This EP is thus a fine, if also slight, document that showcases the duo's serious potential-and hints, perhaps, at how it could be used to produce a more ambitious set of songs as he approaches his next album--more than it fulfills the promises of Pallett the almost solo performer/arranger.

Swans always understood better than most post-punk bands that the crushing, wall-of-sound repetition pioneered by Glenn Branca could be taken to its logical, nihilistic extreme in rock-n-roll.

Even the forecast backlash from fans of the trance era can't dent Barking's relentless enthusiasm, and given the sufficient exposure and time, everyone should be able to party to it. It's just that for an Underworld album it sounds distinctly un-Underworld, and more like someone's asked Smith and Hyde to ghost-write a Now! compilation.

There's a stunning balance between fluid variations and deviations that in total feel like improvisation and the strictly confined, loping-in-circles gait of traditional hip-hop-a process which then lends itself to being described as simultaneously dynamic and hypnotic, loose and hard, jam and the jam.

Their latest, Castle Talk, isn't a staggering improvement on that front. It feels--and, in its middle section even more than on Power Move--not so much a cohesive, self-contained album as a collection of Screaming Females songs that will sound very good live.

It's true the band has made a radical decision to turn down the volume on the wall of sound they've been building up since their debut, but in doing so they've turned up something else they've been fond of for so long: measured nuance.

With never any hurry or need to their lyrics or their vocals, with only dreamy soulfulness that sounds too content and comfortable wallowing in grief to want for much else-I just don't see what's very necessary about this album.

Of Montreal will always appeal to anyone looking for a world to get lost in. Is it too much to ask for him to visit ours once in a while?

Sleep Forever will likely hold minimal appeal for anyone not already on the bandwagon built by Crocodiles' high-profile forebears, but I'm guessing Crocodiles wouldn't have it any other way.

Majesty Shredding is an energetic return to form for Superchunk, and they've retained the sound that made them indie stars on records like No Pocky For Kitty (1991) and Foolish (1994).

Somehow the mistakes she made before-experiments with Swedish folk tunes, reggae-pop, and fringe-aesthetic miscellanea, having achieved varying degrees of success with each attempt-have become character-building idiosyncrasies she now seems borderline faceless without.

Humbled by a silenced rhythm section and bafflingly reverberated guitars, the majority of Interpol is little more than background static. Maybe it's time for an intervention.

As a whole, it's not consistently buoyant enough to be a good pop record, and the politics that weigh down its middle section aren't sharp enough to make it into anything more than a middle section weighed down by some obvious politics.

They've proven themselves able to change drastically in the past--so, even though Minotaur is one of their lesser works, I can't help but hope that a band as consistently transcendent as the Clientele will continue on into the future.

Familial's far from brilliant, but you-snotty brat of the Radiohead generation, lapping up the languor of both Wavves' bong-odored holidays and the admittedly strange sight of Matt Berninger's kid on his shoulders-would do well to turn the dial of your irony meter from "post-post" to "zero" for a half an hour or so.

My problem with the rest of Memphis, then, is simple: it too often falls into retreading thoroughly explored pop without truly making it their own.

Down to the near-microscopic details, down to the faintest rough edge on his smoothest vocal landscapes, down to the last moments on the final track: it's a self-sustaining, well-rounded album that stands well without Bon Iver-especially without a drum solo.

Grass Widow have channeled a number of distinct influences, tones, and anxieties into an eccentric and strangely cohesive album. Past Time solidifies that there's nobody else out there right now who sound quite like them.

I think All Delighted People is more fun to talk about than listen to even though I have trouble discerning what it is I'm trying to say.

They've rapidly become the standard bearers for the funkiest of instrumental soul, and III suggests they could keep doing this thing for several albums before it even begins to approach boring. We should all be as similarly stoked.

The problem here being that the clean production values are themselves another veil masking Williams' fundamental badness--and so this album becomes, like its predecessors, an exercise in misdirection and deceit.

It's a staid achievement-a soundtrack to unwillingly letting go of the unsustainable, both figurative and literal.

"Murder," "skimask," and "gangsta," all appended with the word "shit," are the terms in which Gibbs characterizes his oeuvre. Str8 Killa is all of those things. It is also breathtaking in its execution.

