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.

I Am Very Far can only be considered a stumble or misstep on a steeply curved scale, yet it proves, even as the shock of the musical pomposity fades and familiarity sets in, to be a less emotionally generative return to the same wells from which Sheff has long drawn.

The album is as stuck in time as a delivered text or dead second cousin. The songs remain the same.

Bird’s simultaneous engagement with the words and distance from the material free his delivery to keep the album feeling lighter than I’ve implied.

“Harpies” is emblematic of the issue that prevents Glynnaestra from being an unblemished success, since despite its enveloping airs, the instrumental does often reverberate as a little undercooked and sketched out, as if it were the anticipatory intro to a more expansive and consequential piece. A significant minority of the album’s tracks could be charged with this offense, because for all their sheen and arch-modernism, they often don’t build upon their ostensibly innovative foundations.

Without an adequate treatment or storyboard, [I Decided] feels listless and wanting immediate predicate. It lacks a ready place on the shelf.

It all adds up to something that is far less than a great record, but those who approach Distant Relatives can expect at least a handful of keepers for the summer months.

Autodrama feels just several adjustments away from fullness.

Pillars of Ash is the body in transition, all crumble and ovation, an album that celebrates a human voice and exists in a world without it.

The listener is unfulfilled at the album's end. We learn nothing new about Sole, who's the only character on the album.... There's nothing to grip on to. All the lyrics are observations twisted into weak witticisms.

ARTPOP wants to hide that it doesn’t have much to say.

Magik Markers seemingly forget their own warnings and regain their former wily intransigence, ending the album with a threesome of songs that return them to sonically murky territory, as if suddenly realizing that in fact they’d been trying to uncover something in this murk rather than striving to bury themselves in it.

I'm sure purists would prefer to snag the recently remastered originals as opposed to this Gift, even though those older fans would be able to appreciate this album most.

Tracer glimmers with the CD-ROM gleam of early-90s intelligent techno.

Each record is made for the true believers, but this new one should at least bring a few more into the fold.

While the rest of the album flirts with the shivering, uncomfortable mood found on 'Since I Came,' it infrequently equals it.

Schoolboy Q is neither a great lyricist nor a technically dazzling rapper.... Happily then, the production on Oxymoron is uniformly solid.

The dull interludes and derivative sound of "Close Forever Watching" prevent Owl Splinters from achieving the promise intimated by its standouts. It's a noticeable improvement over Pale Ravine, but perhaps not what one might expect after six years of hibernation.

Putnam doesn't seem to be striving for something new, and if a new lineup isn't shaking up the formula, it’s likely that the music community shouldn't expect something new either.

Overall, however, Money is hit-or-miss. The less structured tracks often get lost in the shuffle, resulting in stretches of floundering in between the more highly developed tracks.

Ultimately, Tanglewood Numbers is a pretty good record for the Silver Jews and a very good record if you like chimey, talky, uncool indie rock.

Silicon Tare sounds like 2010, which could be a good thing, depending on how you look at it.

Remember Your Black Day has some great moments--the eight-minute title track, with its hyper-pulse percussion and somber synth strains, is a solid incarnation of what made Vatican Shadow so compelling in the first place--but it’s surrounded by a mixed bag of tunes that either attempts some agoraphobic tightrope walk before falling flat or wrestles with contrasting ideas that weaken the project’s potency as opposed to crystallizing it.

Despite its shortcomings, Always Want is a debut that shows considerable promise and a willingness to test the boundaries of the singer-songwriter framework.

After awhile, the monotony becomes wearing. Television Man is a disappointment in the sense that it’s a lot of the same, save for the two instrumental tracks, based on keyboards, that sound like attempts at making warped VHS soundtrack music.

Unlike Patton's previous forays into the experimentalism of John Zorn or Merzbow, Mondo Cane delivers a more conventional set, heavy on romantic strings and swaying nostalgia.

While far from easy listening, the mechanics of NYC sound positively pastoral, and the interplay between Reid and Hebden, formerly spastic and indebted to the free-est of jazz, is now melodic, the give and pull of the rhythmic forces against the melodic textures gentler, and the songs more likely to cause subtle head-bobbing and confused stares.

Return to Love is a sticky, sweat-drenched spiritual that commands attention with each wrenching power chord. Far from any aesthetic bait-and-switch, the album marks a slow maturation, a deep breath of chordal refinement that for once feels like an honest distillation of form.