There are a few more hooks on this latest release and the production is clearer, but it certainly doesn’t water down the sentiment.

It’s a gorgeous, unreal place that Mount Kimbie evokes on Love What Survives, but dissonance leaks in through the crevices.

Woodland Echoes, his latest solo album, is cohesive and strong and despite being a little more mellow than some of his earlier offerings, would fits nicely alongside his work from the ‘80s and ‘90s.

The words are as smart as they come, full of sudden puzzle-twists and casual apercus, the showy part of this musical enterprise. Yet the music is just as polished and fine, even if it takes a supporting role.

It’s a little regrettable then that his last officially studio album, coming out less than a year after he died, is so overproduced and kitschy.

It’s all quite pleasant, nicely played and sung and recorded, but perhaps a little distant. These tunes flow by like sunny afternoons and when they’re done you can’t remember much.

Seventeen tracks makes for an extended listening experience, but there’s enough variety that you’re never bored. In fact, the second half seems to hit a little harder than the first.

There are plenty more excellent guitar janglers like The Pooh Sticks doing my favorite tune “On Tape” plus Pale Saints doing the dreamier “Colours and Shapes” and Choo Choo Train (Ric and Paul from Velvet Crush) doing the righteous “High,” all of which is one disc one. Moving right over to disc two The House of Love start things off with “The Hill.”

Here in his first solo full-length, he sands down the edges of the jazz-man’s axe, denaturing the sound until it evokes rather than presents itself. Almost all these songs have the drifting, half-heard, hard-to-pin-down sense-memory quality of music drifting in from other rooms, long ago.

Instead of dramatic tempo shifts or sing-along choruses, the songs rely on subtle texture and tempo changes that, in context, wind up carrying far more weight than they would in another setting.

Life Is Fine boasts some of Kelly’s best lyrics in years.

Iyer really makes an effort here to highlight all sides of his musical skills, letting two decades of experience boil into an exceptionally tasty dish. Iyer has already proven himself a jazz master, but with Far From Over, he takes his talent as composer, player and bandleader to new heights.

Don’t look for fireworks here, but rather smaller, quieter revelations that take time to unveil themselves.

As always, Mulcahy’s pastoral pop stirs up a delightful brew, both easily accessible and undeniably irrepressible all at the same time.

This former power pop band currently eschews the pop in favor of the power. Melody is less of an essential, but the sheer verbosity suggests that they’re opting for a stadium-sized sound.

L.A. Takedown often errs on the side of too much perfection, but here, a little messed up, it soars.

With Positively Bob, Nile manages to make one of the few cover albums worth owning.

Though only seven songs long, at least two--“Mallow T’Ward the River” and “One Can Only Love”--offer multiple movements that provide opportunity to explore more exotic environs.

Superbly performed, the show is recorded with perfect clarity by NPR’s engineers, and packaged with an extensive booklet of essays and photos. Truth, Liberty & Soul is no barrel-scraping collection of effluvia, but a vital addition to the slim catalog of a genius.

Kids in The Streets is just as charming and powerful as its predecessors.

It all sounds like the best kind of disco, but warmer and funkier and rougher around the edges.

Though solid throughout, without hooks like the best ones on Goes Missing, Untouchable suggests the more random approach suits Kelly and his fans better.

It’s a good sign that Jones is open to anything on Super Natural, and that he can easily enhance his usual firebreathing rock & roll passion without diluting it.

On Big Bad Luv, his fourth solo effort, Moreland continues his knack for writing impeccably perfect lyrics (“They got silver spoons for American gods/I wanna be stoned, thrown American rods”) on some of the best heartbreak songs since John Prine.

These are songs that brush up against you softly, swirl up around you like a sweet smelling breeze and leave you wistful for things you can’t quite put into words.

Love Is Love isn’t clear cut, reading at times like the various stages of grief.

No matter how synthetic and mechanical things get, the stain of cosmic psychedelia never completely fades.

The production, composing, arrangements, and playing makes A Kind Revolution something uniquely special in the Paul Weller catalogue. Weller is a talent like no other, and you will not be disappointed.