For either Reid or Hebden completists, Live at the South Bank is a useful and worthwhile artifact. For someone seeking entry to the catalogues of two vital artists, this is a thorny and difficult listen.

The seamless blend of cutting-edge textures and an obvious deep respect for the essential building blocks of classic techno make Sepalcure a pretty resounding success.

[A] lovable shamble of a rock record.

A seriously solid and enjoyable album.

What they've done is only pretty good; it's clear what they can potentially do is far more amazing.

More than any other melodic recording this year, Earth Grid feels truly timeless.

New History Warfare has enough range that it seems to have opened up a whole new fanbase that might otherwise have no interest in avant-garde music.

This freak of a record is almost obscene in its flippant disregard for the core elements of such a well-defined thing as what Boris is supposed to sound like... as crazy and over-polished and un-Boris as it is, New Album is still a new Boris album. And, apparently, that still means excellence.

LIVELOVEA$AP absolutely scorches from front-to-back; its author's ability to command a variety of sounds allows it to sound unified without drifting into monochrome territory.

This record has a way of making you feel alone and alienated even in a crowded room.

Celestial Lineage deserves every bit of attention it's garnered this year. I can personally put it on a shortlist of 2011 records that reinvigorated my confidence in metal in ways that I haven't felt in a long, long time.

It's an appealing, bombastic hybrid of '90s nostalgia, and anything less than audience ear drum obliteration is not an option.

Curren$y drops some of the meanest s*** he's ever done, giving real credence to his attempt to crawl out of his obvious niche.

Despite the inessential nature of some songs, and perhaps the inessential nature of the album as a whole, for sympathetic ears it serves as a kind of skeleton key to White Denim's bewildering powers, as much as any collection of demos or rehersal tapes.

Whatever these songs lack in immediacy, they rebound with an artistry.

It still is either very sincere or very sarcastic, or both, though these are two qualities which have always been both a justification for liking them and just as easily a reason why not, meanwhile not offering any amnesty or middle ground.

Fernow's more melodic output on Bermuda Drain is somehow even more punishing, a new development in the ongoing creation of what he calls "negative energy."

This album, despite its merits, doesn't do much but position the band as a bunch of revivalists in serious need of reviving.

Ceremonials is a sumptuously produced album of mystic pop anthems.

If Drake had it his way, one imagines he would deliver this album via fan newsletter. He made this record for them-which is why his aesthetic so thoroughly encases this record like a cocoon made of syrup-and he'd rather any stone-throwers politely evaporate.

In essence, Ferraro has crafted a noiseless noise record.

It's not perfect, but in the context of its subject matter one feels like its accidents are worth more than another album's successes.

As a whole, An Empty Bliss is a remarkably cohesive listen and one that achieves its goals, but whether or not it, in and of itself, is an entirely creative work is another question entirely.

On the surface, Replica's focus on the measured emergence of harmony seems to capture a bit of the modern struggle to find some sense amidst a constant bombardment of careless repetitions, to uncover a beautiful pattern in the digital noise of the everyday.

Perhaps the best thing about this catchy, super-short record (it'll take less than thirty minutes of your time) is the balance it strikes between tight songwriting and a loose, improvisational feeling.

Powers definitely has the compositional wherewithal to make something special--he just has to put more of himself into it.

A well-crafted doorway into Thee Oh Sees' lovely DIY funhouse, and leave your rock 'n' roll expectations at the giant lips-shaped entrance.

If McCombs' first release this year evoked a sense of baroque horror, this one does loosen up, offering at least a few degrees of clarity in a catalog more defined with each passing year by its creator's desire to subvert the tropes of his genre and refuse anything resembling an easy reading.

Anyone expecting the nocturnal looping he usually cooks up is in for a shock-Passed Me By is a jagged little tangent designed to make that warehouse seem spookier.

The record has more than its share of enjoyable moments, and more than its share of predictable "genius," but a seemingly new dread, a latent, sometimes crippling anxiety, lends the album a certain emotional edge, a hint of vulnerability, that is normally absent in the work of this Baddest of singer-songwriters.

It's a rare thing how it manages to be both accessible and inclusive without giving in to any of the current trendy concessions, all the while demonstrating the practiced purist's taste for measured, genre-specific experimentation.

With II, the Psychic Paramount have created an record both gratifying in its dense magnitude and equally rewarding in the fragility of the elements that the album is composed of.

Its overcast may be thick like a dustbowl, but well-placed rays of light make this record an especially accomplished return.

Though it's fun, pretty, well-constructed, and hits the buttons, those very facets are in danger, in the absence of Cox's beautiful vulnerability, of becoming what this sound is all about.

