Truly, Sweet Heart, Sweet Light is one of those gorgeous things and, if nothing else, the most profound late statement Spaceman has given us in a decade.

The "black" of the title is not racial blackness, but the blackness of the void, the "abyss" of occultism. And that void, evoked by the dark, inchoate pop of Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland, is indeed beautiful.

This is intensely human music.

Despite the gratuitous, overripe details of these songs--potent, lurid confessions; broken plates and bloody lips--Heartbreaking Bravery is a peaceful, centered work.

The Next Logical Progression, is evidence of a serious identity crisis.

The Clearing is nothing if not the sound of a band discovering a new home, musically, emotionally, and physically. The sound is far bigger than either of the previous fingerpicking-heavy records.

While that combination [hip-hop beat, industrial trudge, start-stop synth] yields some moments of blissful jitteriness and pop rejiggering, Mr. Impossible never gets too far past being big, dumb, and unquantifiably creepy.

The new songs display a newfound sophistication in composition, arrangement, and production, with richly layered, textured guitars, and Pundt having come ever closer to finding his own voice.

In Between still contains its predecessor's youthful spirit, if not exactly matching its energy. It's evident that replacing those muddling walls of noise with a cleaner, distinct, and more organized approach to songwriting hasn't affected the band's knack for capturing the melody and feel of early shoegaze.

Much like the surrounding semblance, densely concealed behind a name with clear sci-fi connotations, the music on The Host can be difficult to really get into.

Overall: Fair.

Foreign Body has moments of generous lucidity. Yet it struggles to find a foothold amid a flood of ideas, as if each performer were vaguely unsure about her role.

What Lapalux manages to do here is capture something of the mood of his time in the sonic language of his time. It's a real achievement.

It might be "teenage" in its orientation, but it is an adult album in its serious and mature rumination--and affirmation.

Ekstasis is a lovely record. Bedroom pop that floats and swoons, it has a lightness to it at the same time as a real sense of seriousness and ambition.

The balance of gold to dross still makes this album a keeper.

With them, hip-hop's fun again.

Next to "Knots," the rest of the record feels like a sort of necessary supplement. The quiet before and after the storm, it prepares and relieves us.

Oddly utilitarian, geared towards dancing rather than listening. This is the type of music that reminds you that iTunes has made 'party' a utility.

A hymn to improvisational specificity... a melancholy erotics of noise.

The cuts on Kindred aren't simply longer than before; they introduce a completely different sense of space and continuity... this is why Kindred is so strong.

Overall, the album is something of a grower.

Something about the gummy aesthetic of the viscera at work here keeps I Love You from sounding too awry when its elements seem to suffer from slight exhaustion, elasticity, endocrine peaks, biological decay.

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.

Its funereal funk can be hard to shake off; its catchiest hooks stain and discolor.

Ghostory is well on par with the strident ephemera to which followers of this project have become accustomed.

Whimsical waltzing and barefoot stomping, warm 'n' fuzzy resurrections of soothing old-tyme indie-baroque-pop shimmies for sunset revelry, splashed upon buoyant, Northern African-influenced rhythms and shining with the silky gloss of a keyed-up, Eastern-Euro-tinged lounge sashay.

Xiu Xiu is so earnestly committed to its project that its music inevitably bursts through its own irony to the other side.