Despite its prickly sonics and inaccessible veneer, Isa takes recourse to a privilege of gratuitous futurity, a privilege its cold sheen blinds itself from registering.

Where there was previously a plethora of cuts, glitches, and turntable sounds, there are now indie pop hooks with an underlying aesthetic of experimentation.

Carried to Dust is a fine entry Calexico’s discography that both evokes a much-loved sound from the past and yet looks at the sun fading into the west, turns its horse towards the dying light, and carries on into the future.

When the boys aren’t treading water, they’re still treading a fine line between memorable and anonymous.

Its sharpness in wake of modesty might make it The Cinematic Orchestra’s biggest accomplishment to date.

It's hip calcified, transformed from posturing into legitimate and exciting experience; it's the channeling of well-defined musical expressions into a more powerful, unified direction.

Paperwork is a definite step forward, and though it’s possible that those who loved volcano! before might find this more "conventional" album less exciting, I’d be surprised if anyone called it less rewarding.

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

Here we have an artist who's been making music for nearly 25 years and this album sounds fresh and new. This album is, by far, the best record I've heard this year.

In synthesizers, Matmos have found their hearts; through old Cluster records, they’ve created one of the most pleasant surprises of the year.

The balance of gold to dross still makes this album a keeper.

The hit and miss nature of Transistor Radio makes it seem more like a compilation of songs rather than a cohesive album. But in the end, the album is a winner simply due to Ward's unique voice and talent as a songwriter.

The Boris of New Album never hesitate and seldom falter, realizing the potential they've left untapped for years.

The album’s second half becomes noticeably more lo-fi as it draws to a close, with the band laying down instrumental nebulas into which Vile allows his voice to languidly recline. It’s a hazy ending to a bear of an album, but one that rewards those who stuck with it through the 80 or so minutes.

Whether exploring a lost little town or his own lost soul, Will Sheff proves an excellent tour guide.

If we measure Q-Tip's success at "abstractionism" in terms of how his voice, message, and golden ear complement each other to bring out hip-hop's full musical potential, then Kamaal is a clear success on the artist's own terms.

Its songs are mostly amalgams of tired pop music tropes/techniques and trite realizations

Thankfully, Connected, despite the richness of its sounds, is spacious enough to leave room for the imagination (with the slight exception of "Trios," which teems with movement). That's not to say it's empty.

It’s actually quite an audacious album; it’s just that it’s so well articulated as to come across as serviceable. It is vain, self-serious, and predictable, but endearingly so.

Ultimately, what we’re left with is an EP built around a great pop song, two good ones, and a throwaway.

Jayne is a lyricist with the cynical wit of a Stephen Malkmus, but rather than pointing that cynicism outward, he uses it to cut himself down a notch or two.

Each of the nine songs here (this album, unlike Why There Are Mountains or Lenses Alien, feels less like a suite and more like a collection of individual songs working together toward a theme) merits extensive and attentive lyrical consideration, though such an analysis deserves a treatment not feasible in a standard-length review.

Ultimately, the album represents a refinement of every base Liars have covered prior to it, coupled with a mixture of musical maturity and an exploratory vigor that make for an altogether astonishing experience.

Megafaun, with reverence to everything and without reference to anyone, are quickly carving their own path both through and away from their musical roots.

Like a masterfully carved piece of woodwork, every facet of this record has been lovingly molded such that, when all’s said and done, the finished product looks completely natural.

At its core, Total Life Forever is a good dance record: something you could leave on at a party and not stop moving to until its full 50 minutes have finished. But as much as it tries to run away from that, it isn't a whole lot else.

Holding Hands with Jaime is a remarkable debut album. It ticks off plenty of familiar noise-rock boxes, but Girl Band massages them into a whole that feels authentically their own.

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.

Something about the gummy aesthetic of the viscera at work here keeps I Love You from sounding too awry when its elements seem to suffer from slight exhaustion, elasticity, endocrine peaks, biological decay.

On the whole, Imitation is self-consciously danceable and overconfidently messy. It’s restless music for restless people, and while it entertains plenty for stretches, it doesn’t quite hold the focus that a 40-minute collection of songs demands.

Color is, first, a thing of intrigue and frenzy, as deserving of your undivided attention as it is confounding mixed with almost any other sense perception; second, it’s an exercise with a few robust rewards.

Despite the gratuitous, overripe details of these songs--potent, lurid confessions; broken plates and bloody lips--Heartbreaking Bravery is a peaceful, centered work.

The standouts are too numerous to mention, and all in all, Ladytron have set a new peak, getting to the heart of their best previous moments and expanding on them.

