inherent garishness, 666 expands Hella's core sound to new heights that, although at times hard to stomach, finds the band both at their most playful and regimented.

A slippery, engrossingly genreless take on the old theme of desolation in the city.

While Cryptograms presents its own obstacles, it's easily enjoyed as a whole. Memorable melodies and an awkward, charismatic narrator are often peeking from behind the dissonance-laden mists that self-consciously choke them.

For all the possibilities suggested by their debut album, Clinic are threatening to become the sort of rock band of which you only really need to own one album, and that album remains Internal Wrangler.

Deerhoof, an indie band who have released plenty of discombobulated pop and no wave albums, have lately turned toward accessible, foot-stomping rock. It worked on The Runners Four, but it works better and quicker on their new album, Friend Opportunity.

The results are cohesive almost by default, considering how monochromatic the bulk of the disc comes off. Yet monochrome by design isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially when you're out to challenge rather than entertain.

Wincing the Night Away is a lovely and well-executed album and-- for the first time in the band's career-- nothing more.

An astonishingly good late-period record from Of Montreal that's as uncomfortably savage in its depiction of breakup psychology as it is relentlessly catchy.

Friend and Foe follows through on the potential of their unique sound, proving their wildly great debut was no fluke.