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.

While Smile may be inarguably more accessible than their previous releases, it still has enough cloaked treasures to keep the diehards interested.

The impressions made are that the sublime, the relinquishing of the self can only come with work and time. “-” seems to come from a similar place as The King of Limbs’ latter tracks, which speaks to the notion of human fallibility and fragility, helping make News From Nowhere a decidedly beautiful album.

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.

The Sea and Cake continue to be champions for the weary and resolute alike, being both the soothing reassurance of beauty and the wistful resolve that the most dogged absolute is the very impermanence of everything. It’s a deceptively tricky feat and one that they continue to thrive on.

This is no walk in the park, it has to be said, but Wolf is going to be remembered as the record that sees Tyler deploying his tact as an astute beat-maker and a producer more than allowing his reputation as a Satan-worshiping neo-fascist to swell any further. Musically, it’s a step in the right direction.

Although still a strong album, YACHT would do well to better marry its aesthetic with the famous DFA beat factory, instead of giving it such clearly separate airtime.

It all hits you at 78-rpm, and that these guys have the dexterity to recall the unadorned energy of 1977 punk is their greatest asset.

It's the kind of music any fledgling music lover deserves to remember.

The group used to flirt more often with jazz and electronica, but when those elements show up here, such as with the groove on “Spy” or the digital glitchy noodling on “Roots and Shooting Stars,” the flirtation falls flat; the thrill is gone. The elements that feel most familiar to the group's past sound are the elements that matter the least.

Barnes and Trost may be back home from their sojourn abroad, but their music is still out on the road somewhere.

Listening to this album suggests a universe of unheard information beyond the reach of understanding and perception, of phenomena both too brief and too enormous for us to comprehend.

At 35 hefty minutes, Dedication is Zomby's most complete statement to date. But, much like the man, it offers a number of details in one hand while obscuring other crucial signs with the other.

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

Oblivion Hunter recaptures missing pieces of the Lightning Bolt jigsaw and reconfigures them in a new context, painting a broader picture of the band's roots while giving us the sense that it might not be a singular instance of "lost" material being pulled back from the edge of eternity.

This is just a modern rock record, and it definitely won’t change your life, but it’s more than competent and beyond clever.

There is indeed more good than bad. Unfortunately, there is also more bad than there should be.

This set of witty pop songs fits perfectly in the musical panorama of the last 15 years: there are no underground rock references, no orchestral pop sensibilities, no vacuous attempts at updating a 'decades-old' sound to modern audiences.

While keeping the same mix of hushed beauty and spooky old-time feel, Holland seems much more direct and confident, a forwardness that risks losing some of the mystery, but instead ups the awe factor.

As dub creates stripped canvases to then be used to host further expressions, so do these versions. They encourage engagement and further remixing by projecting the past and present into an unknown future.

Last Summer sounds good; next summer could be even better.

They've got that sound--you'll know immediately that you'll like it, and this time around, Grooms don't screw around with your certainty.

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.

After navigating complex matrices of identity under an indulgent, accessible veneer, Dirty Computer is ultimately--even “simply”--a cathartic assertion of self in a hostile system.

Where its siblings thrash and writhe and scream, No One Dances flows, undulates, sighs. The result is nothing short of pastoral.

Plaintive, spare, and narrative in approach, these songs--which seem to bookend the album--are among Raposa’s most affecting.

While Franciotti's work is far from unique in its revival both of lo-fi synth panoramas and of ambient experimentalism, the combination and alternation of the two allows Forever a certain originality beyond other musicians mining either one or the other vein.

Sure, Street Horrrsing doesn’t overtly delineate any new sonic set, but its execution and relative brevity reflect highly on these two venerable artists.