At its best, Burst Apart is a delicate, varied work that hints that we've only begun to see what this group is capable of.

It's as if Tyvek decided to reinvent themselves as a mutated punk group, and to no one's surprise, the aesthetic shift works.

The sheer ambition of it is staggering at times and you can't help feeling that Electrelane are on the right trajectory.

Much like his 2007 debut, "Ash Wednesday," Perkins speaks through characters and, more importantly, though his musical arrangements to present a nuanced approach to musing on mortality and loss and loneliness.

Although the limitations of Claire Denis Film Scores 1996-2009 will make parts of the collection appear inessential for casual listeners, this music will certainly be welcomed by Tindersticks fans and soundtrack buffs.

On The Echoing Green, Cantu-Ledesma has brought a newfound clarity to his work, carving distinct shapes of mellifluous guitar lines to impose against his towering sonic architecture.

There’s little doubt that, despite the odd slip into the saccharine and the set’s lack of anything notably outré or innovative, they do this with conviction and integrity, to the extent where Limits of Desire will receive plenty of service from the lovestruck and jaded alike over the span of this hopefully torrid summer.

Mysterious Phonk feels extremely private in ways that are powerful but not entirely sorted out yet. Purrp finds numerous occasions to talk about smiling in the face of a cold world, but even a facetious smirk never really cracks, and the world is cold in only the most brightly-lit, fantastical, and dystopic ways.

While the second half of the album is a miscue -- eschewing the sunny innocence that makes his music so likeable -- I know what'll be in my CD player all spring.

Faust continues to embrace the former and remain unperturbed by the latter, displaying the same youthful, brave spirit on C'est Com..Com..Complique 38 years after their self-titled debut.

There’s nothing wrong with Atomic. If you like this sort of thing, you’ll probably think it’s as good as Mogwai’s other work; if you’re aware of their career trajectory, it will mean something specific in that respect, too. The problems come down to communicating the weightlessness of the invisible imaginary figures that dance across your mind’s eye when you’re listening to it.

Introducing Brilliant Colors doesn’t go so far as to challenge this tradition, but it throws in enough wrenches to make it an exciting addition to the catalog.

It’s a hazy journey, encompassing loss, disconnection, and disappointment, buoyed up by hard-hitting production and Mykki’s unrelenting desire for pleasure and connection.

Rapor doesn’t push any boundaries or break the speed of light, but it constructs its fragile, fervid, and elegant confections with laserlike precision.

Making no egregious concessions to potential new fans, nor to the musical trends of the past decade, Trail of Dead finally sound like a band emerging from a purgatorial state, out from underneath the shadows of their former selves.

Like an imagined conversation set before the waves, Still Trippin’ folds and unfolds. It is still unsettled, in me and out.

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.

Bat For Lashes has contributed an imaginative installment to our love affair with marriage, in all its charms and discontents.

The absence of transportation and deliverance is ultimately what enables Recurring Dream to realize its pessimistic vision of the confused mechanisms we use to delude ourselves into thinking all is well, and despite its conceptually-necessitated limitations, the album is not short of moments of resonance and emotional impact.

Thankfully, Connected, despite the richness of its sounds, is spacious enough to leave room for the imagination (with the slight exception of "Trios," which teems with movement). That's not to say it's empty.

Those time signature-obsessed math rockers will delight in her phrasings, while those with a taste for the intimate will no doubt grimace at the hyper energy. What both of those groups are missing, however, is that one hand feeds the other. More and more, Stern seems to be getting it, too.

It’s an accomplished one, and Fernow sometimes impressively commands the stylistic cues of the electronic musics he’s discovering. But the cold, calculating position of producer feels alien to Prurient as a project, where once Fernow torched his soul.

As usual, it’s best listened to when you’re in your feelings, and since good news is in short supply, that might be often enough for her gauzy vision of love to feel like a balm, the more wide-eyed the songs the better.

Mos Def’s third album is worth a careful listen: it’s not a happy record, and there are few, if any, genius rhymes. But it speaks volumes about the frustration and resignation of the underprivileged.

Carried to Dust is a fine entry Calexico’s discography that both evokes a much-loved sound from the past and yet looks at the sun fading into the west, turns its horse towards the dying light, and carries on into the future.

It shouldn’t offend, but it might be slow to engage.

While Moore’s aesthetic interests are rangy and Chelsea Light Moving most certainly exist to make them a compelling reality, the disc’s final act seems to be the most keyed-in to his recognizably arty, bookish-punk iconoclasm.

It’s no "Donuts," but it’s definitely another solid entry in the Dilla canon and a reminder of how lucky fans are to have another beat tape this valuable in the absence of the man himself.