A Mad & Faithful Telling, however, comes off as their most focused and researched work yet, incorporating traditional and pop culture aspects without getting cluttered or seeming like they’re trying too hard to find a niche.

Hot Chip sound like such a broad swath of pop music on this album that you can’t quite call them out for biting any single obnoxious influence too much, even when they do get so hyperactive it’s annoying.

Houck’s talents are prevalent in everything he plays, and his enthusiasm for Willie’s material comes through with each passing listen.

Deerhoof may be more serious this time around, but the music’s still very imaginative and fun.

As close to perfect as a noise album can be.

The lack of vanity, the frank way it strives for accessibility only serves to further magnify the greatness of Anxiety. It does the most ideal thing art can do: it tries to make sense of life itself, without pretense or guile.

The whole affair has a grandiose, almost decadent feel to it, with its damaged beauty and elegance.

Pleasant but unmoving.

Whether sublime or quizzical, the work of David Daniell, Doug McCombs, and their like-minded collaborators has resulted in a pair of fascinating albums.

Return to Love is a sticky, sweat-drenched spiritual that commands attention with each wrenching power chord. Far from any aesthetic bait-and-switch, the album marks a slow maturation, a deep breath of chordal refinement that for once feels like an honest distillation of form.

NMW works as a ‘00s update of British invasion rock and orchestral and baroque pop, just as Jeff Lynne and the boys updated those sounds for the ‘70s.

Instead of commanding attention, Relief allows it to drift, preventing the listener's final escape into the contentless void of sonic oblivion.

Everything is still flawed and everyone unredeemable on this album, but as a whole it doesn't grip completely like past gems.

White Lung demand attention, engaging heart-to-heart conversations while simultaneously rioting.

Local Business is an uneven record in comparison to the two that preceded it, owing to a slight loss of momentum in its back third, but the material that shines does so with an effulgent intensity that's become par for the course with this group.

Total Folklore is a captivating release of memorable, “hummable” tunes dressed in the trappings of noise and “difficult listening.”

Though Sheff’s lyrics can be too earnest sometimes, there’s no doubt he’s one of the most exciting songwriters of recent years, and The Stand Ins is another fine entry in the band’s discography.

A diverse and creative offering.

Marion's guitar and synth bedroom pop project continues to be immediately enjoyable, simply because he never seems to be reaching for something that's outside of his grasp.

Greyhound lacks the raw immediacy of their first three albums.

With two exceptions (Desiigner and, uh, Damon Albarn), the [guest artists] completely fail to elevate the tracks in any way, an unfortunate consequence of needing to feature Charli XCX on your album because she’s good and popular as hell rather than because you and Charli XCX have made any particularly interesting music together.

What one rarely finds, however, is the synthesis of the sounds brought by such a group's various components into a new form that nonetheless retains their recognizable trademarks. But Channel Pressure is such a beast.

Face the Truth won me over by showing all the sides of Steve that drew me to him in the first place, along with a few new surprises.

They certainly have a grasp on what they're creating, but it hurts a little bit to think that the mysterious band-that-could from ten years back cares less for innovation than simply having a fleeting good time.

It's probably best that the album we've been waiting so long to hear is as safe as Guero is. At this point we just want our Beck, and Guero is as Beck as Beck can be.

I'm New Here is undoubtedly a bleak record, and given Scott-Heron's trials, it's hard to imagine it being anything else. But his take recognizes a hard-earned beauty, as well.

All the idiosyncrasies which either drew you to Waits or repelled you from him are present, and many songs hold a resemblance to past gems.

Almost Killed Me is the most authentic, dirty, and rocking album you'll hear all summer.

They still get a thumbs up in the sonic department, and their songwriting is certainly to my liking; but that quality of elusiveness that made their prior albums a journey of discovery seems to be missing.

Longer listeners will be impressed with the band’s evolution but will inevitably be let down with the lack of charm in these new recordings as opposed to their looser demo cuts.

Parts & Labor are exciting, both on a gut level and an aesthetic one, but the shift to a more sedate sound hasn’t pushed them in directions that emphasize this enough, at least so far.

Four albums in, Polar Bear are clearly trying new things, ensuring that their brand of jazz-punk remains at the forefront of forward-thinking jazz music with an incessant desire to rebel against current trends.

Next to "Knots," the rest of the record feels like a sort of necessary supplement. The quiet before and after the storm, it prepares and relieves us.

There is a natural grace to these compositions that's difficult to deny.

