This is still a Grizzly Bear record, but thanks to a spin through the grinder of maturity, it's also now a Grizzly Bear that know when to hold back or let things flow in order to create an LP that connects emotionally. This was the one thing that its impressive but more technically minded predecessors often lacked.

This album still contains some of the strongest pop songs of the past few years, plus evidence of a restless, experimental desire to keep moving on that makes you hungry to hear what they're going to do next.

This isn't a record you dismiss on one spin and parts require some work from the listener, but given proper attention Theatre Is Evil unfolds into something multilayered and quite lovely.

If Nada! was the sound of punk rock overcoming itself, passing into its opposite, Love Will Prevail is the sound of it re-emerging once more, irrevocably altered by the journey.

It is, of course, a very good album from start to finish--but you would expect that from an elder statesman of American alt-pop and one of the brightest talents of the current NPR-approved indie-rock scene.

Goat has distilled what could have so very easily become an overblown meandering jam fest into a punchy, forceful and infectious masterpiece of cosmic rock & roll – the will is palpable, nigh a trace of fat on these bleached bones.

Sun is the light at the end of one hell of a tunnel, a record brimming with an assurance and playfulness that, if a little dorky in places, is about as cathartic as pop gets.

This is an album that vindicates maturity, long years of toil, cumulative effort, resilience, patience, wisdom.

It's ultimately a solid enough album, but one that's difficult to love.

Algiers isn't so much a portrayal of New Orleans as it is a manifestation of the city's often observed ability to both elevate and weigh heavily on the soul.

I Know What Love Isn't turns out to be a graceful break-up album, one that eschews ugliness and rage.

They perfect the formula occasionally - penultimate track 'Swept Away' matches its name, a pillow-soft cascade of plummy bass notes and piano house, across which their voices whisper like wind - but for much of Coexist they sound halting, nervous, afraid to push beyond the boundaries they've created around their sound.

Ultimately, this is a celebration, rather than an analysis, of several species of awfulness.

A dash of extra variety, and an increasing ability to transform clever layers of sound into well-structured songs, make this his best contribution to date.

A marvelous record packed with charm.

Guzo is a strange album--it feels like the record label (or management) are calling too many shots, unable to decide whether Yirga should play the Ethio-jazz which we've come accustomed to through the Ethiopiques series, the cool Western jazz of Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans, or a fusion in-between that also includes soul and Caribbean flavours.

This is their pointed after-hours comedown LP, it's not enough of a disclaimer to save what amounts to an occasionally flourishing, but largely frustrating and tedious record.

In a character-defying move he has left his crowbar at home and cockney references serve as little more than a backdrop for his usual lyrical capers. What glorious capers they are too.

Hot Cakes [is] proof if it were needed that there's plenty of life in the old dog yet - and that dog still don't give a f***.

That Four is laced with some of the band's hands-down strongest work, then, makes its weaker moments and occasional in-your-face insistence all the more grating.

Some incredible songs also made it through, and if Minor Wave and Haunting and Daunting sound like perfectly listenable period pieces, then The Burdens of Genius and The Spiders are Getting Bigger are for the ages; timeless encapsulations of youthful frustration and depression, and the outer limits of a drug-warped imagination.

To the wider rock world, Yellow/Green deserves to be regarded as a left of field classic, whilst to the metalheads who were perfectly content with the Baroness sound as it was, the record may seem something of a disappointment, its straightforward and melodic approach to songwriting the antithesis of the labyrinthine complexities and huge riffs of old.

Clockwork Angels is an extremely accomplished piece of music composed and performed absolutely flawlessly.

Advaitic Songs doesn't feature one of the lengthy, insistent, sense-dissolving tracks they usually supply. Instead the tracks feel restrained and poetic, but not always very substantial. A pity, but at the same time, Advaitic Songs does reward multiple listens. It's a subtle and meaningful album.

Skelethon is a wildly energetic, funny, poignant, nostalgic and sad record; the result of huge personal investment on Aesop's behalf.

The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends is a flatulent folly, humming with the sulphurous reek of self-indulgence.

There'll never be another band like them. And if this is really it and they leave Blur to the history books, then it's a perfect way to remember this unique, occasionally annoying, but genuinely quite amazing band.

On the album's first half, everything sounds correct but lacks any intoxicating, addictive spark.... [Yet] when its mood alters, somewhere around the metal wasteland of 'Lagoon Leisure', and things start getting sinister, then Regional Surrealism becomes (finally) exciting. The record transforms into a deeply disconcerting experience, all eerie shadows and claustrophobic spaces.