XXX is something much more complex, challenging, and rewarding than a dirty joke.

It feels both classic and surprisingly new; this is Real Estate, and this is all Real Estate will ever be.

To Coldplay's credit, amidst the over-production they still manage to reach their quota of flag-waving festival rock songs, some of which could be considered career highlights.

Leslie Feist has managed to produce an even more intriguing character, one with depth and doubt and apprehension and dread and all the other things that make up the other, harder, larger half of the human experience.

It's okay to mourn Apparat's past and question his trajectory. Just don't ignore what rests at the center: a record that, if nothing more, soaks in the present moment.

The cacophony raised by this album is not so much the kind that unsettles us in important and challenging ways, but is the commercial noise of a spectacle without a center, of emotion so generic we are instantly desensitized to it.

Minor quibbles are easy to overlook on a record that is, the majority of the time, flawlessly executed.

While I wish that Only in Dreams offered more adventurous songwriting or a more varied sound, it's still an achievement in its emotional tenacity.

On the Water is too uncompromising, too disinterested in being for anyone outside of its circle of two.

What follows are a series of maybe-serious experiments that aren't much fun.

With Get Lost, McGuire has nudged toward both goals, and while in many ways, for long time fans, this is exactly what you'd expect a 2011 Mark McGuire album to sound like.

It is as "original" as this band is going to get, and for that we should be contented.

Ashes & Fire might mark the first time he could ever been described as simply dull.

Enough Thunder certainly offers up enough for any Blake fan to both love and hate--and at the end of the day still be entirely unsure of exactly what to hope for.

When it's warm it offers a cool side, the underside of one's pillow, and when it's frosty it offers a coverlet of weight or the stable resting of a hand.

The results are occasionally--surprisingly, even--very nice.

The Imaginary Adventures of Pardon, Mannerfelt, and Co. just happen to be a wonderfully suitable and measured vehicle for the dense and compelling work of Roll the Dice, and In Dust is sure not to leave anyone wanting for a more promising wilderness to explore.

Life Sux is no King of the Beach; if anything it's a minor diversion on which Williams seems to be toying with the idea of slowly toeing into maturity.

Somehow Portamento is snuggled amidst St. Vincent and Braids and Tim Hecker and Colin Stetson on my year-end list.

It's an album both in tune lyrically and out of time stylistically, and that's what has All Things Will Unwind approaching relevance.

Tweedy's lyrics have recaptured much of their surreal, grammar-defying, sinister charm, and he has mercifully spared us the smug, privileged nihilism that Clayton so rightly lambasted in his review of Wilco (The Album).

Looping State of Mind both conquers and surpasses the only-so-many-pieces-in-the-box standards of most traditional dance forms by appeasing those crescendo/break/denouement expectations in name only.

Loney, Dear hasn't changed much, and that's what makes this inimitable album such great company.

Though these variations are often enjoyable, particularly on an individual track level, taken as a whole they're just too slight, making Civilian difficult to fully engage with.

As seventeen-track records go, it's edible, and should qualify him for another wave of buzz when the Mercurys come round next year.

It is a more mature record.

An Argument with Myself seems like more of an attempt at an encapsulation of Lekman's talent--to use the smallest things as gateways into work more ponderous but still relatable, achingly pretty but still occasionally biting, adventurous but familiar--than a showcase of new directions.

New axe-slinger or not, I'm With You is a given for this band--at least four songs too long and Rick Rubin's nonchalance leaves everything sounding precisely and consistently the same.

These guys have the tools, and God knows they have the chops, but Thundercat has yet to develop a compelling sound of his own, and no amount of production wizardry can ultimately disguise that.

Nothing on Thursday sounds like filler.

Pleasure essentially satisfies, even if I have to admit that it's hard not to feel absolutely, completely, and totally lied to by virtually everything about Pure X that isn't their music.

Fourteen tracks may seem slight for someone with that kind of longevity and creative drive, but if it means we get a listenable, often times surprising collection as opposed to a bloated vault dump, then I'll take this over something more "complete" any day.

Wild Flag is concise but jumpy, perhaps a party record in that sense.

Strange Mercy is Clark's most tense, nauseous, kaleidoscopic album yet.

Like similarly engaging pop music, Room(s) diversifies and moulds its winning formula into a variety of fledgling creations.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's third album might not set the world on fire, but it's a great little record in its own right.

We have Father, Son, Holy Ghost: honest, occasionally crushing, often stunning, and all the better for the fact that Owens seems to be incapable of being anyone but himself.

While Wander/Wonder is assured and richly orchestrated for an artist with a long career ahead of him, there is just some aspect of real world struggle with which it fails to engage.

