So, no, this isn't the sound of The Dears taking it to the next level, but the level they're on is still pretty solid.

Chemical Chords is a fine album by Stereolab standards, even if it does nothing to improve upon the band’s by now all-too-familiar sound.

Foundations of Burden is special, there’s little question of that, but the precocious virtuosity of the performance doesn’t change the fact that the material is far from challenging.

LP3 is a rewarding listen, and you’ll have a taste for it if you enjoyed the less powerful moments of "Classics" or Evan Mast’s previous textural work as E*Vax. Just don’t expect to find yourself headbanging and air-guitaring alone in your room.

Live, Hunx are utter trashy goodness, a trip to Dreamland, but recorded here, there’s a fine line they wobble back and forth on, like the tyres of a dodgy fixie, where the humor can wear thin and wear out its welcome.

No matter how likable all 10 of these songs may be, there's something missing here.

Reassemblage already feels peculiarly familiar, but the residue it leaves behind is oddly intangible.

If the too-often twinned strands of listener preference can be unwound, hopefully it will be remembered as the most-heard Isis album, not the greatest.

The Teenagers have not made a great album, but it is better than many will want to admit.

Pattern To Excel emerges in fragments, almost painlessly, with every inch of space filled, all the darlings still written.

EDD are probably too traditional a band to ever record a straight-up punk record. But it would have been nice to hear an entire album powering through with the intensity of the more rocking half of Riot Now!.

It tends to, er, drag, but the producer's deft touch with wonky textures remains thrilling.

It is an album of specks dancing in the dust in an amorphous bubble of babble and bawling thoughts, yearning to be unthought.

Ghost Games is nothing so profound, but it certainly is something to bring out of the closet once a year or so.

Freedom is not a “challenging” listen, but choruses or hummable melodies are few; rather, the album progresses at a loping, steady pace, as if somehow delivered by natural rhythm.

Physicalist is indeed a luscious, bubbly record to behold; just don’t expect its preordained patterns to hold many surprises.

Part rumination on engaging with the pop icon and part deep end even after eating the meal, Reputation keeps the ball in the air, argues for moving forward, even if it’s herky jerky.

To be a little more complimentary, Bespoke sounds like darkly magnolia-lined city streets, like late afternoon, like crisp hotel beds. Darlington may have tailored the album from existing sonic cloth, but at least this time the seams are a little more skillfully sewn.

No longer a statement and certainly abandoning the vanguard, it’s still some sort of map of some sort of territory, a specific body and a specific sexuality in a specific sonic present/presence.

The playful experimentalism and inherently subversive nature of Dead Petz is enjoyable (in a sickly-sweet way) throughout, yet it’s experimentation is akin to playing absent-mindedly with a shitty synthesizer iPhone app.

If Departing sounded as if absurdly-energetic drummer Paul Banwatt was holding back, then Mended With Gold corrects this modesty a bit.

Although as a dub obsessive it saddens me to say it (indeed, it saddens me to say anything critical of anyone as seminal, interesting, and all-round sympathetic as Styrene), it's mostly the reggae tracks and uninspiring deejay cameos that let the album down.

It's a joy to hear him in such audibly great spirits, even if his most cognizant album effort in decades isn't some kind of miraculous knockout

Truly, though, I like to think that The Bridge takes the best of early- to mid-’90s hip-hop from New York, the synthesized sound of the last five to ten years, an interesting blend of MCs, and an ear for a slammin’ beat, and puts them together in a package that isn’t necessarily mind-blowing, but that is at least complete, well-intended, and meaningful.

Despite its honed brunt and conceptual integrity, the album just doesn’t quite achieve enough to raise it above its similarly disaffected peers.

Ghil is an album that’s shaped by ideas, but driven by a sound that’s often disengaged.

There is a creeping charm to tracks that seem initially off.

This is expertly crafted music, but perhaps too intent on being discomforting: the music intentionally aims to unsettle you.