Long’s trax are emotionally at a remove from the soulful sirens who are sometimes associated with deep house--that tension between joyful celebration and a modern-day blues, between major and minor keys.

For Herren devotees (a group in which I would place myself), this album will appear as a necessary, blissed-out, and relaxing installment in an ever-evolving musical saga. For others less familiar or only interested in the Prefuse aesthetic, La Llama may leave them feeling adrift.

While this is drastically experimental by their standards, there is nothing here you haven't heard done infinitely better many times before.

Let's Go Eat the Factory works as an offering to those obsessive enough to be satisfied just to see Sprout and Pollard up on the same stage and little else.

The Drop Beneath takes their sound in a direction both more eclectic and more shoegazy than 2011’s excellent Correct Behavior, even occasionally straying into jangle-Cure territory.

Listen to NYC, HELL 3:00 AM close enough and you’ll hear them drumming at the windows of your mind’s storefront.

Far from a drop off in coherence, Mr. Beast is just another stop on a long, strange, satisfying trip.

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.

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.

In the final analysis, of Montreal represents a rare and comprehensive attainment of vitality in modern music.

Somehow they straddle the line between fluff and absolutely essential hipness that few attempt, and even fewer succeed at.

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.

Falls between Starsailor, Travis, Elbow, Alfie, etc, always raising the question: who are The Veils?

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.

I find it hard to find fault with their approach, which is same-y but laced with beats and rhymes so powerful they conjure the old ‘if it izain’t broke, don’t fixxit’ axiom.

It’s Frightening is far from a bloodless copy of a more vivid being; it is, rather, a living, breathing creation, one that is only dubiously theirs.

Rafts may seem conceptually like a retrospective or statement of purpose, and it holds up nicely as a portrait, but it should also be considered a refinement, wading further away from readymade images of the tropics and into the depth of the traveler’s imagination.

The songs are neither here nor there, which, to me, is exactly what a cover should be. That the men and woman behind Yo La Tengo have created yet another fine album after 25 years of existence and 11 full-lengths is outstanding.

Harcourt's piano proficiency separates him artistically from guitarists who tinker with mere chord-banging to accompany lyrics. There are a few misshapen puzzle pieces on this one, though.

Although I'm usually a fan of the short and (hopefully) sharp delivery, at 34 minutes the album feels insubstantial in terms of length as well as material.

While The Sound The Speed The Light might not push the band beyond the ground they’ve already covered, it goes a long way towards proving that “more of the same” isn’t so bad when it comes from the right outfit.

Mellow Waves might be a strange bedfellow for the seminal albums of the year so far, but it’s a nonetheless unassumingly essential artifact.

What Chaos Is Imaginary serves as an important document of the Girlpool narrative: a juncture in the band’s career that highlights the emotional (and in Tucker’s case, physical) changes its artists are reckoning with as their success grows in the indie community.

Suspending cynicism for a moment, this is their strongest release to date.

Again is probably one of the most derivative albums I’ve ever heard. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though.

Despite Andrew Barr’s attempt to develop new rhythmic ideas in every song, the tracks tend to bleed together, impairing each song’s distinctiveness.

The real point is that, as a compilation, Dark Was the Night far and away surpasses its predecessors-- even in an age when it should be irrelevant. Go buy it.

Anyone who dug Beam’s official albums will likely enjoy this odds-and-ends release.