Cruel Country might get a little sleepy at times, but it’s a rather impressively compelling listen, given its intimidating length. There’s a lot of beauty and feeling to be unearthed here, and the album greatly rewards further listening.

It's certainly an all-encompassing, monolithic piece of work, an album that'll make a bunch of people suddenly relieved that there's another Swans album, in a we've missed you kind of way.

Ultimately, Harry's House doesn’t really go anywhere or do much of anything at all. It breezes by with songs that seemed designed for the festival circuit and that are interesting and experimental enough that they’ll fit with Harry’s aesthetic without being too alienating for radio, almost as if he and his team couldn’t decide which was more important to them, so they went with neither.

There's not much new in the way of substance, but the execution is nonetheless pleasing enough that you can shrug off flat or dull offerings (see, e.g., "Brighter" or "Wasteland"). It's a nice record filled with nice moments.

While each song has a solid musical backbone, it’s Brown’s narratives that make the most profound impact, and move the album forward.

El Mirador is definitely on the right path, becoming Calexico’s strongest effort since Algiers. These cheerful tunes make for an immediate, fun affair.

It’s obvious Hospice is an album Silberman made for himself, one that we’re just privileged to listen to and enjoy. So sit back, listen, and consider yourself lucky, punk.

If 03.15.20 is a full stop to one of the most dynamic, inventive, frustratingly inconsistent discographies of the last decade. I'm not convinced Glover's multi-hyphenate brain could ever stop working away, creating shows and songs and short films and botching album rollouts to a ridiculous degree.

They've rarely sounded this in-tune with each other or this certain of their purpose. It's gorgeously arranged, amazingly textured, and evocative in ways that only patient music can be.

Ab-Soul performs well in this complementary role and shows how versatile he really is, almost a west-coast amalgam of Brown and Kanye West, yet still a slightly weaker and more inconsistent sum than the parts.

It's his freest record, musically speaking, and in its bloodstained lyrics, which run the gamut from cautionary to vindictive to self-loathing, it opens up a side of White that previously has been impenetrable, wrapped up in his own self-mythologizing persona as he was.

There's a clear aesthetic touchstone for pretty much everything this album does. If you're the kind of person easily frustrated by such influence-heavy music you'll be turned away, but I admire the consistency of songcraft needed to hold together an album pulling from so many places.

Overall, The Nothing is a huge step back for the band. The Paradigm Shift and The Serenity of Suffering were far from perfect, but they rode a line that balanced a contemporary vision with their stapled characteristics. This tries dearly to be nostalgic yet fresh, but the finished product just comes across forced and derivative.

A phenomenal record by a band at a creative peak that's as fully realized and as utterly terrific as the myriad other peaks they've hit during their brief but already illustrious career.

Thus when taking in Attack on Memory as a whole, it sounds as if Cloud Nothings are, despite their best efforts, a pop band at heart.

With their eighth studio album, Yellowcard anything but disappoints.

While the instrumental mastery still impresses as always, the end result remains enjoyable but ultimately missing a key aspect of what made the driving, mechanical sound of Meshuggah so worthwhile in the first place.

Far from the sort of thrown-together collaboration that is generally de rigueur, case/lang/veirs stands out because it remains an accurate representation of the sum of its parts, a catalog of what makes its three artists great.

Gargoyle marks another solid addition to an extensive catalog.

Disambiguation clearly shows that Underoath are still very much the same well oiled machine that brought us Define the Great Line back in 2006 when they firmly established themselves as the kings of the scene, even if that title is somewhat constricting and misleading as their music transcends its given tags and connects with their fanbase at a deeper level, regardless of belief structure.

The album won't win many new fans, but for those already clued in it supplies a fresh batch of engaging, abstract production and, especially in the meat of "Old Rock n Roll", a few meals' worth of food for thought.

An Evening With Silk Sonic lives up to its billing as a true experience: it’s sexy, ever-so-smooth, and radiates confidence and charisma. ... An Evening With Silk Sonic marks the pinnacle of Bruno Mars’ and Anderson .Paak’s respective musical careers.

Fennesz' ear for striking textures takes the spotlight precisely once here: through the latter minutes of the opener "Heliconia", he plucks and rakes his guitar as though putting it on life support, the stark tone of the instrument a fragile contrast to the densely processed sound that otherwise dominates the album. It produces a genuinely compelling tension and sets the bar modestly high, this but proves to be an early peak: the remaining five tracks lay down one languorous chord pattern after another, their digital modulations and cavernous reverb settings spread too thin to patch the threadbare cast-offs.

If Primary Colours still left any doubt, Skying makes it certain that The Horrors have moved on from the shadow of the (unfortunate) title of being NME darlings and into a realm where their future releases become something to mark on the calendar.

Overall, As the Love Continues ends up as one solid album that does a great job blending the Mogwai we are accustomed to into a friendlier direction. I wouldn’t place it up there with the best though.

Lisbon is an album from a band finally using the full palette of their talents to adapt and come out the better for it, and that's a pretty picture to behold indeed.

Talk of pretension aside, Rival Dealer is an important piece of work, a genuinely astounding and jaw-dropping release that deserves every pair of ears it can find.

Indeed, Grinderman 2 is actually a far more listen-able record, with far more replay value, and this is what I'll remember when I find myself nostalgic for the dumb simplicity of the first album.