The British duo's second full-length in as many years mashes ghostly electro-pop tendencies with live instrumentation, empathetic orchestration, and tape-machine snippets, creating a world that is both compulsively listenable and eerily foreign.

Hansard gave himself a hard act to follow, but he pulls it off with Repose. He doesn't shun the sound that made the Once soundtrack a hit, but he does expand his palette and show off the breadth of his songwriting prowess.

Fascinating speed-bumps aside, it's a mission still very much accomplished.

You won’t care that it’s gleefully empty, shamelessly primitive, pre-rational, lo-fi. You’ll be too busy dancing.

The songs on this debut album are lethargic, syrupy, and sinister, with the rough-edged peaks of a maxed-out mix.

Ferry is as cool and debonair as ever on his first collection of new material in eight years.

Live instrumentation and organic jams keep it all from sounding très moderne, and though it touches upon some typical Air tropes (free-floating whispery shimmers, B-movie space sounds gone glitzy) the overall loosey-goosey methodology is refreshing.

It’s one of the most unabashed love letters to anthemic ’80s synth-pop ever laid to hard disc....If that sounds like an unappealing clarion call from a dark musical period that you’re still trying to forget, this isn’t the album for you. But for those of us who weren’t beaten up by Harold Faltermeyer in a dream, Head First is a wondrous piece of creative anachronism.

The production from Steve Albini ensures that it's not too slick or processed. These short, humble pop songs amble along like the Wedding Present if David Gedge had a wrist injury that cut his inhuman strumming speed in half.

It makes for their strongest work yet.

Man Man fans probably weren't expecting "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head"–levels of optimism from the happy-titled Life Fantastic, but the vibe on the Philly-based band's fourth album is pretty morbid, even by their standards.

The surgical-mask costumes help in that regard: coupled with their herky-jerky brain-scan riffs and malevolent aura, Clinic look more likely to perform torture surgery on your ass in some water-logged basement than give a concert.

Freedom’s Road addresses his pet topics — hard work and small-town life, not to mention freedom and the road — in catchy-enough tunes built with rootsy guitar licks, boot-scooting beats, and the occasional splash of spaghetti-western strings.

It's heartbreakingly gorgeous, and if it's sometimes easy to miss the club-kid joie de vivre Antony brought to last year's brilliant Hercules and Love Affair album, well, that disc didn't have this one's lush Nico Muhly string arrangements.

The smooth shape of this album - there's no rising or falling action - and lack of a big concept won't replace 2005's Black Sheep Boy for diehard fans, just as the superior The Stand-Ins didn't in 2008. But Elvis Costello fans should holler.

Even at Tesfaye's most awkward, it's impossible not to be intoxicated.

Tennis are still cute as a button, but now they have songs to go along with the smiles.

the Waits of Glitter and Doom Live values theatricality as much as storytelling. As on his previous live album, 1988’s "Big Time," Waits often borders on playfulness.

Everything feels dead in the desert, but Return is rife with life.

Hecker's sonics are huge and unrepentant, but they tease the ear; individual sounds are highlighted by their sustained revision.

Cautiously, I submit that Join Us, their 15th album and first non-children's release in four years, has that old-school TMBG feel, as if the Unlikely Rock Band ditched the self-conscious weirdo-geek shtick for a more genuine weirdo-geek non-shtick shtick.

It's easy to imagine her getting very famous, because Torres doesn't wash the songs out with its prettiness.

Zoo is a fine tribute to [often-compared band]Wire's heavier side, alternating between powerful, lumbering riffs and manic splatters of guitar noise.

The fuzzy guitars start to blend together as the album progresses — the point, perhaps, but Black Mountain do well to break up the repetition with 'Stay Free,' an acoustic, falsetto ballad, and 'Queens Will Play.'

Even when Fountains of Wayne are phoning it in, they're never less than professional. Think of this as a thoughtfully-written greeting card of an album.

This is the work of artists confident enough to embrace a sound that makes them happy.

The cumulative effect can be like listening to a church choir doing canons while simultaneously crushing OCs on your bicuspids, one at a bloody time.

[A] terrific, visceral album.