Youth Novels serves as an entertaining, but ultimately inadequate introduction to Lykke Li.

Essentially, the band only seems to have bit off a little more than could be chewed, and Outside Love feels like a slight misstep.

Per the majority of The Sea and Cake catalog, Butterfly is roundly solid: not great, but very good, with frequent moments of luminosity.

An über-catchy collection of short, diverse songs laden with a playfully channeled anger and wit that are hard to forget.

Hope in Dirt City presents some of Pemberton's most complex material to date. Most of the songs still bear the characteristically breakneck rhythms that garnered a nod from the Polaris Music Prize committee back in 2006, but unlike Breaking Kayfabe and Afterparty Babies, this album is swathed with layers of full-bodied instrumentation.

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.

Goat devotees should be most satisfied with this addition to the collection, and the uninitiated could find worse places to start.

The album’s strongest cuts reveal an undeniable energy and excitement on the behalf of its creators, but those moments are much too sparse to draw in many from outside of Putnam’s cult of true believers.

Bibio aims to express an exquisitely blurry mind-state; instead, his lack of focus conjures only a musty shadow of the varied, sportive electro-pop album he strains to create.

They’re a thrilling pair Richard Bishop and Ben Chasny], giving each other space to stretch out but staying close to cohere. Corsano matches the energy of each with an enviable malleability, staying closer to Bishop than a shadow, then turning around to throw cars, houses, and oil tankers into Chasny’s twisters.

Love Yes flings the sound skyward and waits to hear what bounces back. The pop haze of In Limbo, the bounce and blip of The Way and Color are rebroadcast as a symphony for synths and hi-hat.

While it may be the most unfamiliar work of Herren’s discography, it’s still one of the year’s first great albums.

The caveat is that this is primarily dance music, and doesn't make for a super-compelling listen on a full attention basis.

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.

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.”

If $ucessor is the finality of the final, then Tahoe is the beginning that begins. Tahoe is a voice that emerges after the rupture, the voice that creates itself anew, settling into itself as into a home.

If Belle and Sebastian appear to be repeating themselves here, maybe that just means there's another minor reinvention coming somewhere down the line.

I’d rather be listening to Magnificent Fiend’s antecedents.

Within the extravagant walls of Versailles, this cosmic, spacious work must have been transfixing. Coming through a humble set of headphones, it’s still pretty enchanting.

Apocalypse is keenly observed, distinctly humane, and predictably idiosyncratic; it is yet another minor triumph from an artist who, despite his constant self-deprecation, seems incapable of offering up less than his best.

(k)no(w)here is a really good, enjoyable record that this band has already made twice before, if a little more unevenly in the past.

Molina and Johnson manages to sound as good as the backstory: two friends crossing paths in winter, making an album that reflects the contemplative spirit of the season.

Sea Lion is a delight.

Even his lyrics, a mix of front-porch reflections and impressionistic images, are more sound than sense, the stuff of ambitious art-rock, not folk.

Expo 86 puts up a good showing. The best songs are catchy as hell but complex enough to stay sharp even after repeated listening.

Everything that Happens Will Happen Today is the product of one of the better collaborations that modern music has known.

P.O.S. is good. Real good.

Craftsmanship sets him apart, and allows Insides to be as incredibly moving as it is and always will be. It will easily be one of the best electronic albums of 2009.

Despite its lack of focus, the record's immediacy is also kind of charming, and there's something else about White Wilderness that makes me less inclined to toss it aside; only a few listens in, it's proven to be a grower.

On Pangaea Ultima, that world isn’t one with which the audience is typically familiar, but Moore does a spectacular job of making us feel at home there.

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

Through this the mesmerizing plan of the album becomes, at last, apparent. The issue of making sense becomes a far-off one.

Maybe much will be made of their newplayful trifling with those muchmaligned indiedancetronica influences, but I don’think this is the mereaesthetic synthwave chill,man plasticity of the endlessly reproducible shoppingmall sunset.

From the simplicity in songs like "Lightning Thunderbolt" to the momentary pause before the tempo jump of "The Rule of the Game," the lyrical content of the album depends on the musicality, which itself attests for the album's strongest moments.

For those with autumn coursing through their veins, they’d do well to assuage their summer by keeping Dirty Beaches’ Drifters/Love is The Devil coursing through their headphones.