The starburst drum-fills, the jackknife stabs of guitar, the vocal melodies bronzed with catchiness-all of it soars, nodding at vitality, as though the aesthetics of joy might, if stressed enough, smother sadness until it's finally gone for good.

I'm not sure what this one will sound like when the heat lets up--but what matters for now is that Beach Fossils have crafted a breezy and charming debut that renders such questions, at least for right now, unimportant.

What's the same is bigger and broader, bringing its faults into stark relief. This is, I stress, Best Coast's Proper Album, and so rather than Where The Boys Are's loosely defined "songs" we get Songs: feeble, noise-soaked throw-back translations of everything from doo-wop, girl-group, pop-punk, to pseudo-grunge.

Rick Ross would like you to know he has sodomized women in Acapulco. Lord knows we all aspire to such Olympian heights, but in that admission lies the crux of the impotence of Rawse's extensive discography: this is all pretty unnecessary.

What Infra is, is perfectly pretty, atmospheric, rainy day music.

The result is a mellow, atmospheric album that still manages to embody the delicious, self-absorbed, fuck-all bombast currently making mainstream rap so exciting.

This is exactly the subjective realm that MAYA taps into: it puts its listeners in a position where opinions are formed in large part by predetermined prejudices. Of course, this is true for most music in general, but what makes MAYA tacitly brilliant is that it forces us to engage with those prejudices in a way that pop music typically does not.

Kozelek appears to have returned to himself with Admiral, though the draw here is that (oddly, after so many years) he's finally discovered he can actually really play the guitar.

Backstreet spawn aside, it may finally be settling in that Sir Lucious Left Foot does gather itself around Big Boi enough to make it the best OutKast-related release since the duo dropped Aquemini a dozen years ago (we can debate its merits next to the incredible six tracks or so on the bloated Stankonia, sure). For a Kast fan, this is life-affirming.

It is during this fifteen-minute stretch that the album transcends its familiar, blokey, mad-for-it Mancunian template and, though you've heard all these tricks before, achieves something charming, familiar, fucking good-and this is the level on which Delphic needs to operate more often if they're going to wring a lasting impression from this sound.

The lyrics are less interesting, the songs are uneven, and while ultimately Expo 86 sounds like Wolf Parade-and sounds good, even-it doesn't feel like Wolf Parade, if that makes sense.

The monolithic nature of the album feels necessary, but like any sustained chord, every other song tends to have less interesting undertones.

Typically heavy subject matter aside, Mason actually seems more content in his skin than he has in some time, and anyone who has previously garnered enjoyment from the Beta Band or King Biscuit Time will unquestionably find something to dig within Boys Outside.

With Total Life Forever, Foals have objectively identified the shortcomings (shouted vocals, claustrophobic song structures) of their first album, and erased them while keeping their trademark mathematical riffing intact.

Two of Drake's favorite topics on Thank Me Later are I'm young and I'm rich stated with precisely that level of eloquence and imagination; should we start calling him the Justin Bieber of rap?

Loving Body Talk means finding pleasure in the perfect execution of pop conventions; it means recognizing the click.

It shouldn't come as a shock that Bionic is not a very good record. What should is that the conversation about how bad it is has become one of the most vitriolic and fascinating conversations pop music has recently provoked.

Destroyer of the Void isn’t a bad album, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect well upon Blitzen Trapper’s changes as a band.

Tokyo Police Club have readjusted their approach-a much leaner, Strokes-ier brand of indie rock, which allows them to continue to play to their strengths while conveniently avoiding the missteps that held them back before.

While he may be fundamentally un-reconstructed, Pink’s clearly a more polished revisionist, more polished than he’s ever been, and while it may not be conventionally recorded, Before Today still feels punchily archetypal.

Becoming a Jackal is downright convincing-maybe sustaining-even these few weeks after first hearing the thing. I'm surprised, though maybe I shouldn't be, by just how cool and atypical that feeling is.

It’s a middling album that managed to get the best of collective consciousness.

While not punch-for-punch or track-for-track the heavy-hitter "War Elephant" was, or even offering the tonal variety of "Born on Flag Day," the consistency has come into its own doleful focus, the lyrics have reached a blisteringly high point and for any/all flaws, and, in the end, it just leaves me holding the broken pieces of my face in my fucking hands.

