Cohen manages to find the happy (and probably most obvious) middle ground between his spare origins and the sheen of his later work with light, jazzy instrumentation, with the songs stretched out to allow for several solos and interludes.

In all, the languidness of Rules has its own odd charm—since WBA never aspire to be much beyond a wistful dance pop quartet, they don’t fall down the stairs too embarrassingly.

The fact is that Black Cascade is half victory lap and half turf statement: it hones in on their strengths without sacrificing originality; it pays off magnificently on all the chances they’ve taken in the past; it is fucking brutal; and it is another high water mark in the band’s catalogue for the New Wave of American Metal.

Nite Jewel’s schtick may well revolve around crafting a distinctive and specific sound/mood and doing it well, but Good Evening‘s best moments arise when Gonzalez goes for just a little more range.

LotusFlow3r achieves nothing so much as reliving the glory and joy of emulation, which is saddened by the image of Prince nudging our shoulders, urging us to relive with him.

MPLSound appeals to nostalgia both implicitly (a reminder of the reasons for our adoration) and explicitly (the album sounds good because it sounds like Sign O’ The Times).

In lieu of an actual follow-up [to The Knife's "Silent Shout"] we get something that manages to make good on two of those three elements [of the decade’s best electronic records]. I’ll take it.

Here we see the often-resourceful Deacon approaching a big canvas with too little paint, and the result is a record which feels bloated, overlong, and ultimately empty.

True, it is also the kind of soaring, gleefully overwrought, overproduced, folk pop that drive detractors to acts of libelous message board violence and depravity. But if "inauthentic" means commercial then it should be noted that Hazards is essentially the definition of a passion project.

There’s some really wicked ideas buried in the mud here, but between some humdrum instrumental passages and a lot of nu-metal lite-style singing and the general mess of sonics trying to pull them out is like forcing yourself to listen to Joe Satriani for the cool parts.

In the end, Fuckbook is a disappointing Yo La Tengo album, but the band’s made it clear that it doesn’t want it to be that, instead just a pretty good Condo Fucks record.

Enemy Mine is altogether more defined in its varying forms, food groups falling out a cornucopia rather than coming together like the stew that bubbled in the "Beast Moans" cauldron.

He’s filled his abdicated spot with greater authority than ever before, patched up the walls punched in from Ghostface’s temper tantrums and assured us that villian-rap’s appeal will remain evergreen as long as it infused with this genius, this wild idiocy, these manic flights of syllabic invention.

The Floodlight Collective exudes something astonishing and rare, particularly for a record on the fringes of indie rock, scoping into abstraction. It is, more than anything else, sincere.

It’s like listening to a strong feeling that yearns to be vented, but instead is left inside its confining limits, echoing on itself.

So in comes an album with zero individuality, zero originality, zero workaroundability...and it’s really good. How good this thing can get is sort of terrifying considering how bad this material might sound in the hands of other bands.

With one bright, surprising exception, the songs here either make a terrible impression or they make none at all.

Beware is exactly the album to be expected from Oldham, now, as he begins to investigate the limelight, as he trots out his friendships with gothic southern troubadours (Jim White), say, or free jazz northerners (Rob Mazurek and Nicole Mitchell), wondering whether to scamper back to the stern nobody-ness Drag City allows him or push on expanding his solipsistic world.

The second album has the more obvious and combustible singles. But there’s nothing on the second album that comes close to the 1-2-3 punch of 'California Goth,' 'Wavves,' and 'Lover.'

It’s all so cold and empty and irritating.

It is a step forward for an artist with a wealth of potential and a tremendously moving voice. Should he cease his overzealous grab for stylistic and thematic conventions--or perhaps if he simply learns to cover more ground--there’s a good chance Handsome Furs will reach a level of maturity and sophistication at which their current offering merely hints.

Not the first single (“Rockin’ That Shit”) or the second (“My Love”) but hopefully the third, the title track of Love vs. Money is the sole moment where The-Dream’s artistry is actualized through, how else, an epiphany of self-loathing and regret.

Clocking in with around thirty five minutes of largely instrumental music, one’s tempted to cast Thank You Very Quickly as a one-off, but both the band’s communicable enthusiasm and obvious technical skill pull it off.

It’ll play huge at the Troubadour. It’s just that, as much orchestration clearly went into this record, it seems content to be merely “well done,” when the opening two tracks make it absolutely, exhilaratingly clear that there’s more than that at stake here.

Nowhere is this idea of acceptance clearer than on An Imaginary Country. In a sense the album evokes nothing so much as Hecker himself, diligently and intuitively molding his sounds through synthesizer, guitar and laptop, and as a result may be the most symbiotic album of the year.

It sounds more coherent than episodic, placeless, and with a definite emphasis on the rock aspects that, on "Recording a Tape," were used sparingly.

Some of the more irregular numbers scream “demo” between their whisperings--think very early Arab Strap, midi beats in place of the crass Scottish semen puns--but overall it’s a solid little barometer, one or two cues offering insight into Casiotone’s current organic direction.

Despite some engaging song-craft, however, the album overall feels lacking in real substance and its fixations leave me blase.

