As the album thumps on, though, listeners who prefer dynamics over beat matching will lose patience.

At 69 minutes, I Was Real is a lot to take in. Newcomers are advised to start with W/M/P/P/R/R, the concise, big band counterpart to I Was Real’s occasionally meandering chamber music. Still, I Was Real is sure to puzzle and please whether your devotion to rock and roll and its antecedents is intellectual or physical.

Bottom line: if you like diva pop with a little edge, have at it. But if you got into Billy Nomates because she reminded you of the Sleaford Mods, maybe sit CACTI out.

III is something to be appreciated and savored, but not necessarily obsessed over.

While Sky Burial is a bit overlong, and meanders a bit in some of its textural climes, it’s a fascinating statement from a young band to watch.

The result is not a great leap forward but a stationary jump--with one foot forward, another backward, and a hard landing on both feet.

Impossible Truth is a dense and compelling album, but also one that shows room for him to develop into an even more impressive musician.

You need to listen and absorb. It won't always work. But when it does, you'll find the door open and a fascinating terrain inside.

Mug Museum gives off a solid first impression, but gets sturdier the more time you spend with it.

The Stimulus Package finds him working the angles as sharply as ever. On this album, he swings like a trapeze artist between the extremes of solemn commentary and hardboiled boasting.

Here the whole sum is less than its individual parts: individual tracks display real quality, but the album fails to cohere.

Roberts sounds alienated, but not arrogant, like some of his labelmates often can. His vocal melodies lack warmth and pain, but I find No Earthly Man's blank stare profoundly appropriate.

Caught in the Trees is neither as ranging or as raw as what Jurado’s capable of. While that still slots it comfortably above most records of its ilk, in the context of this catalog, it’s essentially caught in the middle.

The Triad has no standouts and doesn’t even stand out in the Pantha du Prince catalog. What it does do well is provide a consistent listening experience, blending all of Hendrik Weber’s strongest proclivities into a 10-song, 63-minute album best thought of as a mix.

Sound Kapital never quite settles into a comfortable pattern of pop.

There's a wider range of styles and sounds here, from dramatic shoegazer epics to the closest they've ever gotten to straight-ahead rock. Not everything gels solidly, and there are some awkward moments, but no real stumbles.

There's a distance between the trauma in the lyrics and the overall mood of the song, which only reinforces his albums' theme of optimism in the face of the worst circumstances. So, how does it stand up? Pretty well.

Mr. Impossible feels both inquisitive and hermetic, half closed off to the outside world, half chasing noise and patterns to their logical conclusion.

This is an album in a platonic sense, crafted around a clutch of real hits that were made for group enjoyment on the radio, not just for headphones in coffeehouses. And, like every Comet Gain album that's come before, it succeeds.

While McCombs may not transcend his influences, his sense of...well, humor on Humor Risk does set him apart from the current crop of guitar-based musicians that wallow in the dour and faux-clever.

Weekend has crafted an aesthetically sound model of how a rock 'n roll band should work. It looks good, it knows how to talk to women, and some guys you know even think it's pretty cool.

So while In Prism at least sounds like a Polvo record, it’s not until the second half, starting with the eight-minute opus “Lucia,” where it actually begins to feel like a Polvo record.

To See More Light is another strong effort from Colin Stetson, and a familiar one. Should there be another entry in the New History Warfare series, Stetson would benefit from a broadening of his tactical approach.

Even with so many strikes against it, however, Seconds manages to be a surprisingly compelling listen.

Urban Turban is consolidation for Cornershop, pulling together old and new tracks and showing as many hands as they can.

If Share the Joy is the direction Vivian Girls are going in, I'm interested in seeing how it plays out.

This isn’t so much the first AMC record in awhile as the sturdiest, most bottom-heavy Eitzel record in awhile.

March of the Zapotec and Holland won’t get people as stirred up as "Gulag Orkestar" but they do suggest some interesting new directions.

Transistor Rhythm clearly isn't the full-force, wall-to-wall banger album that many were hoping for, but it does show that Addison Groove can successfully and consistently operate in a more relaxed mode.

Lamping has some catchy songs and some interesting lyrics, but feels too inconsequential, too easily sloughed off.

Despite the occasional filler and silliness, Guns Don’t Kill People...Lazers Do! takes dancehall, club music and a genre that can probably best be described as “Diplo” to new and very interesting places.

Thankfully, the rest of Black Noise manages to maintain an elegant balance of the concrete and the ephemeral.

Though the harsh synth textures and borderline-disjointed edits from the EPs remain, the record as a whole is simultaneously hazier and more distinct: more fine detail in the cavernous reverb, more impact with every tumbling, hypercompressed stack of drum samples.

Matmos have created a digital manifestation of their own personality, one that would be done more justice through psychoanalysis than musical description.

While not a rapturously groundbreaking record, Cold of Ages is a rock-solid entry.

Quarter Turns Over a Living Line is neither an easy, nor comforting listening, and absorbing the entire album can occasionally leave the listener gasping for air. However, as a portrait of a dystopian 21st century musical landscape, there is little better than this brand of pure British blackness.

Subtlety is clearly not a strong suit here.

He puts together a good melody for each of these songs, as effortlessly as Ray Davies and in as nasally a voice.

Luckily, the songwriting on Minks' debut hits far more frequently than it misses. It's a solid establishment of a noteworthy sound--the proverbial "encouraging first album."

Beast Epic is a good album. In some senses, it’s satisfying. It just doesn’t get to the concreteness, to the creation that makes it something more.

