Despite its sub-30 minute run-time, Remain Calm packs a punch.

There are some obvious pitfalls to this newfound worldliness, and the second half of Girls in Peacetime is a bit of a mess.

If Plowing Into the Field of Love is meant to convey anything, it’s the otherworldly passion of a world without control and without truth.

On the whole, these tracks feel partially-realized, like demos that didn’t get wholly fleshed out.

What separates Boss from any cynical cashing-in critiques is that the Markers went above and beyond to actually create an album that nearly contradicts their constructed identity.

Songs Cycled--cheeky, geeky, and critical as ever--is his most approachable take on the whole sprawling mass yet.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have retained most of what we loved about them while also finding new ways to dazzle us, to make us swoon.

If anything, this album is best compared to the aesthetic of hip-hop, where allusions to universality and transcendence are simply non-existent, and what we are left with is content that will be dated within months.

Given time, these transmissions work on a person like a vast overgrowth, subsuming one’s fastidious human preoccupations. When it hits you right, it’s like that first big beam of sunlight after weeks of cloudy sky.

Religious Knives’ latest recording doesn’t implore repeat listens the way "Resin" did and still does.

Wilco (The Album) isn’t a failure--not by any means--but when a band has become so attached to the notion of change and then stagnates, it casts a heavy shadow that’s hard to escape.

Unfortunately, Let Us Never Speak Of It Again barely registers any of the emotion or punch of the debut and, worst of all, goes ahead and adds positively dreadful lyrics to nearly all the songs.

Her words read and speak like a haunting.

Even with the complete lack of song-oriented material, Instrumentals 2015 serves as an interesting career overview and a welcome return of someone who I had begun to believe had slipped entirely into the light of time.

This, of course, can be a drag, but when said influences are as carefully picked, pristinely melded, and precisely replicated as they are in the case of Crystal Stilts, it can be a real blast.

The concept understood, no longer intriguing, no longer as unique as it's presented, runs out of interpretations on the final induction of every theory and concept highlighted.

An interesting and extremely well-crafted moment of critical self-reflection early-ish in a talented producer's career rather than a worrying about-turn.

As progressive and interesting as Wilderness the band is, Vessel States is not a great leap forward for them, and those who appreciated [their debut] will probably be underwhelmed with the band's latest offering.

Matmos have successfully transformed their washing machine into an instrument of righteousness as well as introspection, and while I am not surprised at their continued high level of craft, this one feels especially deep.

Whereas The Fiery Furnaces used to suffer from a lack of restraint, they suffer here from having too much.

Flumina does exactly what it's meant to. Which is not very much.

It’s a good album. ... It’s a lusher, synthy, melodramatically gothy version of Tamaryn’s sound. More Soft Cell, less Chapterhouse.

Hello Sadness hits harder than any indie rock record in recent memory because it doesn't really sound like the gentrified indie rock I've grown so frustratingly familiar with.

This is nothing short of a monumental piece of work.

[Bring Me The Head...] is the perfect accomplice to the contorted bliss of a seductive daydream.

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.

Ultimately, despite Gainsborough’s troubling of dance, of the physical, of expectations, the most successful (and most fascinating) tracks are those that engage with the dancefloor, or at least with rhythm, rather than do away with it completely.

It sounds dismissive to say that Farm is, undeniably, nothing more than another Dinosaur Jr. record. Yet it is, and if that assertion carries with any ideas of complacency or stock “rock action,” it should also denote the superb craftsmenship inherent in Mascis, Barlow, and Murph’s work.