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

His good intentions are largely undone by the occasional ideological confusion. The enjoyment offered by the instrumentation is unmitigated, however, which ultimately makes Li(f)e something of a positive-sum venture.

So maybe Nothing Hurts won’t be a record at the vanguard of a movement. But it certainly moves.

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

Warm Slime; it's just solid, thick as a brick.

Over the three preceding records, the band has built up a loyal following by creating dark, gritty, but tuneful music. This album slots in nicely to the band's catalog as yet another release with undoubted new wave pop sensibilities fluttering amongst more damaged, foreboding vibes.

Stuck On Nothing is a boozy, lusty hug of a record--an album so loving and large-hearted that its virtues essentially cancel out its flaws.

While it doesn't quite hit with the immediacy of 2008's Imperial Wax Solvent, Your Future Our Clutter has already proved to be quite the grower, with complex lyrics (Smith grappling with his recent medical issues and overall mortality) and penetrating aesthetics.

They may have traded in a certain sort of urgency and sprawl, but there's a certitude to the whole affair that makes the album go down easy.

Cosmogramma is futurist in form, rather than content. Reliving the future's past through a constellation of references to cosmic jazz, psychedelic funk, hip-hop, and techno, the music of Flying Lotus never fixates long enough to crystallize; any groove that spontaneously emerges is quickly subverted, churned up in favor of a creating new maps and new vectors.

While it does have moments where the listener is reminded of why they love power-pop, Together ends up sounding too vocally divided as an album and at times too top-heavy with orchestral arrangements.

Unlike Patton's previous forays into the experimentalism of John Zorn or Merzbow, Mondo Cane delivers a more conventional set, heavy on romantic strings and swaying nostalgia.

Due in large part to Herring's undeniably affecting vocals and lyrical laments, In Evening Air is a record that sticks. It is one for autumn, for spring, or for any moment of your life that is vividly tainted with love and all its trappings.

The earth will remain unshattered by this release, but that's okay; there'll be time enough for rocking when we're old.

Trans-Continental Hustle is an honest effort, but one that pales a little when compared to the Technicolor explosions of Gogol Bordello's back catalog.

As far as products go, B.o.B. is, at the very least, highly marketable, if not terribly satisfying. The Adventures of Bobby Ray, like bubblegum, loses its flavor after about 15 minutes.

This release feels freer, though--not easier, necessarily, but delivered with a clarity of purpose not quite as muddled, consumption-wise, by sheer weirdness as was their previous LP, Tears Of The Valedictorian, for instance.

With Swim, Caribou has transcended the confines of indie pop and electronica.

Robert Schneider has always been an expert tunesmith, which makes the potentially disastrous transition from garage rock to super hi-fi feel like a natural extension of The Apples' ambition. Not only has the evolution been seamless, but an expanded mastery of studio technique has only served to buttress a fine collection of songs on Travellers.

For the duration of their career, Trans Am have described landscapes as if from a balloon, as if the universe is readily recognizable, and yet they've continued to do so with an oddly hued and surreal perspective. Thing welcomingly continues this delicate balance between the strange and the familiar.

True Love Will Cast Out All Evil is a rare example of a man finding peace on record, of a long journey being rewarded with a slight glimpse of salvation.

Thistled Spring seems a really lovely idea; the lyrics are beautiful, the musical texture is auburn and wood-hued, smooth-sanded and multi-faceted. But there’s nothing that speaks to me.

Though it'll never be powerful or earthshaking, Weathervanes seems to have found its place among the clouds.

Either way, therein lies Congratulations' biggest triumph: despite being every bit the sophomore slump MGMT damn near willed it to be, it leaves you just enough reason to stay interested in what they do next.

The Dark Leaves is too uneven to transcend its shortcomings, and that poses more of a conundrum than if it had been simply awful. There are great songs here, but it’s frustrating to see them so outmatched by the lesser efforts.

The Wild Hunt is a very good record, but it's not perfect. The album's second half, though unarguably beautiful, runs together like an extended 60s folk mix.

Tommy is a kind of maximalist musical confetti, a mostly instrumental amalgamation of jazz, hip-hop, folk, and laid-back electronica. Disparate ideas flit in and out of these songs, often before the listener really has a chance to get acquainted with them.

At nine songs in length, Go is short enough that its purposefully naive milieu never becomes rote or oppressive.

For the few of you who have not already been won over, I Learned The Hard Way will make you a convert. For everyone else, the album excitingly perpetuates Jones' reputation as one of soul's all-time greats.

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.