This stuff is genuinely, earnestly satisfying, in the same way all great pop music is: these songs, simply and purely, sound fucking great.

Said new record is what one would expect: wholly similar to their first three records in that it’s got three possible hit singles, a useless Side B, and is proudly derivative of at least six other bands. They are amusingly impervious to trends. So long as you can get your head around the fact that it’s, y’know, Stone Temple Pilots, this, their self-titled sixth full-length, is far better than any pointless reunion album needs to be.

Saint Bartlett, Jurado's ninth album and a perfect place to start for the uninitiated, succeeds mostly because it seems to attempt nothing in particular.

In a technical sense it sounds, like everything Murphy produces, pristine.

The no-bullshit album cover might be the cheekiest thing about delightfully straight-forward Brothers.

Still, as much as the warped good intentions of the album can get exhausting and embarrassing, Nas and Damian's creative side remains pure enough to carry one through the lunkheaded didacticism.

She is what we say we want. The ArchAndroid is not my favorite album of the year so far, but it is undoubtedly the best.

If there’s one major complaint to be made, it’s that Compass is simply overlong. These fourteen songs are proof that there is far more longevity in Lidell’s work, even if at over fifty minutes too many moments seem frivolous or forgettable compared to the striking highs.

Human Kindness is interesting and it is, in a sense, an enjoyable listen because it manifests, right in your face, an emotion not often seen in music this heavy: sheer fucking exhaustion.

Though High Violet sometimes ("Lemonworld," cough) veers dangerously close to self-parody, the National have crafted something exceptional: a massive, dynamic album that still makes good on the National's devotion to meticulous production and a sound they've kept simple and distinctive for a decade.

Nothing Hurts ends up being its own worst enemy: it obscures its biggest strengths, choosing not to showcase them but to drown them out in a familiar and uninteresting haze.

The Dead Weather have released another quickly recorded batch of entirely unmemorable, unpleasantly limp rock music showcasing Jack White’s increasingly irrelevant take on garage, blues, post-punk, and guitar refuse.

It regresses to the essence of an increasingly stale sound with a series of second-rate tracks and bored performances. This is co-option at its base; you were a few years too early, Nick.

None of the songs quite scale the heights of a "Stuck Between Stations" or "Your Little Hoodrat Friend," but it's to the band's credit that Heaven goes down considerably easier than Stay Positive (2008), fortunately bereft of the obvious clunkers that rendered that album's Side B such a slog.

Forgiveness Rock Record doesn't provide anything interesting to talk about in and of itself. Its actual thematic talking points, as far as I can tell, tend toward political pedantry.

Cosmogramma bursts with inventiveness; I've found myself careening around my apartment to sounds I don't recognize as of this Earth. That Lotus takes these vibrant ideas and sets them to pulses that move asses is incredible. Apparently everyone else is bouncing along in agreement.

Together is paced excellently at a little over 44 minutes, feels like half of that, and not a single song warrants a skip.

What makes In Evening Air a great break-up album is the same thing that makes Teen Dream (2010) a great break-up album: it's not exactly that the lyrics espouse these profound, poetic truths about relationships so much as they use sonic patterns and pretty mundane language to create a sad and disorienting sense of something very familiar disappearing.

Diamond Eyes incorporates all the same basic tropes as every Deftones record before and almost certainly after it, but here, for the first time in ages, they’re crafted and performed with more than mere hints of the assuredness and pummeling hooks of their one (yes) great record—a full-course meal to the last decade’s worth of scattered crumbs.

B.o.B. may be too eager to please at this stage of his career, and Adventures is perhaps too stuffed with ideas and styles to be deemed a true success, but the triumphs fucking reverberate.

As a guitar record Paul’s Tomb may be, somewhat surprisingly, the best guitar record since, gosh, Pink (2005)?

This is the third album in a row where Snaith seems to have devoted most of his effort into submerging his own unique voice deep within the musical persona he's adopted, I just don't really get what I'm supposed to do with it. Like, should we get him some water wings to keep his head above the water?

Clinging to a Scheme feels more haphazard, more Revolver (1965) than Abbey Road (1969) as it goes from searing ambience (“A Token of Gratitude”) to the thicker-figured dance tracks. The album leaves you wanting more--whether this is for better or worse is one question you’ll have to answer for yourself.

