In its many moments offering something warm and comfortable, Into the Blue Again might have been able to gain the status of one of those albums that could settle restless nerves, but this undercurrent of coldness counteracts this idea, leaving some tracks unsatisfying, passable rather than pleasing.

I catch myself unknowingly enjoying Lights Out whenever I quit trying to overtly "listen" to it.

While Oracular Spectacular has its sophomoric moments (you’d be wise to avoid the nasal whine of 'Weekend Wars'), a listen to 'Climbing To New Lows'--a catchy demo set from their undergrad days--will make anyone see what attracted the bigwigs at Columbia in the first place.

They’ve just created a good version of a great record, which may have been their intention all along.

Sonic Nurse neither disappoints nor surpasses expectations.

Even ignoring the tectonic shifts in music over the past decade, this is by no means a novel or inventive album.

There isn’t a single moment on EWBAITE when I wasn’t second guessing my feelings, and that makes it interesting to me, if not necessarily as interesting as some of their other post-reunion records.

Musically, End Times approaches Everett’s best work yet, but due to its narrow focus and exhausting reliance on theme, it falls just short of it.

When it Falls, while not a masterpiece, is a nice album which will likely appeal to a very broad fan base.

The grand message that The Underachievers seek to spread musically can get a little boring, though, especially when they pretty much rap about it on every song.... AK and Issa Gold are getting better at rapping, and rapping together.

Cryptacize have made an album that sounds welcomingly familiar for fans of Cohen’s aesthetic, but it won’t likely gain them a much wider fanbase.

But by continuing to relentlessly mine the same fundamentally limited descriptions of groupies and Schedule VI narcotics, The Weeknd risks coming off as bored as its debauched narrator.

The Year of Magical Drinking strikes me as an album with something interesting to say, a quality only increased by knowing where Flournoy is coming from.

On Sauna, Elverum’s attempts to mimic heavy metal rock ballads, Tim Hecker, and certain so-called “holy” and unholy minimalists alike, feel inconsequential and compositionally uninteresting. That’s not to say that every citation falls flat.

Unfortunately, the bright spots are weighed down by fodder that would fill the troughs of many, but coming from Cohen feel perfunctory at best.

Its purpose is to cement Underworld as elder statesmen of minor-arena-filling, rather than “floor-filling,” amorphously electronic music. It’s not hip, but it’s not square either.

A subdued effort.

Taken within the context of !!!’s (and, by default, OUT HUD’s) legacy, it doesn’t feel like a step in any particular direction so much as a million ideas left to duke it out.

The album’s pervasive sameness hinders sustained interest.

You Can Have What You Want is an insular recording, but it invites us even as it turns a shoulder toward us. And that insecurity is what makes it compelling.

The combination of this 'throwback to '96' sound with confident restraint, and that Quasi have already proven themselves to the die-hards, I'm going to call this timeless underdoggery.

Painting With lacks the consistency to be that work, but its moments of glory provide a welcome return to the melodic mastery of golden ages past.

The very thing that animates the structure begins to ferociously explore, digging beneath its creations in order to observe itself. It is unclear whether the exploration of the structure’s depths is motivated by curiosity or by a need to undermine itself and to challenge its own creation.

The thrill of Flux Outside is that, if it had its way, it wouldn't stick around either.

Equivalents is similar to a lot of the post-Coast/Range/Arc material, but decidedly reduced. The faint stuttering high organ sounds that pepper the opener feel curiously threadbare, with none of that contented percussive effervescence swimming up to give it any harmonic sweep.

R.E.M. do sound like a band again, but they don’t sound like a band very much apart from their peers.

The results of this experiment are not blasphemous by any means, but they have clearly lifted their collective leg to the fire hydrant of their former selves, in favor of cleaner and hipper pop.

It sheds their debut’s pastoral psych for a spacey romanticism, and in the process, its airy synthesizers and reverb’d guitars evoke a yearning that’s too vague and indeterminate to be a yearning for anything in particular.

Many of the other songs on this album feel rather static and enclosed.

Skip the first track and Greedy Baby is a welcome addition to the Plaid catalogue, though not nearly as essential as their earlier works.

Sex Change will please both their fans and newcomers; in fact it might be one of the best intros to their work so far.

Greyhound lacks the raw immediacy of their first three albums.

The Eternal is accessible, listenable, and all the rest: another consistent album from the consistent rock band Sonic Youth.

Perhaps the most that can be said for Have Fun With God is that it is reverent of its exceptional source material.

On the whole, Manners mostly evens out into a consistently listenable experience, the joy of one absurdly successful track spread out in variations and reformulations across the entirety of an album with inevitable dilution in the process.

