We’re given a de trop of horrid synthesizers, only to be outdone by worse choruses and banal refrains.

A well-done lo-fi pop album lost of the things we’re used to: contexts and whatnot that make both us and the analytical process feel much easier, helping us pretend that we really know what’s going on and how to get behind the ideas.

Many of the other songs on this album feel rather static and enclosed.

For as spare as her pallet is (many of the songs consist only of Fortino’s single or multi-tracked vocals accompanied by her own acoustic guitar), there is a staggering diversity in tone and feeling throughout the album.

It’s not Sonic Youth, but Ranaldo, haunted with memory and philosophizing all this time stuff, sounds like he’s indeed having the best time of his life.

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

Takes the listener on an unmitigated aural journey through the outer reaches of electronic music.

Self Help Serenade is not an unpleasant listen; it has simply and unfortunately been played out over the years by scores of other bands.

Lysandre is full of problems/problematic things, and most of it rests on one of the album's biggest problems: the insistent, ever-present "me."

I hate to say it, but Love at the Bottom of the Sea is such a drag: a damp and dreary album, drowning in bad faith and bad jokes.

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

Decimation Blues examines with more boldness some of the possibilities hinted at in his previous recordings and brings them shuddering to life.

With no pretense and few frills, Rhyton have created an excellent document of tripped-out modern instrumental rock, drawn from open minds and extraordinary musicianship.

Shots isn’t a perfect record by any means.... However, by the time the epic closer “Ghost Blues” enters its nasty twin-guitar breakdown, you’ll want to pour yourself another drink and hit Shots’ high points anyway.

All of this is borderline insulting to its target audience, myself included. For a moment in “Brand New,” Williams lets us see his hand, and it subtly reveals how incredibly marketed and capital-centric this album is.

Waiting in Vain captures the modest landscape of America’s backroads and countrysides.

The lyrics here are trite and the melodies saccharine.

I think it’s safe to say that this third Volume remains the most autobiographical of the bunch.

Soft Money continues to blur the line between downtempo electronica and underground hip-hop in its own distinct, highly gratifying way.

There is a deeply impressive EP to be found on this album.

Picking up where "Z" skidded off, Evil Urges is like a carnival, like life (after all, My Morning Jacket is in cahoots with The Band), like cigarrons, discarded cigarettes dredged from the Cimarron River, and cinnamon sticks in a pot of boiled apples on the stove.

Lost Themes II isn’t the monster transfigured. It’s an echo chamber for the transforming horror to howl in.

Sure, Mister Pop might be of interest to fanboys and a few others, but it makes a less convincing case for why new listeners should care about these guys.

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

I listened to this CD quite a bit, and it took some work for it to grow on me. I’ll admit that it finally did, but I’d say Knapp and Koster’s experiment was more failure than success.

Collaborations abound, and most of them work.

The fact of the matter is, despite lesser numbers, they have demonstrated progression as artists.

While Ready is far from a perfect album, it seems Trey is learning how to inspirit his original works with the charm and inventiveness found in his freestyles and covers.