These songs, especially in the album’s first half, are uniformly gorgeous—the melodies are often quite good, and this record is all about finding ways to showcase melodies—but they suffer from sameness.

While MGMT may no longer peddle the kind of instant-pleasure-point melodic textures that propelled the band's most well-known songs into so many playlists, they're up to something far more interesting: releasing a major, mainstream objet d'art without for a minute fooling themselves that it "matters."

What makes the record work is his acknowledgment that he's just one more voice in that cavalcade, one that neither tries to hide or overemphasize the influence of the other shouts that came before its own.

It sets up the tension between the often gentle voice and its malevolent surroundings, and this, his third collection of re-arranged traditionals, oscillates between the sweet and the almost apocalyptic, often to great success.

What this means in terms of structure and pace is that Tommy is leisurely, which to some people might suggest “boring” except that this is a very dynamic sort of leisure.

Go, then, is strangely underdeveloped for how overdeveloped it feels; by no means a trifle, it's as hard to outright hate on as it is to be trampled by, just another lovely 40 minutes from a guy with easily another 40 up his frilly sleeve.

Good songs, great times, and maybe it's a bit too long and short on variety but whatever. Plus, this record actually came out months ago and none of the songs have soured yet. That's something.

New Amerykah, Part Two: Return of the Ankh is a record full of smooth, creative, grooving (but not too grooving) songs that are exceptionally well conceived, penned, and executed.

Cuban Linx 2 was a glorious mess, but Wu-Massacre throws so many punches I feel at times like I’m listening to a promotional album sampler for some amazing full-length to be released later in the year.

Here’s hoping Sweet Sister is the sound of a talented group shaking out some superficial songwriting ideas before getting down to it.

Volume Two is a record, of occasional charm, that comes off all-too-aware of how cranky a response to it other than “charming” will seem.

My frustration is simple: not only does the record’s production drag down what could have (probably) been good songs, the band deliberately downplays its two best players, and everything suffers as a consequence.

Oversteps is reasonably accessible without compromising any aspect of what it means to listen to an Autechre album, which is the closest I can come to a formula for success when it comes to this band. It’s probably ten minutes too long in the middle, but the distinctive intro is a winner and the last three tracks are worth the trek.

The Way of the World is just one more Mose Allison album: exceptional in it’s own right but entirely expected.

Black Sands is an album so fully realized that comprehending the places he still so obviously has yet to reach is staggering.

Hood’s contributions dominate To-Do; of the thirteen songs, bassist Shonna Tucker gets two, and even after his jaw dropping win streak on 2008’s excellent Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, Mike Cooley is only allotted three. But he still comes off as the crafty Southern gentleman with all of the best one-liners.

Baffling production questions aside, In The Dark is still another solid entry into what's becoming a pretty spotless discography for a band with seemingly little aspirations to do anything but be a predictable answer to what a band called "the Whigs" would sound like.

Jet Lag is a confident, mature, fully-realized record, and much denser than it lets on.

Find, here, Gorillaz’ third record, some sort of masterpiece within the band’s canon, and undoubtedly the best chillwave record ever recorded.

The band will surely never be able to banish the ghosts of their tenuous acclaim, but as far as sounding finally, thankfully revitalized by their obvious talent and ravenous taste in all shapes and colors of music, Sisterworld is the most refreshing thing I’ve come upon this year.

The Winter of Mixed Drinks is a minor disappointment, then, in that in wake (and perhaps as a result) of his heart’s subsequent rehab Hutchison’s songs can’t really sustain the weight-loss of their ego.

Finely wrought themes aside (replete with a careful balance between Darwin the man and the grand ideas he unlocked), it flunks the cohesiveness test, libretto or no, destined to sit forlornly on the shelves of most of the people who sent it to the top 10 of the Billboard electronic list, unplayed and unloved.

The Monitor is ridiculously strident and frequently overblown, but somehow never slips into self-parody, which may only be true because it's obvious these guys are having a total blast indulging this hard. It's easily the most enjoyable rock record I've heard so far this year.

This album simply sounds like their first with inferior production and less-memorable songs.

The Brutalist Bricks, for its moments of torrential fury, sags when Leo occasionally writes outside of an exhausted but all-encompassing formula.