Bitchitronics may not be bold or experimental, but that’s irrelevant to Bitchin Bajas’ concerns--that being the craft of pure sound, as Eno put it, “ignorable as it is interesting.”

Their distinct blend of shoegaze and Americana sounds more natural than it should, while remaining, at most, vaguely reminiscent of other bands. Once the clarity of their songwriting matches their musical vision, there won’t be any need to keep peppering praise with regret.

All of Us, Together doesn't feel right as the first full-length statement being made by an artist of this caliber, but it definitely serves as an appealingly breezy 45 minutes of summer dance music.

Even though …and then you shoot your cousin never quite betrays its allegiance to either criticism or satire and is consequently an awkward, variable amalgam of both, it offers something important in its efficacy to disrupt that logic and pave out a new line of progression for a mature act.

Its (mostly) gimmick-free, clear-eyed dreamer propulsion will buoy you. But if, like me, you're looking for something a little deeper in an instrumental rock record and you don't unrestrainedly sanctify this band, you may want to hold out till the next Do Make Say Think album.

Love is Dead is formally earnest and it succumbs as a product of its (unearnest) production, an art of sincerity lost underneath. Love is Dead, damnably, is sincerity in place of irony, which is to say sincerity outside irony. It has no world to tease of tense.

I'm not writing the Walkmen off just yet, but this is a genre that you can't afford to stay in one place and hope to keep an edge on the competition.

While HEALTH and Get Color were cohesive collections of songs that created a snapshot in time of where the artists were when creating them, listening to Death Magic feels like we’re seeing not just the band they are currently, but all the bands they could be.

You can add this record to the pile of fun, entertaining albums that is sure to get people moving at any party, although it offers little else.

http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/cocorosie-grey-oceans

This album is legitimately well made, and despite his limitations as a rapper, The Game has skill enough to support his charisma.

The strongest feeling I get from At War With The Mystics is that it's a wank riddled parody amalgam of The Flaming Lips back catalogue, focusing on the earlier stuff.

The battle between the cream and the shit ends in a perpetual give and take, but it's the positives of A Hundred Miles Off we will remember in the long run.

Waterfall is promising, but it’s perhaps the first Evian Christ release that hasn’t amazed me.

The mood from track-to-track varies drastically. The pieces do work, though.

Overall, the album is something of a grower.

Tracks such as The Fragile’s “Ripe (With Decay)” are these kinds of delightful journeys. “World” and “Over and Out” only display longer extensions of single ideas, which make them still a few points shy of the band’s best.

While The Morning Benders navigate the unstable boundary between tried-and-true pop structure and spacey excursions, the songs fall apart when they lean too far in either direction.

While it offers just enough in the way of individuality to stave off a disappearance within the impersonal grid of the received and the conventional, it still can’t quite fuse this into a coherent personality that transcends its inhibiting foundations.

Enjoyably dumb and agreeably psychedelic, Eating Us is easy listening for an easy-going season.

Though more consistent in tone than in quality, Relayted is easy to criticize but difficult to dismiss.

While Vanderslice's consummate production creates several indelible pieces of music, the stark repetition of John Darnielle's songs seems all the more apparent on his full-band numbers.

Rather Ripped comes off as a collection of good-and-great songs, but it just isn't up there with their best.

There’s really no good reason to seek this out if you already own the... debut album.

The selections run the predictable gamut of great to interesting to wholly disposable, but the breadth of material here nonetheless reaffirms Springsteen’s talents as a songwriter and interpreter of others’ work.

Discontinued Perfume has a net effect, despite its potpourri. Still, I wish they'd let some of their ideas out to roam a little more.

Although the construction of these songs are as stacked as on other F&O albums, this time around, the piling up of bridges, solos, and refrains only adds to House of Spirits’ tangible claustrophobia.

They are making pretty, tightly structured pop songs cheaply, or at least pop songs that sound cheaply made, and pretty, and melancholy, and somehow detached and futuristic.

Just Like the Fambly Cat is appreciably better than its predecessor, but a far cry from the bliss we've all come to expect.

Where once this cut deep, extended, it discloses itself merely as pleasant and pleasantly familiar.

An almost abstract series of daubs, here, there. Melodies submerged in machinery.

While Ready is far from a perfect album, it seems Trey is learning how to inspirit his original works with the charm and inventiveness found in his freestyles and covers.

The question, regrettably, becomes whether or not their transgressive lyrics are funny, whether they're 'appropriate' in a world where we're hung up on identity politics. This difference is significant, and it's precisely here where our reaction to Goblin becomes less weighted: if it's all in jest, who really cares about the relationship between his lyrics and our values?