The result is an absolute monster of a closing track that caps a seductively repeatable album, which speaks miles to the effort on Holy Fuck's strongest album to date.

Not as sprawling a set of riches as "Never Hear the End of It," this new album is more in the pop juggernaut category, where each song pulls the listener along in head-bobbing succession--but there’s no less dynamism for that.

These songs are alive, but there are too many cooks, and they clutter things with all their different ideas and approaches. Madlib's instrumental interludes are weird and compelling, which is no surprise, but because of the multitude of voices, his influence is more subdued than usual.

By no means is The North Borders sterile, but there isn’t a notably invigorating spark either--at least not of an obtuse or intense gesture.

They have taken on a wider range of styles and adapted them to their strict sound, but it still sounds like Tunng, which is never a bad thing.

It’s Hard For Me to Say I’m Sorry feels brief, too, but it’s still highly allusive and transportive, dense and beautiful, like a field recording without a field.

The breadth of sounds covered will scan as inconsistency to all but the most pious Uzi devotees, but it’s hard to imagine anything else serving as a more comprehensive document of rap in 2017.

Katy Goodman seems to be changing, developing, maturing (whatever you want to call it) as an artist at her own pace, and however slowly or carefully that may be, we’re all the more fortunate for it.

Eno’s continuation of his flag-bearing series is about as ignorable as it has always been with waning levels on the side of interest.

While still struggling a bit to overcome their influences, still sound no less than incredible and compelling on their debut.

There are a few scorching solos throughout, but most of Ensemble Pearl witnesses the musicians paying more attention to atmosphere than technicality.

Neither a remix nor a remodel, even less a tribute to an inspiration, these songs sound the same yearning breathed in different breaths.

Yet another charming balance of winsome melody, subtle studio twinkle, frolicking rock, and tinges of country meshed against traditional song structures.

On Weird Sister, Joanna Gruesome exotic blooms--forget the Ys and wherefores, and cue some!

This is an album less about immediacy and more about subtlety. It’s not rocking in any traditional sense, but it reveals itself gradually, building in complexity with each turn.

Koushik effortlessly summons the hazy feel of running around stoned at noon on a summer day in hot pursuit of a grape soda or some other ridiculous craving to be satiated.

Its idiosyncratic animus is something to behold, and even if you don’t like it, both the digital age and Burnett himself can reassure you with the verse, “Don’t worry; in a few, you’ll all be somewhere else.”

It is no accident; Jaga Jazzist is trying to blow your mind. It is supposed to feel like a masterpiece.

If one didn't care for White Hills before, this won't change a mind. Of their recorded material, however, White Hills' latest is perhaps their best; short of an in-person experience of the band's eardrum-shattering performances

Their meh generation, “shouting lager lager” take on four-on-the-floor energy is starting to wear a bit thin.

Absolutely the least offensive record you will probably not hear this year.

There are enough genre-hopping and synergistic, trans-genre partnerships present on the tracklist that Long. Live. A$AP, its commercial bets hedged, feels not unlike a myriad of other major-label rap disappointments from nearly any other era of rap.

This is a much better effort than anything they've done in quite some time.

Radical Connector softens up the abrasive glitch techno and broken beats of 2001's Idiology to produce a more dance-friendly album, with their signature warped vocals taking on a house sheen and invading every track.

It's got more of an arc and sense of unspoken redemption than most contemporary albums that parade themselves as such. It's also one of those rare albums that starts out great and gets better over its 45-minute length.

"Eighth Avenue" starts us off with a case study in mid-aughts indie pop: nylon thrumming, snare-led rhythm, spare buoyant bass.... Feels orchestrated but spontaneous, massive but twee.

For the moment, it’s surely a worthwhile project for players and listeners alike, an album of unusual synergy, exploration, and focus that expands both artists’ repertoires well beyond genre constructions to create something both unique and replayable.

On GEM, the power of Megan Remy's hooks is almost dangerous, to the point of threatening to overwhelm entire songs. It's where she attends to the muscle of her work that GEM invites deeper listening.

Although the album's been released in the United States a year after it was in their native Australia, the songs have held up quite nicely, memorable and unique as they are.

The recordings all fit within a folk or blues tradition, but given the complex rhythmic layers, they may as well be post-rock songs.

