Like a tour guide who occasionally gets lost in his own museum, Haldar's unbridled excitement about his subject matter can be both exhausting and infectious.

[Beware And Be Grateful expertly fuses] the complex rock of the band's early EPs with elegant, polished pop.

His luxuriant loop-based instrumentation on display is easy to lose yourself in, making your life seem, for just a moment, much more epic than it actually is.

The story [House of Baasa] is a mix of glee and despair, and it fits with this album, a venture into the bliss and torment of matters of the head and the heart.

From the first drum hits and piano chords of the opening title track, it's evident that this is a match made in black-light heaven.

Though the album overstays some of its freshness by the closing tracks, nearly everything Winston sings up to "Sister Wife" adds an inspired spin on common pop idioms.

Time Capsules II is that kind of album: a buffet of familiar confections designed for easy digestion, painstakingly dressed and seasoned to demand repeat consumption.

When it works, the noises are strange and exciting, like discovering a dead animal as a child, all over a danceable groove. When it doesn't, it just sounds like a drunken jam sesh over fucked up Casio drum loops.

Like any good exorcism, Year Of The Witch allows Ryff to share and shed what's haunting him.

Despite its psych-rock influences, the duo doesn't rely on a variety of instruments to convey the mood. Instead, the band doubles down on reverb, feedback, haunting vocals and doom guitar.

This record feels like a race to an unknowable destination.

Wagner has poured her soul into recordings that may seem too mature for the 23-year-old but highlight the talent that Wagner has at communicating difficult subjects with ease and forming truly compelling songs.

There are enough outside influences here-kraut, new wave, post-punk-that the album, for the most part, manages to mark itself as a smart, sleek dance record.

It's just a little too long and continuous to listen to in one setting.

Neatly countering the initial pedal-to-the-metal energy of "My Girl," "Sweet Dee" is a slow-burning sunset cruise that makes Tiger Talk's destination entirely worth the somewhat familiar journey.

Bursting Visions can at times feel like a record that emphasizes quantity over quality. Then again, this also makes it easy for pretty much everyone to find at least one song they like.

The perfect concoction of guitar riffs, synthesizer wails, the mullet, 1980s reverb and two awesome animals, the dinosaur and the walrus.

Rossen's sprawling pop coupled with his subtly personal lyrics gives the album a bittersweet flavor that makes for some very impressive moments.

The result is honed and sophisticated, unique yet smartly referential.

It's less bedroom, more band-centered than his previous work, but the music still feels uncomplicated.

Acousmatic Sorcery is an occasionally iridescent collection of songs, but at the end of the day it feels too tasteful, too self-consciously curated.

On an album so concerned with straddling the invisible borders between the material and the spiritual, Wexler's disembodied voice becomes most powerful when seeping through space like a ghost in the machine, mysterious and ubiquitous as the existential questions he sings to life.

Even with Mixed Emotions' tumultuous gestation, Emm and Cohen have overcome, with a lean, lighthearted LP of which Toto would be proud.

Earle's tendency to wander might be more of a problem if the accompanying music wasn't so intimate and alluring.

The band gathered its instruments for a retreat/recording session at the converted 1896 church Dreamland in Woodstock and produced a more concrete, rock-leaning sound.

Mathambo is both voracious and omnivorous. This leads to a diverse and exciting listen.

Zoo is a bleak record, but through prolonged exposure it can begin to feel like a place you want to stay.

Even though Yellow Ostrich succeeds at creating catchy, clean-sounding indie rock, that style doesn't dominate the album.