It would be a joke to call an album as lush as Twin Cinema “lo-fi,” but it is a more subtle, reined-in New Pornographers.

Pixel Revolt is the sound of a man trying to come to grips with the larger questions--the "why?" questions--and, if nothing else, the sheer attempt makes this an essential album for our troubled times.

Where this release stands out is in overall sound and songwriting.

It’s certainly another step forwards and upwards for one of our only real musically emotional geniuses.

It has one pace, and that pace is “mature”.

With No Flashlight, Elvrum is shifting the focus of his music onto himself. It’s unclear whether this is the smartest move to make, in light of his obvious production mastery.

Ghost lacks the dynamic swing of much of their past material, content to move towards unnecessary cohesion, one that takes all the wide-pupil joy out of their songs.

A work far more potent and lasting than their debut.

The Juan Maclean takes the mechanized side of music, the Kraftwerk precision and automated bass, but injects it with a personal, human vision and unmet, unwanted desires.

Starting at the midpoint, "Twosley," Maritime starts to drag.

This album is difficult, complicated, pretentious, infuriating, inconsistent, and asks more questions then it answers.

Why Should the Fire Die? may see Nickel Creek turn further away than ever from CMT’s trappings, but it also shows the band reaching to eclipse its more generic pop-rock reference points as well.

God love her, but Faith and her handlers just can’t seem to tell the difference between good and bad songs.

It’s not groundbreaking. It’s not a huge stylistic forward leap or a studio-stunt. It’s simply another of Eric Johnson and his band’s records of simple grandiosity.

Rehashed Bob Mould still beats most of what’s out there, though, so the album has its strengths.

Clor’s singer and main-man Barry Dobbin unfortunately posses the kind of high, straining voice that grates to the point of making you want to punch him on the nose, and when combined with the incessant business of the band’s undoubtedly clever and accomplished music it makes this eponymous debut feel like an effort to listen to.

Honeycomb proves too rigid and self-serious to make good on Black’s strengths.

There’s just not much to get; these 9 tracks awkwardly move from one improvident moment to the next, collectively assembling a record that might elevate the mood of an extreme skiing video but does little to lift conciseness.

A quiet, thoughtful, but never uninteresting album.

Much of the album bears more than a passing resemblance to the second half of [Daft Punk's] Discovery.

If the sound that the original Son Volt line-up cultivated began to feel oppressing for Farrar, it’s clear on Okemah And The Melody of Riot that a return in part to that sound has been good for his musical soul.

La Forêt has the sort of courage-minus-contrivance that is exceedingly (and ironically) rare in music of its dramatic and thematic ilk.

That these songs sound like mashups to my ear is both their strength and their weakness--they’re good enough to remind you of the best work of the parties at hand, but the term implies that you’re not going to hear anything new, just two songs mashed together.

Her adventurous and, yes, massive, persona is allowed to wander wherever it wants on The Cookbook, be it avant or common.

Uneven by and large, and below what we all know R.’s capable of, this one mostly shoots blanks.

It's a bit of Michigan redux, which works because it's so uniquely Stevens and so uniquely beautiful.

Though The Wilderness is filled with stunning songs, by album’s end, they tend to meld together. Their uniformity is their greatest fault, though admittedly one that can be overlooked during its best moments.

To be fair Free The Bees isn’t a bad record as such, it’s just that this backwards looking, past-is-best philosophy so often smacks of a distasteful and conservative obsession with authenticity and tradition, as if sounding like the past is more important than sounding like yourselves.