The strategy is the same: start with a basic, inoffensive and unambitious melody, repeat it over and over again, toss on a few scatting horns (between three and five notes only, please, and let’s keep dissonance to a minimum) and whatever other trinkets are in the studio, and voila! An instantly forgettable pop breeze.

It’s a sophisticated work, delicately and meticulously crafted, and its effete pleasantness lends itself as well to "Late Night" performances as "New Yorker" coverage.

As relatively good as most of Bitte Orca is, 'Stillness Is The Move' alone gives us reason enough to be optimistic: should Longstreth pursue his newfound fascination with mainstream music further, it's proof that the Dirty Projectors are capable of evolving into a far better pop band than their experimental selves ever let on.

If you like blues-oriented rock from a man who can pour out his soul like Robert Pollard's bartender pours Bud Lite, then, by all means, give Bubblegum a try.

Nobody who has ever had some semblance of an interest in this band should ignore Journal For Plague Lovers, which is simply far more awesome than anyone had a right to expect.

A wane in consistency in its latter half keeps I Am Not from achieving the heights of Yo La Tengo’s best work, but it will unquestionably satiate their rabid fanbase awaiting a return to eclecticism while re-establishing Ira Kaplan’s status as an early fifty-something guitar god.

There’s some talent behind these songs; there isn’t a single instrumental dud on The Chemistry of Common Life. But while the instrumentals leave room for some kind of epic lyrics from the right lyricist and singer, Abraham is neither of those things.

In terms of a go-to disc for a pissed off stomp around the bedroom, it’s the finest album I’ve heard this year.

In total--and there is absolutely no other way to absorb this album; if it lets up it will lose itself--the sentiment is hostile, championing a mismatched, bitchy pile of allusions to alienation, dissatisfaction, and indifference that begs for attention and respect but is too passive to amount to anything but a wan wash.

The harrowing track list of Electro-Shock just wears too thin here.

A dozen listens through... and I can’t help but think the band has done better in past.

If you give it a chance (or maybe even a dozen chances, if you can stand it), and don't immediately dismiss it because it's by Joanna, I’m sure you’ll find something to love.

Enter the Vaselines serves as a timely reminder of the old ways we found music: for Cobain, one dreams, as a record in a bin somewhere, and for the rest of us, a recommendation from a friend, a cassette loaned around like a dirty one-hitter.

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

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

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.

The new versions aren’t bad, but the Vertex-era fan might quickly become the unwitting recipient of a $20 coaster.

With El-P's help, Killer Mike has produced his first unquestionably great Album.

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.

The distance that keeps Elvrum’s tiny voice from ever rising above a negligible squeak is applied to our relationship with this pretty, roaring Wind’s Poem. It’s a harrowing problem, like getting stuck between a stone and a hard something, for every Phil Elvrum fan imaginable. And who isn’t nowadays.

Kaputt is the sound of an artist released from his back catalogue and his own notions of how a song should be sung, or written. It is a mighty, mighty piece of work and really worth celebrating. In my mind, this is Destroyer's best album yet.

The peaks are good, obviously; but they're just peaks. And the dips are experimental fun but together they sound like curios. Still, the unfortunate sequencing aside, Passive Aggressive is a great compilation-especially so for those uninitiated with the band.

Banks is often all the more mesmerizing when she leaves the beef on the back-burner and takes stock of her influences.

Serena Maneesh injects the Warhols' toothy, cocksure swagger [into] the lush, narcotic insularity of My Bloody Valentine and Ride.

The band is becoming, depending on how you look at it, either more like a classic jazz group—solos twisting well beyond the compact call-and-answer of formulaic Afrobeat—or something like a more world music-friendly Tortoise.

While that band has yet to make a record comparable to the sludgy majesty of their live show... Blue Cathedral practically explodes from the speakers.

A fractured LP, compelling and convincing in its intent, but just plain less satisfying than Vespertine or Post.

El-P's always been ahead of the curve but Cancer for Cure isn't valuable for its prescience so much as its currency of the now and the way it unites rap head nostalgia for the future beats of the past with the beats of the present.