However, while Looks at the Bird's expanded arrangements are more conventionally "listenable" than much of Field Recordings, this comes at a small price.

It's probably a bolder, more daring record than it will ever be given credit for, as it's rare that an artist recognizes that she does some things very well, and then does them.

Tortoise have created another batch of distinct, inimitable songs that strike a perfect balance between the academic and the playful, the immediate and the eternal.

The disc is an absorbing listen, and a crucial weapon in any battle for subwoofer supremacy, but as far as generating an emotional response is concerned, it pretty much flatlines.

Picking up where Wasp’s Nest left off, Hyacinths and Thistles finds Merritt constructing a complex sonic playground in which a host of guest vocalists have come to frolic. While the songs might initially be Merritt’s, each vocalist manages to transform each piece into something uniquely personal.

Take a Casio keyboard or any other early '80s dance machine, wheel it out and blow the dust off and you would most likely be able to produce an album at least as enjoyable as this one.

For as good as the majority of the tunes here are, the grandiose scope of Highly Evolved turns out to be a bit more than the young quartet could chew.

It's hard to imagine a band coming along this year with a better or more enjoyable debut.

O'Connor's lack of subtlety eventually grows tiring.

Look, there's no question whatsoever that this is a well-put-together, carefully arranged and tastefully executed album created by a consummate craftsman. On the other hand, its palette (and, I fear, its audience) is limited to the placid and gently swaying.

It is, like all the best pop music, silly, pointless and thoroughly lacking in high-level intellectual discourse. Thank heaven.

It's a long, occasionally ponderous listen... but it's an impressive and rewarding journey that moves between prog, space-rock and subdural transmissions in ancient alien tongues.

There's nothing distinctive about it.

Despite the amount of rock and soul that Gahan tries to inject into the stew, Paper Monsters only occasionally breaks free of the Mode paradigms.

It's not a bad album -- it's just not particularly notable.

The fact that it hides among its excesses a handful of truly excellent rock anthems seems almost like an afterthought, as if, when the band ran out of crazy ideas, they found that there was nothing left to do but write actual songs.

It's the stuff that a thousand indie rock records are made of, basted, breaded and cooked to perfection.

I can't imagine a single Westerberg fan being displeased with Dead Man Shake.

Using inventive sounds and solid structures, he has created a damn fine album.

This is an album about technology, albeit not in the typical sense. While it wears the trappings of loungecore retro-futurism and new wave simplicity, The Geometrid has more to do with the "warmth" of technology and the increasingly essential comforts it provides.

By forsaking professionals for amateurs, the Plan has narrowed the scope of their artistic vision; for every stunning reworking, like Deadverse's "Automatic", there's a stinker like ASCDI's predictably bland mix of "Time Bomb" or Cynyc's blasé beat-slapping "Following Through".

At times strong, at other times vulnerable, and invariably honest, Donelly both affirms and fulfills the promise of her songwriting talent with Beauty Sleep.

Noah's Ark retrenches CocoRosie in their signature sound and gives us a glimpse of their indubitably eccentric future.

With an approach that seems so clinical, the album sounds cold and soulless -- and, well, boring.

Where Belle and Sebastian alienate their listeners with emotional detachment and indie superiority, Memphis's songs leave the posing and the cuteness at the door; they are accessible and honest.

The songs on Fallen Leaf Pages are all played at roughly the same glacial pace and share a very mellow, thoughtful and regret-filled vibe. Some listeners will find them repetitive, even tedious.

A solid set of shadowy songs with driving melodies.

Middling music that shoots for epic and edgy, but takes far too few chances and falls short of its fans' expectations.