Keeley & Zaire’s Ridin High has absolutely nothing to offer its listener or hip-hop at large except for a fat pile of old rap comfort food and, tucked evenly away from the beginning and end of the record’s runtime, two absolute fucking bangers in 'Addicts for Real' and 'We Made It.'

I’d reject the idea that this album is laid-back in favor of saying it’s too light-hearted.

Though I'd hardly go as far to call it their best album, which I guess makes U2 irrelevant by Bono's logic, its best songs can credibly stand alongside their classics, and how many bands can maintain this level of vitality 30 years into their career? I give.

Considering the extent to which they seem to follow whatever musical desires grip them at the time, rather than following an overarching path, it's not much of a disappointment to suggest they haven't quite graced the heights of their best work here

One of the most immediate records of the year so far, Here We Go Magic materialize as if they’ve always been here. Which, it turns out, may be right where they deserve to be.

Well, here’s a disappointment so mild I can barely taste it. I think I’m disappointed, maybe, but I’m not sure how much or wherefore.

March of the Zapotec is a serviceable, if less than memorable, expansion of Beirut’s already established sound via the Jiminez Band, a 19-piece band from Mexico. Realpeople Holland is fucking awful techno music that is desert-bereft, wholly disposable, and somehow makes Condon’s crooner’s dollop seem alien and unlistenable for the first time. If

But far from ruffled or startling, Hold Time simply fills the quota Ward’s assigned himself and, (im)properly slaked, poofs off, contrails the last reminder that, yes, Jason Lytle’s still alive.

In the end, we needn’t concern ourselves too much with the machinations of some emotionally arrested Peter Pan of pop. Moz will always have the last word, anyways, which makes the barb from the album’s closer all the more appropriate: “This might make you throw up in your bed, I’m OK by myself!”

Apollo is too much, too confusing, and too forgettable.

We do get a consistent, theatrical dose of glamorous rockabilly out of Bobby Dee.

What we’re left with, speakers humming with aftermath, is the possibility of a real and significant realization: that between Hecker and Mountains, 2009 suggests a sea change--and I can’t think of a more appropriately grand term--in which ambient music may just enter a post-Eno peak.

While previous records had some fascinating collaborations, perhaps Carboniferous hits so hard because it pares things down to the core trio a bit more.

I’m finding these chocolate bar grooves and dark, open spaces in Watersports a pretty nice place to be, and if the guys in Mi Ami have mellowed a bit with age, they haven’t gotten any less interesting or vital, still embroiled with the spirit and verve that supposedly ended at the Black Cat not all that long ago.

It is markedly less frenetic and more cohesive, and for that it is pitch-black and menacing, and for that it is head-and-shoulders the better record.

My point is that topping already listless, dreamy tunes with even more listless production can make it difficult to perceive any dynamics across the whole album. Odawas do make inroads towards changing it up, but it’s hard to hear anything but the relentlessly slow pace and saccharine production.

Mother of Curses feels suffocating: it’s experimental but constrained and bleak but not humanistic or relatable.

I am aware that I am giving the following guy an 85% on Cokemachineglow. The thing is, he deserves it.

It’s Not Me It’s You is neither grating or annoying. It’s merely boring.

Immolate Yourself feels like a transitional record from an act that was almost ready to make itself crystal clear.

Dent May has a firm grasp on his ukulele, debuting his skill through an adept, kitschy, brief, and rarely but sometimes resplendent album, but he’s still forevermore a novelty.

The album’s accompanying trappings do little to dull its impressiveness or the band’s command of its lineage.

Beyond simply being a fantastic musician, he’s a master of imaginative storytelling, and manages to perfectly capture the feeling of such a cruel yet contemplative season.

While hardly the evolutionary leap forward that the band had suggested was afoot, Tonight is still, inarguably, fine for now.

This isn’t progress, it’s pleasant, capable, effortless stagnation; the dream’s already finished and we can’t, for the love of everything, recall what it was about.

Dälek have refined their work but their work has no reaching trajectory.

Animal Collective keep getting better.

The Crying Light may prove to be too precarious to hold up on its own in the future, but for now Antony & the Johnsons have provided a perfect gateway to their music.

Even with their glut of talent (Bejar not included), the band is sputtering for ideas.

Noble Beast overcomplicates what should be a simpler formula; the meat is in Bird’s performances, the virtuoso skills at his disposal, not the antiseptic display of distorted guitar tones that the album’s best song unfortunately resorts to in its final section.

Essentially, Blood Bank is one pretty song--the titular, opening track settling somewhere close to what Damien Jurado’s doing these days--and two similarly pretty experiments in stretching Bon Iver’s sound.

Skin of Evil is hardened, seamless, and totally unrelenting, everything full-bodied and visceral about Frog Eyes squeezed until it sublimates. This is scary, ethereal shit. It’s also a gorgeously captivating half hour of bedroom pop pushed screaming out of bed.

So, um, good? Yeah, but in the same way grilled cheese sandwiches are.

