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

The album’s certainly well-produced, occasionally catchy, and at times even soothing in its simplicity, but it can also be dull and uninspired, like something I might put on when I want inoffensive background music for a relaxing social gathering.

A few forgettable collaborations and sing-by-number hooks aside (the usually spirited Seu Jorge sounds especially enervated on “Favela Love,” which languishes until a jaunty guitar riff revives it well after the four-minute mark), many of the guest verses on the record pleasantly surprise.

Part of how Cronin succeeds in making the listener feel good are his failures: the outsized ambition and the pushing of his practical capacities remind the listener than they’re being spoken to by an everyman.

If the album can be considered R&B proper, it’s one of the most consistent and fulfilling longplayers the genre has yet birthed.

Monomania will be remembered as the album where Deerhunter veered from their carefully acquired sound as opposed to constructing a more pronounced encapsulation of it.

Stetson very literally breathes life into his instrument, and in turn, like the statue transformed from stone to flesh, his music softens our hardened selves--it reminds us that we were once made, too.

It’s great to have a thematically consistent and well-executed Thee Oh Sees album.

For being as spare as it is, Zomes’ music is incredibly full while maintaining a hazy, idealistic distance.

Much as every black witch’s cloak is undeniably part of a discourse that includes both Black Sabbath and Black power, The Haxan Cloak is in a dialogue with contemporary dubstep, and with Excavation, he proves that he has much to add to the conversation.

The songs of his that have stood out most are the ones that at least try to meet the listener halfway, the ones that betray the deep-seeded enthusiasm underlying Vile’s laid-back, stoner(-esque — he’s a family guy, now) cool. While such material can still be found on Wakin on a Pretty Daze, locating it is becoming more and more of a chore.

The majority of tunes on offer here do very little to build on the ideas and panache exposed on Soft Control.

The absence of transportation and deliverance is ultimately what enables Recurring Dream to realize its pessimistic vision of the confused mechanisms we use to delude ourselves into thinking all is well, and despite its conceptually-necessitated limitations, the album is not short of moments of resonance and emotional impact.

Prolific folks like Presley tend to forget the presentation of an album, and Cyclops Reap seems like a step in that direction: not just a collection of songs, but a collection of songs that work well together.

Total Nite still feels to me like lateral growth, neither distinctly worse but certainly not better than what preceded it.

Ghostface and Younge’s filmic vision comes together with great aplomb, and yields one of the bloodiest, most ambitious, and straight-up funnest hip-hop albums of 2013.

Unlike the greatest movements of his previous albums, Wings of Love’s diversity is its greatest fault, as 14 tracks visit musical fads long forgotten and ill conceived.

The eponymous Stygian Stride LP might come from a period of psychological and technical excavation, but the music stands on its own in the halls of modern electronic music and psychedelia.

Seabed is drained of an expressive self.

The Terror may be The Flaming Lips’ most concise statement to date.

Rock music is ultimately about a wild feeling, and Milk Music are delivering it in just the right place.

Overgrown is a remarkable effort from an artist who continues to do things his own way, regardless of the consequences.

There are a few scorching solos throughout, but most of Ensemble Pearl witnesses the musicians paying more attention to atmosphere than technicality.

All of a sudden, the hooks sink deeper; the simple solos, redolent of Pavement/Malkmus to the axe-max, sound better; and, most of all, the songwriting is muscular.

This is no walk in the park, it has to be said, but Wolf is going to be remembered as the record that sees Tyler deploying his tact as an astute beat-maker and a producer more than allowing his reputation as a Satan-worshiping neo-fascist to swell any further. Musically, it’s a step in the right direction.

By no means is The North Borders sterile, but there isn’t a notably invigorating spark either--at least not of an obtuse or intense gesture.

This album is easily taken as it is, a good side portrait of the parts of America that are somewhat still in the throes of modernity (if we all aren’t to some degree).

YOKOKIMTHURSTON displays an issue that affects several contemporary aesthetic forms when they become institutionalized: no matter how transgressive, shocking, or committed an artistic statement can be, it still remains enclosed within the safe, whitewashed, antiseptic confines of the art gallery under the sheltering halo of “high-culture” values, for the admiration of a see-but-do-not-touch enlightened elite.