No Más has three-fifths as many tracks in the same amount of time [as Jamz n Jemz], and for the most part, each track outstays its welcome.

Despite all its goodness and lunacy, Steal Your Face is not a record that is likely to find itself touching the needle very often. It doesn’t beg for repeat listens, simply because most normal human beings aren’t able to handle the speed and sonically-pulverizing vibe.

Badu has refined her authorial vision on Return of the Ankh, creating one of her most vital records to date. Despite her frequent afronautic impulses, Badu succeeds in simultaneously keeping her head in the firmament and both feet planted firmly on the ground.

It's hard to see Medicine County winning her any new fans, but for existing ones it's a welcome release that shows her moving further into Americana (more in the old school sense, but, sure, in the No Depression sense, too.)

The result is an album that feels more like a compilation than a true collaboration.

Their developments are nothing if not honest, even if the gruff, muffled intimations of hip-hop sound awkward or antagonistic, even if the softness of these pieces evades any conventional sense of emotional directness.

The duo has never abandoned the cool reserve of music nerds, but their sound on this tribute has a different sort of ease and confidence; they've learned something from studying their pop music history books.

Putnam doesn't seem to be striving for something new, and if a new lineup isn't shaking up the formula, it’s likely that the music community shouldn't expect something new either.

Mankind across as the next step in defining who High Places are, instead of the sort of developmental stopgap that makes us wonder why we ever believed internet hype in the first place.

I'm all about brevity when it's effective, but S-M 2's patchiness makes its 38-minute length feel much longer. The record isn't unlistenable or even awful, but it's filled with lackluster songwriting, ripe with pastiche, and drenched in a wall of effects that do nothing to mask these flaws.

With Black Sands, he's proven himself to be a skilled multi-instrumentalist who knows how to construct beautiful, arresting music with enough layers of complexity to hold interest for multiple listens. Nevertheless, if he wishes to avoid being the listening choice for those who don't actually want to listen, he's not quite succeeded yet.

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.

Wolf gets lost in tepid mumbling, the musical equivalent of the guy at the end of the bar staring forlornly into his whiskey.

Albarn doesn't give us a "Clint Eastwood" or a "Dare" this time around, but in spite of a messy and patently artificial conceptual framework, Plastic Beach feels clean, shiny, and new.

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.

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

The Monitor more than cements Titus Andronicus's place in the indie rock arena. At its best moments, it reminds you of just how durable--and dangerous--a beast like rock 'n' roll can still be.

jj struck a subtle and surprising balance with their debut, but this time around, they've withdrawn, letting their techniques dangle in the air, starving for justification. The effort is weaker for it.

Are The Roaring Night brings the Montreal group’s potential down to earth, expanding what were sweeping, almost classical compositions into gut-wrenching, prog-y panoramas. A lot of the same cerebral, chamber-music-meets-guitar-wash elements are still there; they’re just a bit beefier this time.

While stripping back the instrumentation, so went some of the ambitious structures and much of the angularity that draws the ear into their gorgeous textures.

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.

Kairos is not an album completely devoid of charm. The R&B influence gives the songs a weight they might otherwise lack.

Anti-folk or not, the band exudes confidence and camaraderie, and The Bundles surely won't disappoint their longtime fans.

This record is a tremendous achievement, but in the end, the grandeur of Hidden can be a little much to take in all at once.

The only thing letting The Strange Boys down this time is a lack of vivacity. Their attitude is dripping from every song, but occasionally you’ll find yourself wanting them to blow their top, to unleash the energy they seem to be capping throughout for the sake of melody.

The ultimate judgment of Going Places ought to be that of a great record that should and will be listened to often.

Unfortunately, two good songs do little to temper the overall disappointment with this new direction, and having thoroughly enjoyed Take Me to the Sea, it really pains me to denigrate its successor.

There's a sort of imposed solipsism here, when tones sometimes seem to have different throb rates depending on the listener's caffeine intake. But Morgan himself is absolutely aware of, and screwing around with, conventions, assumptions, and expectations.

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

Throughout Invisible Violence, Ortiz traffics in the kind of sea-and-eye-centric imagery and bloated abstractions that might cause an adult listener to strain whatever muscle is associated with rolling ones eyes.

For those who have followed his recording career for any length of time, this change might seem jarring, a small revolution, but when his hushed baritone arrives on the scene in the lead track "Leaves Eclipse the Light," the development sounds completely natural.

Serving as the final part of a trilogy that includes the much feted records Rook and , the album is an epic feat of baroque pop craftsmanship, something akin to an update of Scott IV or Dusty in Memphis for the new millennium.

