It's overrun by the dissonance of half-step progressions and minor-chord crunch, and it's constantly excruciating.

While the rest of the record never quite reaches that level of instantaneous pop gratification [as "Silk Chiffon"], Muna still turn in some of their better songs from there while also taking their sound to new places.

One Day I'm Going to Soar hardly justifies the almost-three-decade wait, but it's as marvelously idiosyncratic as any longtime fan could hope to expect.

While the moody "Report on an Investigation" does reveal a bit more emotional depth than much of Minekawa's work, Maxi On! doesn't offer much in the way of surprises; however, it also offers few disappointments.

Fans of Far will be able to appreciate At Night We Live as a further evolution of Water & Solutions, but new listeners will have a hard time finding a fresh experience.

The Ones Ahead gets too saccharine at times, and it's not anywhere near as engaging as Glenn-Copeland's visionary folk-jazz records from the early '70s, or his soothing ambient classic Keyboard Fantasies. Nevertheless, it's impossible to find fault with his optimism, and the songs' messages clearly resonate.

Though it's not quite as immediate as their excellent debut album, You've Seen Us...You Must've Seen Us, KaitO U.K.'s band red delivers more tightly coiled post-punk-pop with shouty vocals and elastic guitars, and also delves deeper into the group's experimental side.

Whether autobiographical or a thought exercise, Honey is evocative and often relatable, if in turn inevitably alienating and mercurial.

While first-timers to this era would be best served listening to the parent album first, existing fans who can't get enough of that LP will find Club Future Nostalgia to be an absolute blast.

Many bands get more sophisticated, or at least tighter, as they become more technically accomplished, thereby losing some of their punk edge. That hasn't happened to Title Fight yet... [They] continue to be fresh, if somewhat semi-professional.

The rest of the tracks are more like exercises in sound manipulation and reduction than songs. The approach is no-fault, but Blake pares it down to such an extent that the material occasionally sounds not just tentative but feeble, fatigued, even.

From a few listens, it's clear most of these weren't bumped because they were low-quality; "Doo Rags," "No Idea's Original," and "Black Zombie" stand up to anything Nas has recorded since the original Illmatic.

It can take a while to deconstruct the narrative, but when ignoring the weighty plot, the songs' key themes of mortality, love, and loss still manage to make an impact.

Unfortunately, although Snaith may sound novel expanding upon his indie forebears of ten years ago, when he begins conjuring the ghosts of Krautrock ("A Final Warning," "Bees") or trip-hop ("Lord Leopard"), as he does here, he's entering the company of talented producers who have ploughed the same ground.

There's still a kind of inconsistency in the development of Through the Windowpane, an inconsistency that can't quite work itself out in sweeping strings and vaguely dissonant chords, and unfortunately, this diminishes the power of what the album really could be.

A Dream Is All We Know mixes up its subjects of study but chooses obsessively detailed replication over the hints of originality and vulnerable emotions that start emerging when the Lemon Twigs let their guard down.

Of the two, Ghosts V: Together is the one to help lift spirits and calm the soul, a welcome escape from the tension and paranoia of the real world.

Written while Jason Pierce was on tour performing Ladies and Gentlemen...We Are Floating in Space in its entirety, Spiritualized's seventh full-length echoes not only that album, but Songs in A & E and Amazing Grace.

This is a good document of Morphine's excellent live show and displays the energy and passion that they played with during the tour that supported their breakthrough album.

It's not as cheeky as Pulp and not nearly as abrasive as British Sea Power; however, Clearlake is equally provocative.

The album as a whole abounds with effective, intriguing atmospherics. It's just that, for all its potential, Fin is merely fine.

With only a few exceptions though, Since We Last Spoke makes the moody Dead Ringer sound like a piece of flag-waving exuberance; instead of the occasional uptempo track, it's brooding and mellow throughout the record -- very nearly a rap singer/songwriter record.

As appealing as the lived-in, swampy jams are, there's a laziness that drifts throughout Hoodoo, apparent in the sauntering rhythms and Tony Joe's mush-mouthed vocals.

Its eight songs containing no masterpieces and Lanois' moody noir production reining in Young's messy signature. So, Le Noise winds up as something elusive and intriguing, a minor mood piece that seems to promise more than it actually delivers.

The album isn't an album of a moments, it's a collection that sustains a mood. A mood that's ragged and slack, but too dulled to charm.

This offers another slight change from Willner's past--enough to maintain perked attention from listeners in love with his sound, while those who are less enamored won't hear enough that distinguishes it from any other Field album.

Apart from the wonderfully elastic, surprising “Us," it doesn't offer anything striking or resonant.

Their voices are strong and clean (maybe too clean) and the parts are played well enough, but when you remove the punk from pop-punk, the attitude goes with it and you'd better be sure that the material underneath is something of greater interest than these largely forgettable acoustic emo ramblings.