It is worth repeating that Far takes everything Regina Spektor has done in the near ten-year span of her career and mashes it up to perfection.

Don't expect any club bangers or hot remixes. But the exciting part is that, in Silver, it's starting to look like we might have a true composer on our hands.

It feels like a resurfacing, like a promise, and it's a grand closer for this classically GBV (collection) album.

At 15 tracks clocking in at 57 minutes, it shouldn’t feel as lengthy as it does. But certain cuts tend to drag, be it because of the inconsistent production, Moye’s sometimes phoned-in rapping, or both.

Unlike previous releases, when we were taken on several rides within a solitary track, the thrills and tempo changes have been stretched out to album length, making this offering essentially a forty-three-minute song, with each track becoming a spike or dip along the way.

As False Priest beds down in its second half, the album still has a sonic charge, but the frenetic sense of discovery from the first half drifts away.

Mux Mool has managed to produce another album as solid as it is thwarted by its limitations.

Knowing the story behind Piramida's recording process does not ruin the horror movie or give away the ending. It does, however, adds a plotline to the wordless emotions the tracks evoke.

It’s Frightening builds upon White Rabbits’ established aesthetic and at the same time sharpens the band’s shambling attack.

It's got some purely great pop songs on it, enough that in spots it rises out of that fan-only ghetto, even if other moments find it falling back in.

The project finds strength in synergy, working off each member's best qualities; they balance a dry vocal tone here with a melodramatic keyboard sigh there.

Fuckbook is the best joke fake lo-fi cover album since Pussy Galore’s Exile, except with the added irony of the roasters becoming the roastees.

Simply, Menomena are a band that sounds completely familiar but totally different.

Cults is mostly just an album of girl-group signifier piled on top of girl group-signifier.

The Sound the Speed the Light pushes the same boundaries that Mission of Burma has always pushed, and no doubt it will lose points for not pushing any new boundaries.

The album's lyrical shortcomings are easy to overlook, especially when most of its best parts occur when the words drop away entirely and the crisp handclaps come in. It's that sort of giddy, emotional, inarticulate pop that Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin does best, and Walla does his part in bringing that side of them out.

On My Way to Absence could have been such a moving album, had Jurado employed some quality control.

We Have Sound is one of those albums that rarely has a down moment, and it’s all thanks to Vek’s ability to bring his diverse tracks together.

Often eccentric and unpredictable, Love Is Simple is wholly listenable because it is compelling, honest, and joyful.

The wonder of Some Are Lakes is the fact that such arguably masculine instrumentation goes such a long way to buoy Powell's lady vocals. Neither takes a backseat, and the combination feels way natural.

There’s a certain history-capturing aspiration here, as if the album's purpose wasn’t just for charity, to move records, or for Dessner to get together with his pals to compile an album but to provide a musical time capsule that in 20 years could allow younger generations to get into indie rock from the early 21st century. If that was how compilation albums were solely judged, Dark Was the Night would be the gold standard.

There are fewer moments of reckless genre experiments on Touchdown than there were on past Brakes efforts, and when there are, they feel purposeful, like the band had some alt-country (or quick punk song) quota to fill.

A valuable musical historical document of blissed-out reverie, yet more archival than transcendent, and far from the most welcoming introduction to the more accessible and engaging individual output of these electronic-music pioneers.

Mountaintops is a decent pop record, and will surely add a few fan favorites to the live set, but for a duo that did so much with just two instruments, they too often do less with more here.

More often than not, they miss, retreating back instead of charging forward.

It keeps Raekwon relevant, not to mention is better than most of the hip hop out there. But it's always worrying when an artist, even one as celebrated as Raekwon, gets complacent.

Plat du Jour is never dull, and if you went your whole life not knowing what it was about you could enjoy it on a basic scale. But as a project, the record is somewhat of a disappointment.

Shows off the group’s ability to transform into a neo-classic Brit-pop band, lush layers and dark undertones intact.