In bringing to light these stillborn-again pleasures, The Caretaker reveals himself to be nothing less than formidably eponymous.

It involves not a disconnection from, but an exploration of the material potential in his instrument(s): an excursion to the outer limits of instrumentality, a commitment to resonance as the product of granular viscera: of throats and diaphragms and guts and lungs.

This set of witty pop songs fits perfectly in the musical panorama of the last 15 years: there are no underground rock references, no orchestral pop sensibilities, no vacuous attempts at updating a 'decades-old' sound to modern audiences.

On Komba, their beats are deeper, darker, and more powerful than before, pointing the way towards a new direction for the band and, consequently, their audience.

Most of the songs here aren't even good enough to be considered for a knockoff commercial targeted at the "indie-inclined" twenty-something demographic.

Everything is still flawed and everyone unredeemable on this album, but as a whole it doesn't grip completely like past gems.

Crazy Clown Time isn't a groundbreaking work in the way that Lynch's films are, but that's not to say that there's not a lot of darkling pleasure for the intrepid and the curious.

Hello Sadness hits harder than any indie rock record in recent memory because it doesn't really sound like the gentrified indie rock I've grown so frustratingly familiar with.

There is a generative sense of the perpetual "to be continued" and "to be announced" in both the projects of Benjamin and Torontonian songwriter Sandro Perri.

Thankfully, such peeks of inhibition are brief, and Cox spends far more time confidently beckoning us into the glorious world he's created. For the first time, this is a place where we're to be cohabitants, not merely invitees.

There isn't enough unforced spontaneity or meaningful pop-craft on The Vision to sustain a full-length album, and a smorgasbord of tasty synths isn't enough to inspire vision.

This uncanny sound field suggests a different set of priorities from the usual transcendentalist rock seekers, and Trust Now is all the better for it.

It's unlike anything else in Lopatin's discography, not just a bold step sideways, but something like an epistemological break from an artist whose work increasingly bears the weight of something like hegemony.

It's an album from a songwriter at the peak of his powers, having tempered his imaginatively destructive impulses with his affection for all things old, rough, and beautiful.

At its best, when Bozulich is not just casting the spells, but stirring herself into the brew, In Animal Tongue ranks among the most provocative work she's done in recent years.

Lulu is a joyless mess, a grim, humorless record with no notion of when to say "when."

Bright and Vivid is a solid follow-up, one that delivers the same catchy songwriting as Calder's debut while simultaneously opening her work up to a broader instrumental pallet.

There is a poise about Scintilli in its strongest moments that was absent even from those early blazed trails.

Because of its ambition and grandeur, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming might get criticized for its long runtime, for trying too hard to achieve aesthetic balance and thematic coherency.

Its total lack of affectation is the album's biggest problem. It feels like it's sequenced to fit some expectation of what types of songs an album should have.

Willner may not have been able to affect us as deeply and profoundly as he does on Looping State of Mind, showing us not only that he has successfully moved past the confines of his early work, but also that he's presently at the top of his game.

Fearing that these songs were indicative of indie-pop conformity would not only be ignoring the group's rich and varied history with melody and rhythm, but also underestimating the ingenuity and convictions that Longstreth has consistently boasted throughout his recorded career.

Unfortunately, there's not much here to distinguish Ruins from the group's previous work, and too few of these compositions stick once the album is done.

Audio, Video, Disco is simply too unfocused, too half-baked, and too busy hiding its inadequacies with superficially interesting window-dressing to fit in either of those settings--or any other.

This album is a consistent, expansive collection of modestly experimental pop songs (covering familiar aesthetic territory, and exploring broad and intertwining personal/familial, political, theological, and philosophical themes), and well worth repeated listens and eventual internalization.

Ultimately, this album is a useful index to effects and samples you might want to import into Ableton Live at this moment, but not much more than that.

Emperor's Nightingale takes that smoky Stereo MCs sound to the stadium much more effectively than their previous attempts.

Breaks In the Armor ranks among the best Crooked Fingers albums.