Mistake may be a solid, somewhat complex electronic music release, but its nerdy precision has the tendency to render the melancholic, brooding melodies somewhat impotent.

This record is solid and merits a listening, particularly for fans of similar straight-ahead rockers like the Constantines.

Old, tired, and disillusioned they may be, yet Illegals in Heaven sees Blank Realm affirm the necessity of maturing into something more than the abstract projection of possibility.

This is pure, unadulterated pop music, and while its individual musical elements sometimes don’t quite add up to the full potential inherent within Dent’s ever-stunning vocal melodies, there’s always something going on that’s guaranteed to endear this music to the listener.

The Flying Club Cup is a good album. If you’re a fan of "Gulag Orkestar," it’s probably a great album. But aside from 'Cliquot,' it’s more of the same.

This ambiguity ends up being what separates this effort from the sort of average indie pop twinkies that were so abundant at the midpoint of the aughts.

Perhaps Negro Swan is merely a step along the way, as Blood Orange continues to contend with monolithic, difficult ideas, but for now, this patchwork of sweltering grooves, amicable conversations, and urban ambience remains limited in its vision.

Stay Trippy distills the sonic extremes of contemporary hip-hop into a potent hybrid of radio-friendly sheen and hard-knocking street fatalism.

Its energized cheeriness eventually proves itself at once disarming and salutary.

Ultimately, Soft Sounds is an uneven experience, stylistically and in terms of (this listener’s) engagement. But still, in the shimmering hooky synthpop of “Machinist,” the Morrissey-esque lilt of “Boyish,” there are bright stars hanging in the firmament.

The problems start with the production, which feels empty and stolid, the guitar plunking around like it has nowhere important to go and the drums tap-tap-tapping out mundane, aimless little shuffle rhythms.

Ultimately, though, it becomes hard to identify individual tracks without keeping a close eye on the tracklisting as you go.

Essentially, Enemy Mine is a showcase for the talent of the three artists involved. But it lacks the conviction of Frog Eyes. It lacks the focus of Sunset Rubdown.

From a purely musical perspective, You’ll Be Safe Forever remains a case of unfulfilled hope: an album that promises a great deal but attenuates halfway, eventually leading the listener down a path that’s disappointingly safe and familiar.

All of this makes White Hills sound a bit generic and derivative, and I suppose it can be at times.

Year in the Kingdom suggests whatever band he’s drumming for is ultimately inconsequential; this backwoods wanderer seems fully capable of detailing his wreckage on his own.

Pile are at their strongest when involved in slippages, designed moments of elasticity and indecision, effects incidental.

Harlem Shakes are in their early days and still sound like they are trying a little too hard; it’s an absolutely excusable quality in a young band, if not always endearing. Harlem Shakes have plenty to be proud of; they’ve also got even more to prove the next time around.

Eisold's delivery, as cliche as it might seem, is often hypnotically compelling, and the lyrics are slightly redeemed by the synthesizers.

There’s enough texture and variety to Drop to make it a consistently engaging listen, although on a song-by-song basis, it doesn’t quite stack up to the albums preceding it.

Oddly utilitarian, geared towards dancing rather than listening. This is the type of music that reminds you that iTunes has made 'party' a utility.

There are certainly moments of well-crafted, spaced-out music, but West is not as overwhelming as it could be. And to be honest, even after several listens, all the songs in West still sound pretty much the same.

Drawn In Basic is an enjoyable electronic pop record, one well-suited to late, sleepless nights. With echoes of a distant club resounding in its subdued beats and hushed vocals, this is a dreamy record of lullabies for the dance-floor set.

When all's said and done, too much of the album sounds dated and uninspired.

Much like the surrounding semblance, densely concealed behind a name with clear sci-fi connotations, the music on The Host can be difficult to really get into.

The album as a whole falls short of offering us anything new or of exceeding quality in relation to either Porras' other projects or the work of similarly-minded artists. Still, Black Mesa is an unmistakably effective, quality genre piece by an artist highly invested in the form.

Nothing have definitely learned a thing or two in between albums about using crushing dynamics to great effect. Unfortunately, there are times when the combination of a particular note and lyric rob the band of its power.

Sure, it's a logical progression from 100th Window, but because their progressions are neither commonsense nor predictable, it's difficult to predict how it will hold up in terms of posterity.

Letting themselves go with greater frequency would turn what is a pretty record into one that actually breaks ground; it'd be sexier that way.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have retained most of what we loved about them while also finding new ways to dazzle us, to make us swoon.