Halcyon Digest might be an easy listen, but it takes effort to digest. Brief moments of transcendence break through the album's cracked, depressed facade, though even those are fleeting.

As much as Everything In Between transcends what the band has released to date, nothing feels like a true departure, and everything seems like an improvement.

Chalk it up to Lanois, near-death experiences, or the wisdom of youth. No matter the cause, this is the Neil Young to embrace.

Public Strain feels stripped-down, simpler, and lolloping. It's not so eerie.

As the Chicagoan trio defines it on their debut album King Night, witch-house is a curious blend of aesthetics.

The music of 2000 sounds pretty tantric by comparison. And anyone old enough to have been swept up in the ornate neo-psych of the mid- to late-90s now has a right to feel a little ripped off by their nostalgia. All of which is to suppose how Glasser's debut LP, Ring, sounds beautiful, complex, intricate, and so on, and yet fails to actualize her.

My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope To the Sky, from the title's evocation of righteous death on down to its suffusion with keening strings and other touches of sonic Americana, is an attempt to come to terms with the dark heart of history, with that ultimate question: if we are born into crime and monstrous darkness, how do we become more than that past?

With The Trip, she's split the difference, crafting a modestly arranged work that showcases a variety of strengths we already knew she had.

Although you'd be hard pressed, but very pleased, to find a shindig entirely amenable to FlyLo's relentlessly eccentric experiments, Pattern+Grid World is certainly more pillow fight than lounge party.

Root For Ruin is hardly a great album, but it is an affirmative gesture toward commitment, to each other and to their craft.

The Walkmen are that rare band that can stretch into all manner of different shapes and retain their oneness with the rock gods, and they've held onto the zeal that made them stand out like a diamond among the other jeweled NYC bands with impeccable resumes in the early aughts.

Black Mountain understand their chosen form better than any other contemporary stoner rock bands still running.

If there is a compliment to be paid to Hurley, it is that the band refrains from delving into the sort of WTF territory they've explored of late.

So while Penny Sparkle might constitute yet another step forward on the band's musical journey, it's not one that I feel compelled to follow them on.

Grinderman 2 goes a long way towards solidifying this four-man Bad Seeds mash-up as a distinctive musical act, even as it brings them closer to their parent band's wheelhouse.

Megafaun, with reverence to everything and without reference to anyone, are quickly carving their own path both through and away from their musical roots.

In the final analysis, of Montreal represents a rare and comprehensive attainment of vitality in modern music.

Sex with an X is a clear case of The Vaselines boldly going where they have gone before - most of the record more than stands up to many of the nuggets in their tiny back catalog - but maybe that's okay; maybe it's better to have them as they were than to not have them at all.

The familiar ingredients are there, from superb buildups to instrumental pyrotechnics to Esjstes' buttery voice and a general insistence that points toward some bright and shining future.

Expektoration offers a strong tracklist, heavy with fan favorites (opener "Hoe Cakes," "Accordion," "Rhymes Like Dimes") and peppered with rarities ("People Places & Things," "Change the Beat"), but it's not the type of strength you can't feel from going back to the originals.

Although technically their fourth album, Shadow Temple is Prince Rama's major bow in front of the increasingly intense glare of the online indie music press. But rather than withering from the mounting pressure, the band has forged an incredibly assured record that plays by its own rules and succeeds in creating its own unique world.

I sense a more natural sense of songcraft here. Banks is still trying too hard, seemingly attempting to write songs he thinks people will like rather than songs that, whether simple or arpeggio-filled, he and his mates like.

When they get it right - as they do on half of Personal Life - The Thermals are a joy to behold.

In a lesser person's hands, this particular analog stew would have turned out to be nothing more than an album of farting robot sounds, but in Prekop's it is a well-conceived piece of musical experimentation. Drastically more daring than previous releases, Old Punch Card shows a radical side to Prekop that is relentlessly inventive.

Sure, with Cloudland Canyon stringently adhering to their newfound formula and retaining a similar pace throughout, Fin Eaves doesn't lend itself to any startles or immediately striking moments. But their renewed approach allows for the full realization of the album's flavor: grandiose, ambitious, and almost painfully beautiful.

Familial is a worthwhile attempt at the contemporary folk that has been bastardized by many, coddled by some, and ignored by most. In this regard, perhaps Selway has forged an experiment more daring than you might think.

Strange Weather, Isn't It? is undoubtedly the band's most streamlined effort to date.

By the force of their musicianship on Rivers, however, Wildbirds & Peacedrums manage to own that risk as one of their greatest assets.