This is a power-pop album released by the biggest Fall Out Boy-ish band working today, on a major label, but it’s also 50.4 minutes of Fall Out Boy music--an extended, incomprehensible and surprisingly marketable clamor, ambulance siren loud, of contradictory signifiers.

This isn’t a bad release, and chances are, if you liked Cross, you could like this just as much. But it’s not going to contain any new revelations, and the extra reverb and applause are not enough to justify the release of a live album.

Circus is a saddening step back to her glossy yet unengaging "In the Zone" era, which is a shame.

The terrible truth of this album hangs stupidly overhead--that it’s a yawner.

This is a record of a plump stomach, a belch, a bit of acid reflux; the by-product of Kanye’s indulgences? More heartburn than heartbreak.

Theater of the Mind is a disappointment and more--snickering through both high-minded social consciousness and insipid cash cows, the album, so flat and fucking boring, serves absolutely no one but Ludacris himself.

Vaguely melodious, embedded with overtones, sometimes placid and sometimes stormy, Black Sea is like a wave in that its diverse parts meld together to form a powerful, all-encompassing entity.

The imprint scores its hat-trick with Ouliposaliva: the entree of Angil and the Hiddentracks, one of the most bizarre/bankable records to air outside of its creators’ Parisian side-streets.

I am...amused. But it's sort of like the horrific fascination of seeing a train wreck.

Parallax Error Beheads You improves upon [his previous] albums’ strengths--wide-eyed eclecticism among other things--managing greater coherence and scope than anything he’s ever done.

Convivial is the closest Ripatti has inched toward making something that would fit in with the more outrageous and flamboyantly mainstream house productions that dominate charts and hip clubs these days, and at the same time still very heady, engaging music.

Love is All has refined its basic ideas and yielded a follow-up much more playable than its predecessor.

It’s good, and I don’t mean just because it reminds me of Mass Effect‘s soundtrack but on the terms of a record: it ingratiates and ebbs and even exasperates, at a stretch, before rewarding in the end.

The Renaissance functions as a representation that he’s never needed to say much of anything to be immensely enjoyable.

Until the group learns to keeps pace or more effectively makes space for Thorpe, their singer will remain the first, best, and only reason to listen to Wild Beasts.

Surfing does not serve a discussion of any of these things; it is, considering all ephemeral connotations, a side project. And an obnoxious one at that.

The songs generally hold up, but the production job remains confounding. Keith Uddin’s meaty fists have ruined this album.

Smartly, Microcastle stops short of alienating, an adjective more than a few scribes have lobbed at "Cryptograms."

The record is neither a failure, nor can I imagine is it a pisstake. No, this is Tom Jenkinson letting out his inner rock star, letting his guard down from the laptops a little bit more, and having sloppy fun.

The ethno-tinted dreampop of School of Seven Bells left me stymied and listless and, most crucially for a critic, at a loss for words.

It makes for a workmanlike listen. For all the frills of doom and cadences of industry firing on all greasy pistons, the dynamics at hand are simple, rounded up summarily when the album presents its glaring contradictions as a matter of fact

This is a record filled with breezy jazz tunes ripe for a dance hall. It’s also music that will give you a headache from thinking, if you take the time to truly appreciate the multi-faceted work of art that it is.

This, then, is the future fashioned out of the stuffs of past and present, out of maintaining a firm aesthetic while employing a staggering array of techniques, out of reaching for the proverbial stars. Tronic hits with the intrinsic revelation and self-evident relevance of new truth.

Given that the record is so nominally personal and probing, it’s telling that there is not one moment of transcendence, or relief, or acceptance, or melody, or substance.

With both "Everybody" and now Car Alarm, the Sea and Cake would appear to be in the midst of an inspiration streak unheard of since their first three albums, and we’re richer for it. Impressive for a quartet of mid-‘40s post-rockers on their eighth record.

There's something downright overwhelming about this disc, whether it's the unremitting playfulness or the way the band pulls together beauty and energy from the oddest of sounds or the way over top they sometimes launch into abstract political commentary.

Like all AC/DC records, this is a troubling one to love.

It’s a sad, wonderful tone he creates, but one too shy or just too gracious to stand up for itself.

Substance-free, without a whit of melody or lyricism or artistry but flouncing about in a post-production fantasia, the album made sounds that sounded like music for people who wanted to like music and have music playing near them but make no investment in the enjoyment of such stuff.

Reefer feels like a pleasant departure from that tired self-parody; tossed-off but in a good way.

With a span of almost three-quarters of an hour, the eight components of III are on the fat side of five minutes per head, though each imbued with sufficient ingenuity to stave off the threat of bloating.

While this solo venture is a unique take on the sound developed with BMSR, his song structures and instrumentation are built-in with monotony, practically usurping the purpose of developing a creative solo project in the first place.

Headhunter’s Nomad, taking cues from the mutated sonic vocabulary of minimal techno connoisseurs like Berlin’s Basic Channel, is altogether headier and more unreal. This is a futuristic, moody and vaguely menacing kind of dance music.

There’s a brilliant EP lurking somewhere in this record, but Mike Skinner is either too ambitious or too fatigued to rescue it.