As Moon Duo have become sunnier and rockier - a trend evident on 2011's Mazes and continuing on Circles - their vision seems less distinctively their own.

Harlem Shakes are in their early days and still sound like they are trying a little too hard; it’s an absolutely excusable quality in a young band, if not always endearing. Harlem Shakes have plenty to be proud of; they’ve also got even more to prove the next time around.

Warm Slime; it's just solid, thick as a brick.

The goal here is a noise-dance album, and they succeed admirably.

The signs are there, but they just haven’t come together in a way that makes significant impact--at least not yet.

An intriguing and mesmerizing compilation of songs that underscores any love you already had for Broken Social Scene.

Our Love To Admire isn’t even a contractual obligation to push off without care. But boy does it sound like one; a band phoning it in, out of steam, and running on a few lingering fumes and smoldering coals.

Good Sad Happy Bad is ultimately an optimistic record; it tries to bring out the positive in some of the most negative sounds around.

If we're ripe for an introduction of post-grunge sounds into the retro mélange - and given that the moment in question is now 15 years ago, no doubt we are - then we have here one among the early contenders.

Listening to World Waits, you get the feeling that it would be a more enjoyable record if Enigk didn't execute every single note with such immense, ridiculous fervor.

With any luck, Stereolab's hiatus will prove to be temporary, but if Not Music is the epitaph of their career, it is a suitably dignified (if not emphatic) one.

They know that a sound so anathema to many rock and soul fans as anti-human or soulless may have been created on machines, but it was the left-field creativity and forward-thinking imagination of a few of his city's citizens that helped to change the sound of popular music.

Even though A Constant Sea is arguably somewhat conservative in its regurgitation of established tropes and forms, the execution of its inherited framework predominantly unfurls with confidence and clout.

Though Langhorne Slim has its delights, one would be remiss not to note its flyover country.

This is pure, unadulterated pop music, and while its individual musical elements sometimes don’t quite add up to the full potential inherent within Dent’s ever-stunning vocal melodies, there’s always something going on that’s guaranteed to endear this music to the listener.

Strangers is a fundamentally passable album.

An album in which a majority of the heavy lifting is performed by the extra-textual aspects of the project, providing undeserved depth to a series of obsessive repetitions of the banal.

Autechre present a uniquely realistic vision of our present-future: always problematic, limited by human nature and other complications, yet driven forward by incredible optimism, perpetually fixing itself and, adapting to new contexts, engaged in a constant state of becoming.

There isn't a weak track on the album.

Temple and co. have obviously taken a big left turn that at the very least indicates a commitment to motion over stagnation; they're pushing themselves and their listeners somewhere.

Parish is good at what he does, but I suspect he'll have a hard time finding an audience with patience to watch him do it.

Canopy Glow sees the band returning to a more straightforward pop format--as straightforward as a band with a penchant for the theatrical may ever get--with successful results.

Transistor Rhythm is an album with a thin atmosphere. There is little reverberation, just repetition, vocal samples repeating without degrading.

Despite longer tracks, this album is a more accessible work. The compositions are less fragmented, and the songwriting has also improved.

Although still a strong album, YACHT would do well to better marry its aesthetic with the famous DFA beat factory, instead of giving it such clearly separate airtime.

Telepathe may not be superstars yet, but with Dance Mother--an album short in length but simmering over with ambition--they are certainly on the right track.

With Ume’s sweet, soft melodies mixed so gracefully with their bone-crushing riffs, any notion of contradiction between the two are dispelled.

Burned Mind contains some of the heaviest moments on record that I've ever heard.