If The Raconteurs were any other group (that is, if The Raconteurs didn't have Jack White), the press/Blogosphere would slam it.

It doesn't have a whole lot of replay value.

As ever, the project is a winner off the bat for producing material where no one track resembles the other. Olympic Mess raises the bar, however, in a fashion set off by the invitingly tactile, yet nevertheless challenging work of the past three years.

EP 4 is super cohesive, conscious of what unions and dialogues are and what it means to re-union yourself with something.

The album is a carefully crafted rollercoaster of emotional and auditory highs and lows, exhibiting the group's subtle growth since its major breakout, "We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed."

It’s a dedicated focus on the materials that compel bodies and minds into motion that make RP Boo a continuously shining light in the ever-growing discourse he helped invent.

The high points are so fantastic that their missteps are easily forgiven.

On 20/20, the Timberlake/Timbaland team seems content to set up a basic (and more often than not, bland) hook, repeat it ad infinitum, and tack on some superfluous bits until the desired, bloated end product comes into being.

The live shows Body/Head have done in the interim, where much of the material comprising The Switch sprang from, seems to’ve helped them nail down a more cohesive approach. It’s still wide open, drifting music, but with a relative brevity that helps it lodge more with the listener as an album.

Sadly, there aren't many moments on An Argument With Myself that register strongly.

McCombs doesn’t want to be known any better than he already is, but here, for once, he shows that he understands everyone else a far lot better than he has to date.

Magnetite is not wholly arrhythmic, but its rhythms are sparse. They enter, and as soon as they develop to recognition (slow gong sounds, for instance, are common), Vainio destroys them with either unrecognizable noise or silence.

The production on each song is a little too repetitive.

Taken as a whole, There Is No Enemy is a solid album on par with the band’s more recent output.

It’s more akin to a journal of the individual’s emotions amidst this state of the world. Constantly on the edge between sadness and rage, its disillusionment becomes anger, brought on by the feeling of helplessness in the face of global violence.

Although as a dub obsessive it saddens me to say it (indeed, it saddens me to say anything critical of anyone as seminal, interesting, and all-round sympathetic as Styrene), it's mostly the reggae tracks and uninspiring deejay cameos that let the album down.

For Art Brut vs. Satan, the band didn’t need Frank Black to give them an edge; they needed a mentor to help them focus on their real message: changing the musical landscape. Satan may have won this round, but don’t count out Art Brut. Not just yet.

Clue to Kalo may give acts like Postal Service and Her Space Holiday a run for their money.

These are the giants' shoulders that Grooms have chosen to stand upon, and with Rejoicer they have done so excellently.

On Everything Else Matters, the band funnels the Kansas post-rock group Appleseed Cast’s delay-pedal wizardry and open-ended song forms into bright pop that’s more in line with Astrobrite alum Andrew Prinz’s Mahogany.

If you like Palace Music, Joji will most likely make your day.

Blue Eyed inarguably sets Hollon as one of the finest artists in electronica today, and it would be a shame if you were to miss out on this release.

It manages to captures our curiosity without giving away too much, gently nudging us to explore.

In a lesser person's hands, this particular analog stew would have turned out to be nothing more than an album of farting robot sounds, but in Prekop's it is a well-conceived piece of musical experimentation. Drastically more daring than previous releases, Old Punch Card shows a radical side to Prekop that is relentlessly inventive.

A mild sense of self-congratulation permeates the record, as if the attempt to synthesize several disparate elements together is somehow as admirable as that synthesis itself.

The middle third of pom pom gives itself over relentlessly to schlock and dross for the purpose of exposing deeper truths on the way.

There are thus a number of quite diverse stylistic influences at work, but here they are all fused together into a whole that is both natural and low-key.

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

Arbouretum succeed through absolute concentration and craftsmanship, eschewing the easy crescendoes of mid-aughts post-rock in favor of more organically evolving swells.

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.

This is digital automation entering the flow of the socio-linguistic, or stark outlooks amidst techno-financial mind-control. This is the sound of a colorless decline.

While the conceptual ambitions occasionally overstep the mark, they rarely get in the way of the cerebral and gluteal-vibratory enjoyment that is to be found. It's a work no less beneficial than entertaining.