Musically, Somewhere Else treads the ground between organic performance and arrangement, as well as the efficiently expansive possibilities of minimalism and pop in electronic music.

It sounds promising at first, but then it slumps into a bed of mediocrity that Toro y Moi has already proved he is more than capable of avoiding.

Reasons to Live sounds like old summer afternoons.

Armed with bolstered production and the band's strongest songcraft to date, Alamanac represents not only the next step for Widowspeak, but perhaps the next point in our never-ending discussion of what "real" folk is in the 21st century.

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."

It brings out the best in Toth both as a musician and a songwriter.

There are enough genre-hopping and synergistic, trans-genre partnerships present on the tracklist that Long. Live. A$AP, its commercial bets hedged, feels not unlike a myriad of other major-label rap disappointments from nearly any other era of rap.

It's perhaps not as immediately satisfying as their early work and not nearly as charming as their intimate mid-career efforts, but, after several careful listens, the album feels as powerful and urgent as anything else in their discography.

The concept understood, no longer intriguing, no longer as unique as it's presented, runs out of interpretations on the final induction of every theory and concept highlighted.

Although these five tracks embody their own specific form, shape, and pattern, they work as appendages to the previous LP as opposed to a collection that builds upon new ideas, and if the debut album weren't such a marvelous success then that might be a problem.

I catch myself unknowingly enjoying Lights Out whenever I quit trying to overtly "listen" to it.

On The Odds, there is a sense in which The Evens are tensing the muscles of their quiet/loud rock within its short range.

Blunt has proven himself to be a master participant in this aesthetic float-game, and The Narcissist II is his demented billet-doux to the gratification that continues to elude.

Despite their best efforts, Free Reign marks just another step in Clinic's journey to unfortunately become even more forgettable.

This is Jack Tatum's Platonic pop record, and if it doesn't meet the expectations of critics, for lack of soupy textures or the rough edges of home recording or whatever, it's because he exceeded them.

Cut the World may not be essential Antony and the Johnsons, but it's a recapitulant compilation of some of their strongest songs, in some of their strongest iterations, while presenting stimulating ideas for reconsidering their music and our own planet.

Elverum has never sounded more comfortable as a producer of volume and viscosity.

While Nookie Wood suggests lusty concupiscence, naughtiness, and vim, these conjurations are foundered by big production and mastering straight out of 90s alt-pop radio

Thankfully, Connected, despite the richness of its sounds, is spacious enough to leave room for the imagination (with the slight exception of "Trios," which teems with movement). That's not to say it's empty.

Instead of commanding attention, Relief allows it to drift, preventing the listener's final escape into the contentless void of sonic oblivion.

While the remixes don't contain the same level of shambolic personality that the nascent originals do, they are still a testament to the fact that Friel's work is full of possibility.

This very refusal to cohere, to make sense, to play the game of identity and otherness, of harmony and disharmony, makes Bish Bosch this year's only necessary work of art.

Just to Feel Anything never quite seems to justify itself in the way that Does it Look Like I'm Here did, to compel you to pay attention in spite of its apparent familiarity, by whatever method. And as a result, it just feels like a lot of wasted energy.

Quarter Turns embodies a shadowed and daunting environment with such an abundance of beauty that it bears contrast rather than resemblance to that damning abode, for the former remains an uncontrollably agreeable environment, despite its grim and unnerving allure.

Sequitur contains powerful resonances with the past, and it certainly reorganizes some beautiful moments that have been left behind, but some of these moments were left there for a reason.

After several spins, it appears that 'edginess' is precisely what's missing here; in fact, the listener is left pining for it, as almost every track floats along at its own pleasant, blissful pace--easy to swallow but difficult to digest.

No Love Deep Web includes some of the group's most accessible material; "Lil Boy" and "Deep Web" are the type of glitch freak-outs over which Lil Ugly Mane acolytes and Crystal Castles fans can come together.

The female overcoming time and space in the way that Herndon does with Movement is so frustrating and frightening.