The record resists you making sense of it. It hits, laughs, ends.

So, it's formulaic, it's 'retro' in a really kitschy way, and Business Casual sounds pretty much the same as their 2004 debut, Fancy Footwork; and still, Chromeo are fucking great.

So, while this compilation retrospective may be aimed at completists, there is plenty going on here to satisfy even the most casual listener.

So the mission statement of this CD is clear; this is a product made by the emotionally and culturally sterile for people who either have no conception of love, depression, or any other emotional state outside of pop culture cliché, or those so desperate for entertainment that they would deceive themselves into thinking the feckless chicanery of this masturbatory ensemble resembles soulful expression in any way.

Herren has actually cooked up a brilliantly soothing and entertaining morsel for his fans.

Days of the Bagnold Summer plays like a b-sides compilation with a few cuts worth revisiting. Like the Storytelling OST, this one’s strictly for the heads.

What's frustrating is that beneath the surface of LP4 there appears to be the basis for a great record. But its execution is too rote, too much the result of being so entrenched in the band's Ratatat-ness that the material is suffocated.

With this record, though, Black turns that style into a genuine language--a flexible idiom--one that can conjure up a whole weird world of new emotions and experiences.

The recording perfectly reflects the aesthetic of the world Jay has imagined, and both Calvin Johnson and Bob Schwenkler deserve praise for accurately materializing Slow Dance’s wintry, yet robust landscape.

Votolato has a lot to offer as a musician, but his songwriting veers into stale territory too often over the course of 12 songs, neglecting to pull itself from its many holding patterns in time for salvation.

Rather than referring to primal transgressions, however, Cowgill refers to the performative transgressions of earlier musicians. There is nothing wrong with this approach, and yet there is something about King Dude's particular gloss on neofolk that I find naggingly inauthentic.

It's Nurses' funky dance pop album, and thankfully they've also conjured up some irresistibly catchy melodies to complement them.

Cheena is phantom shamble, a reanimation of bumps that still make us shake.

End It All doesn't reveal some new profundity to Beans' formula; it just happens to be the album that came out when I was finally smart enough to get exactly how weird he always was.

I, myself, will likely revisit 10,000 Days for plenty of extended listens, partly because I'm a percussion whore and partly because I want to be able to enjoy it with my Super Metal Friendz. But this is Soy Tool, a rubbery substitute for the real thing.

Lennon isn’t attempting to re-invent the wheel with Friendly Fire; he’s just writing a narrative using thoroughly enjoyable pop melodies.

With Graphic As A Star, she’s delivered an intimate reading of a revered American poet and made it entirely her own, creating her most beguiling work yet in the process.

This loss of focus characterizes You Can’t Take It With You. While As Tall As Lions are affected deeply by the weight of the world, they’re too flustered to make sense of it all.

While the album shows the band refining their sound, it also carries the threat that their future might be too refined, too polished and neat.

The worldview Trash Talk puts forward continues to feel generic, as though it has passed through too many links in the human centipede of hardcore punk to contain any vital nutrients by the time it makes its way to us.

His ambition’s got the better of him this time, though: it’s tough to care about the overarching (and admittedly interesting) theme when the component songs aren’t satisfying themselves.

Longtime fans will be enchanted by such quips and the naked introspection offered by Goodnight Unknown, and while not at all challenging, casual listeners will enjoy it simply for its strong collection of pop songs.

Though it'll never be powerful or earthshaking, Weathervanes seems to have found its place among the clouds.

MAYA's many false starts and dead ends also place M.I.A. on shaky ground aesthetically, and with no coherent message to fall back on, the album feels alienated and disconnected, perhaps ironic for an album attempting to evoke the hyper-connectedness and sensory overload of culture in the wake of iPhone and Google.

Avey Tare’s stream of vanishing sounds, creaking floorboards, and silently intonated lullabies is romantic in its faded resemblance to our radiant, ever-growing environment; but as with Portner’s newly adopted city of Los Angeles, the supposed nature exists purely as an extension of the human desire to create and actualize what we see in our minds.

I don’t think there’s any doubt Wavvves consistently delivers wonderful ideas, and those keeping a close watch on the West Coast underground will have to continue to include this kid in their daily musings until he actually provides material worth the blog-storm.

Tom Verlaine has delivered yet another beautiful creation to us.