Its winning, all-pleasing debut, quiet as it may be in a scene overcrowded with showiness and incessant bids to polarize, is perhaps a mere pebble dropped in a sea-but with will and wit enough to ripple as far as a boulder.

Beat-wise, IV doesn't attempt to outdo the top-dollar Carter III production, whose murderer's row of producers and beats is likely to remain unparalleled for some time. But Wayne uses the less showy selection this go-round to deliver a definitively rawer album that only smartens the impact of some of his career's best vocals.

Mister Heavenly, for better or worse, have debuted as a strong musical voice, one with perhaps so much combined talent and perspective that their reverence occasionally gets the better of them.

The end result is a sound that feels both modern and ancient: the glorious sequence of arpeggios that rounds out "Return to the Violence of the Ocean Floor," for example, owes as much to Baroque counterpoint as to progressive rock or synth-pop. And yet, throughout the course of the album, these influences are melded seamlessly into a sound that is unmistakably Krug's own: dour, wistful, and tragic.

The second half of the album is a little bit less direct in its approach, leaning more on the natural beauty of Lipstate's sonics rather than pronounced melody, but there's plenty of detail to turn over here as well.

Whatever your feelings on the swing in direction, As the Crow Flies is without doubt Jon Brooks' strongest set yet, likely to win the label more attention than its celebrity fans have already (even the famous felt uncomfortable in chemistry).

Musically, Mirror Traffic flows lazily, songs streaming into one other. Like an engrossing 3 AM conversation lasting until daylight, it's too immersive to give notice to the passage of time, but once it's over it's difficult to recall in detail, some heady dream.

Since Ferrari Boyz doesn't mark the reemergence of Gucci, it's best viewed as a warm-up for Flocka's previously-mentioned sophomore effort.

Our Blood, like most great singer-songwriter efforts, is open to interpretation, but it's the record's malleable sense of emotion that lends it its peculiar gravity.

Although these judgments point toward Slave Ambient being among the top records the summer of 2011 has to offer, the record's off-axis dichotomy, now favoring studio-assembled mellowness, steals enough of the bite and traction from these songs to keep it merely a contender.

There's a real, meticulous attempt at achieving the same playful, wandering state of mind of the pre-'80s experimental classics that inspire these songs, rather than pulling from any overwhelming examples.

Its tone is largely exuberant, even when its content seems dour; its ancillary themes seem surprisingly relatable and humanizing, even though its thesis stresses how uniquely untouchable and alone they are at the top.

[A] beautiful little album.

She may remain an intimate, closely held artist for a certain sect of listeners, but by any standards hers is some powerful, accomplished songwriting-and in many ways Marissa Nadler epitomizes this ever-maturing skill more lucidly than any of her prior work.

Skying does for early '80s psychedelic Brit-rock what Primary Colours did for post-punk, and both are as satisfying with such goals as one can imagine. Can their '90s Seattle grunge tribute be far behind?

Dedication is definitely an accomplished record and a milestone for Zomby, rewarding continued personal investigation in the same way that Where Were U In '92? found its success in laser beam focus and visceral appeal.

There is little else more gratifying in being a fan of music than watching a musician, with every successive album, build upon his or her potential in such an exquisite, dedicated way that everything about their music is now a magnificent improvement over what came before. Roommate's third album is all that.

This turns out to be an interesting but ultimately disappointing experiment, and the reason for its failure is telling: unlike the posturing shitgaze set who lean on lo-fi as a superficial crutch, How to Dress Well never treated lo-fi as a simple affectation, and as a result he can't walk away from it so easily.

The most intense moments in Past Life Martyred Saints are evocative enough to drag you back through your own most overblown emotional crises, but when the buzz fades, you are plopped back into the halcyon present, strangely empty.

Last Summer is a difficult album to describe because it's made up entirely of these kinds of small moments, gliding gracefully from memory to memory, place to place, like an inside joke stretched into a one-act play.

Parts & Labor have turned what might have been the crippling loss of an essential member into just another development in a long and respectable career.

OS's greatest feat is in its restraint. The urge to collapse into all-out roaring is there for the whole forty-three minutes, but Skodvin and Totman have made a sort of pact: you stay feathery on the piano, I won't go to Hades in the mix.

It is a step in the right direction and, despite its failings, a potential sign of good things to come. As far as community art projects go, I'm inclined to say that this one still has legs, even if it doesn't prove that Portlanders can get people to use theirs.

White Denim remain unusually talented musicians for whom eclecticism is the rule, and expectation the harbinger of some totally bad vibes.

Innings succeeds as a minor expansion and development of the band's essential sound, and it's a progression that makes clear sense.