Rather than attempting to outdo themselves, Efterklang scale back, ending sweetly, without overplaying their hand or overstaying their welcome.

Only toward the end of the record does BJTM finally let up, delivering a couple relaxed and half-realized shoegaze jams (“Super Fucked” and “Our Time”) that come close to being good. Sadly, it is all for naught.

Now seven full-lengths into their career, Xiu Xiu have hit a milestone with Dear God, I Hate Myself. Over 12 songs, they condense the best aspects of all their previous albums to craft what may prove to be their finest hour.

Were brevity the chiefmost virtue of popular music, "Baby Birch" would be a turgid waste of time, rather than the deft and skillful creature it is. The same sentiment goes for the rest of the album; there is a depth to the material here that rewards--nay, demands--repeated scrutiny.

Sure, Phil Ek's production is as crisp and effective as ever, but while it emphasizes immediacy, it also draws attention to the repetitive, redundant elements of these songs.

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.

Luck in the Valley expands on his previous palette and culminates the sounds that have been gracefully flowing from his fingers for the past decade as a solo artist.

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

With Tapestry of Webs, Past Lives prove how musicians spawned from relatively constrictive sonic bloodlines, like hardcore, can eventually produce something that's different, yet equally penetrating.

Tidings then, is a journey down a strip of tape from one reel to the other. Yes, it’s a little warped and damaged, but that’s what gives it its character; the insane parts make the most sense of all.

Constellations is a work of exquisite beauty, coming from a group that grows by leaps and bounds with every release.

Life is Sweet! depicts a gifted artist taking a very solid step on the road to self-discovery. He's just wrestling with the palpable anxiety of influence at the moment.

His style, somewhere between Leonard Cohen and The Velvet Underground, offers little in terms of originality, and often the sappy and stoically emotional quality of the lyrics comes off as snarky.

For this record, the Brewises again borrow generously from late-60s and early-70s psychedelic rock (not to mention the first British Invasion), all pervasive vocal harmonies, whining guitar tones, bouncing bass, and crisp, dampened drumming.

The Stimulus Package, despite its remarkable consistency, remains a modest achievement.

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.

Even the sunniest of good-time albums needs a source of tension, but Gonzalez has provided nothing more than a stream of pleasantry. The resulting album is immediately gratifying, but there’s nothing to keep the listener coming back.

Whether or not one enjoys Presidence depends largely on whether this practice resonates; and resonance is a highly contingent, subjective process. However, if you do manage to hum along at their frequency and wavelength, you are in for one of the longest, strangest, most well-documented trips in the contemporary indie scene.

Odd Blood is an album whose highs are higher than its lows are low; those valleys are, however, still very much present.

On top of being instrumentally impressive, One Life Stand is Hot Chip’s most emotional release.

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.

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.

It squirms and shimmers for an all-too-brief 33 minutes, sounding like somebody melted a cassette with a mix of early-90s R&B jams on one side and Person Pitchon the other.

It’s minimal techno made by someone in love with nature; dance music that should be narrated by David Attenborough — it's also what gives the album its beautiful spark of originality.

Yet despite its cryptic, apocalyptic themes, it’s more appropriate to say that Courage Of Others is a more formal, deliberate album than its predecessor, owing less to “take it easy” leanings and more to the prodigious prog-folk of E.L.P., Giles & McDonald, or the most minor-key offerings of Pentangle.

LaValle’s been trading in spitshined tonal conventions and vacuum-sealed beauty for quite some time now, and this might well be his best effort at putting it to record. But there are already three Album Leaf LPs that do this exact same thing, and the prospect of him doing that thing slightly better simply fails to excite.

Blackjazz is an undoubtedly bold statement from an incredibly gifted compositional genius. Munkebey has been working toward this album for a while, and it is a real achievement in synthesis of the band's overriding influences.

It may be something of a litmus test for newer listeners due to its uncompromising severity and double-album length (I'd suggest either of the aforementioned full-lengths, which are somewhat more manageable), but longtime advocates will no doubt be pleased.

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.

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."

Beach House have reached the point in their career where achieving grand melodic climaxes seems to come to them effortlessly, and on Teen Dream the climaxes are as thrilling as ever before.

It is big, but without feeling grandiose. While Everything Ecstatic was bursting at the seams, bright and flashing with cacophony, Hebden doesn't try to dazzle us with any sudden moves this time around. And the album is a joy.

Ultimately, Realism neither impresses nor disappoints.

Expertly and diversely arranged, the songs of Heart of My Own build and hover, often in surprising ways.

Here she sounds more focused, and her delivery more triumphant.