The best parts of Iron & Wine songs are almost always the bridges between chorus and verse or the outros, the spaces void of singing where Beam adds subtle riffs on top of the normal progression... They are the sharpest hooks, and, unfortunately, Calexico pretty much cuts out the effect of these bridges on In the Reins, replacing them with dull saxophones, harmonicas, trumpets, and ill-defined electric guitar parts.

Although it isn’t as full-fledged or layered as a full-length Aphex work, it’s full of minor miracles, advanced lessons in acid appreciation and stirring little lines of drum poetry.

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.

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.

An album of cloudy-day pop that's hard to top.

It does justice to the musical traditions it invokes, integrating them into dynamic, scrupulously constructed rampages that escalate at just the right moments and explode at just the right moments.

Overall, Venus in Leo deviates minimally, fearful of letting light shine in, but the moods it creates shimmer with a gorgeous, melancholic atmosphere.

It is blatantly experimental, though most indie fans should find it at least mildly accessible.

What you will get with From A Compound Eye is your typical gourmet spread of Pollard delicacies from the modern eras of Bob.

The biggest problem with Late Registration though is Kanye's verses; he's not a great MC, but he doesn't know it.

Pressure Chief won't change your mind on the band, although I will call it their weakest effort simply because there's no memorable single like "The Distance," "Short Skirt/Long Jacket," or even "Never There."

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

This descent into industrial retro-futurism provides a fitting artistic and aesthetic parallel to the corresponding descent society has made into technology worship, into a disempowering worship of things at the expense of an appreciation of the social, political, and economic realities in which these things are situated.

If there's one thing to complain about, it's a lack of focus to each individual track, in deference to sheer joy at the combinations of sounds they're making.

The familiar ingredients are there, from superb buildups to instrumental pyrotechnics to Esjstes' buttery voice and a general insistence that points toward some bright and shining future.

With Funstyle, she has crafted above all else an experience, and one that is entertaining and rewarding in ways that few records can be. It's an arduous listen, and as music it is unquestionably terrible; but as a musical experience, it's something that shouldn't be missed.

It’s at once simple, colorful, and cozy, but, if examined closely enough, can be appreciated on another level entirely--one that’s both casually sophisticated and quietly intelligent.

This is not the best or most refined Jesu album and for the casual listener perhaps not the best place to start. For the Jesu fans who have not been able to track the debut EP down, however, it is well worth a listen.

Beautiful Thugger Girls is remarkable because of its Thugger-ness--it’s a clear step forward at the very moment that Thug-derivation is a particularly viable come-up.

Too often, Program 91 is a controlled explosion, hemmed in by a fangirlish conservatism. When it all clicks--as it does with "Above All" and a handful of other tracks--this is spiky twee pop in a black-and-white cardigan of glory.

Luckily, for most of its duration, Where You Go I Go Too manages to assimilate the more enjoyable elements of both of these alternate possibilities into a seamless and engaging whole, with only a few moments of awkward uncertainty.

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.

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.

That Ward succeeds so well in capturing something akin to escapism while keeping things engaging enough to bypass passivity is perhaps the album's greatest strength.

While How to Socialise isn’t the most musically adventurous album, its moments of humanity are what give the band its subtle edge.

Some will find the album’s often starry-eyed nature vaguely overdone, and it’s this more than anything else that will turn them off. However, for those who fall weak at the knees when the strains of R&B, soul, and hip-hop hit their ears, even in an idiosyncratically distorted form, the post-millennial quotations and evolutions of In My World will be love at first listen.

II is, on the whole, worthy of the names and histories that have coalesced and been commingled in its making.

Despite the modern production quality, the overall feel of Ballad Of The Broken Seas is unerringly timeless.