At last, HTRK are inhabiting their own spotlight instead of disappearing into negative space, and by shearing off the mystique, they’ve become much more riveting.

Although it is exploratory in terms of space and texture, Skullsplitter is anything but incidental; it unfolds like an epic poem, in all its boundary-dissolving creativity and intentional patterning.

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.

The album’s a treasure trove of exciting, sharp production, recruiting some of today’s most tuneful producers (Mick Shultz, Vinylz, London On Da Track, Murda Beatz, DJ Mustard, Soundz) who simply understand what works best for Jeremih’s adroit, rhythmic vocals.

It’s really the power of the synthesizer that allows his playing and compositions to breathe, to carry the music into the z axis. And while this new dimension may not present much in the way of a challenge for Frahm or for us as listeners, it’s chill indeed, and also beautiful.

While a few songs interject to maintain the rabid pace of earlier releases (“Because You,” “Somos Chulas (No Somos Pendejas),” “Tonta”), most come through with a mid-tempo energy that might fall flat were it not rejuvenated by dense song forms, disjointed and atonal harmony, and Ruiz’s characteristic snarl.

The lyrics can’t support the music, and vice-versa. That’s not to say there aren’t some great moments for people who’ve been following Bejar’s work--“Ivory Coast” and much of the second half of the record have a lot of noteworthy moments, in both their musical adventurousness and lyrical successes. But the interplay between flatness and richness that Bejar describes as integral to his lyrics--and that can be extended to its interplay with his music--isn’t here a lot of the time.

Hanged Man absorbs the worries of a world (Leo’s and ours) and reflects on it, rolling with the inconsistencies and fractures to make something better.

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.

Throughout, ego is rightfully extended through the sheer material force of his content generation. The listener must ultimately face their visceral love or hate toward his character, or, at least, observe how the majority of any given subway ride is in their feelings with his music.

While it still has a few standout moments that grab the listener and spark a mood, it’s only occasionally eventful and, ultimately, doesn’t reach the heights of its predecessor.

Although the music doesn’t always conjure it, there’s power in the album’s consciousness.

The Western Lands works well as a whole and will surely please longtime fans, but I get the sense that Gravenhurst are holding back.

As a collection of stunning, yet unassuming, pop songs it fits in nicely with the Pernice oeuvre.

Lullabies is one of the strongest albums of 2005 thus far, from beginning to end.

Poppy but pugnacious, familiar and yet dizzyingly foreign, Matangi is a contrarian work from an artist who lavishes us with liminality, with contradictions.

Jam City’s message is a positive one. The actual music Dream a Garden is offering, separate from all the pomp of its press releases and strained interviews, are beautiful requiems for our lost sense of love toward shallow brand loyalty; they return to our inclinations for warmth, solidarity, and friendship.

As a representation of how it feels to find yourself helplessly adrift, The Rip Tide simultaneously strikes a nerve and soothes it; that's a pretty old trick, but Beirut have done it with the right mixture of solipsism and grace to bring the feelings flooding back again.

Although his rough-around-the-edges production and label affiliation suggest he is a folkie or New Weird American, his songwriting harkens back more to Tin Pan Alley than The Incredible String Band.

With minimalism, especially of this improvised sort, if you don't like it, give it another listen; and if you still don't like it, ok.

This is one lush, warm bit of earcandy that will not let you down.

An astonishingly challenging album in every sense of the word; and for this, it is one of the most fascinating and beautiful things I have heard in years.

Despite these vigorous moments, too often The Winter Of Mixed Drinks falls prey to indistinguishable mid-tempo material.

Come To Life is a continuation of the captivating style he brought to the fore with Digital Lows; it’s motivational, sure, but it’s also thought-provoking and catchy as hell.

As a full-album, Love is Hell is a lovely, drug-induced contrast to the balls-out rockers on Rock n Roll, but Pt 2 is significantly weaker on its own.

It’s certainly a bit early to be throwing around "Album of the Year" type accolades, but Cellar Door is arguably the crown jewel in an already incredible body of work.

The sheer ambition of it is staggering at times and you can't help feeling that Electrelane are on the right trajectory.

As always, Berman and the Silver Jews work best in their classically sharp, witty song stylings and deftly produced Americana constructions. And most of the songs here exhibit just that.

I doubt they’ll be circling back to the sound I felt so strongly about, but even the mildly frustrating Set ‘Em Wild, like all the band’s records, has songs I’ll be listening to for years to come.

It's probably the worst Elbow album yet.

Indeed, when everything clicks, Darnielle can't be denied, and even when there's cause for concern, there's always something worth taking note of.