As inconsistent as it is, Every Kind of Light, the first full-band Posies record of the century, curbs the pair’s excesses enough to reward repeat plays.

While Feorm Falorx may have some of the duo’s more simplistic songwriting, it’s well worth a spin for its textural delights alone.

Despite the less-successful entries, Saint Dymphna is commendable. There's substantially less chaos and abstractness and more pop quantization, but Gang Gang Dance are still overflowing with ideas.

There's a strength in what these four musicians are capable of together, and the best moments on Tidelands explore the boundaries of such an approach.

His songs flash by in vivid, disconnected mental images, floating on an underlying current of mood. What we see passes by. What we feel about it lingers, evocatively, just out of reach and often filtered through digital mechanisms. ... The album’s lyrics are about all kinds of things, but its sound is about being isolated and frightened with contact only through digital interface.

The end result is the 11 songs on Unlearn, which I'll save you the frustration of calling "eclectic" and opt for the even more euphemistic "well-informed."

This album is more grounded in sounds recognizably made by physical instruments. It’s also, in places, openly archaic in its devices and treatments.

Les Savy Fav has finally delivered an album worth shrugging about.

They’re no longer one of the torchbearers of a perceived trend, but they continue to grind out records of a style and overall quality that are still hard to come by (whether we need more of them is certainly up for debate).

These songs are smart and ingratiating, and slightly squeamish about the world of privileged, post-collegiate ennui they inhabit, and... that's what they are.

In brevity it betters the 1999 boxed set, in songwriting it plateaus.

Hairball doesn’t redefine its chosen genre, nor does it really refine it. It’s a straightforward album, one meant for windows-open listening on a sunny day.

Ultimately, this album probably won’t be the critical sleeper hit that its predecessor was-–it’s hard to find fault with the band’s playing, the choice of songs, and the overall premise, but Thing of The Past only nudges their art forward a bit from "To Find Me Gone."

It's cool that he's trying to change things up, but there's no substitute for a strong result.

Oldham's music, while drawing on familiar influences ' Neil Young and the Grateful Dead are immediately apparent ' is diverse enough that it feels far fresher than a by-the-numbers retread.

Nightshade's 10 songs unpack desire and affection and come up with the notion that disappointment is every bit worth savoring as joy because a romantic betrayal might acquaint you with real (not necessarily romantic) love. So while this record sounds pensive and lingers on experiences of loss, it's not depressing.

Out Hud’s new-found pop smarts leave you hoping that they’ll drop the instrumentals and devote a whole album to songs.

The players are so good that even their sketches make for engaging listening. And two songs on the EP are quite good.

There's plenty to like in this abbreviated outing, and hardly anything to raise the hackles.

Back to Reality's themes are pretty simple: having fun, getting laid and falling in love, all on the dance floor. It has just the right mix of crassness and manners, in a proportion that seems more than a bit quaint by today's standards.

For a songwriter who packs so much into his creations, it’s no surprise that Mercer makes it hard to get a full measure of 5 Dreams’ narrative gist, even after multiple listens. Approach these songs however you choose, and they’re sure to shift evasively, compelling you to follow.

Play It Strange covers plenty of ground and suggests that the folks in The Fresh & Onlys are far from out of compelling ideas, it also finds the band playing at a kind of strangeness that sounds suspiciously like work.

All told, Light Divide is a pretty thing, transporting and enveloping and full of glowing tones. Yet even as you’re listening to it, it slips away, and when you’re done, it’s like you’ve been asleep.

Teen Dream’s best material comes up front (“Zebra,” “Silver Soul,” “Norway” “Walk in the Park”) , and there’s a bit of a sag in the middle (“Lover of Mine,” “Better Times”), with songs that are pretty enough, but without any big payoffs.

It's got an energy that's usually associated with naiveté and learning instruments on the job. The trio knits their little hand-played loops together loosely, and in a certain light, there are places it unspools completely.

With Intoxicated Women we don’t get starlets and a known bad boy tussling in the spotlight. We get Harvey and his cast of players dusting off old scripts of prior perversions, delivering them to a world that fancies itself jaded, but is just as confused as ever.

The proceedings would be a lot less palatable if they didn’t often achieve a forceful, unhinged immediacy; amid the heavy themes and brash posturing, there’s still room for the band to elbow in some loud, rousing real life.

It’s nothing new and it’s nothing scary, but its renewed vigor is encouraging.

It has a denser, more cohesive sound, more defined rhythms and richer arrangements--and yet lacks some of the subterranean pull of its predecessor.

Even incoherent and excessively long, Frozen Niagara Falls shows that, like John Wiese with his recent--and more rewarding--masterpiece Deviate From Balance, Fernow is pulling apart the clichés of noise and looking at where it goes from here.

Even if it fails to meet impossibly high expectations, The Harrow & The Harvest offers a handful of keepers while moving Welch and Rawlings (hopefully) past their writers' block.

With the exception of the somewhat dull “Dormant Love,” I’m altogether satisfied.

The music doesn’t go far enough--it’s too restrained and mellow--but the point of view is crystal clear. This is alternative rock clinically perfected in a perpetual adolescence.

He doesn’t always push far enough; the album’s best when we feel the tightwire of this experience rather than when we suspect an agnostic at play. Religious language and transcendent experience (secular or sacred, if we divide them) come loaded with danger. The more Morby pushes into that space and the more he asks of the listener, the deeper the experience.

As far as conclusions about Popular Songs go, it’s fair to address the reader not as a consumer of the music, but as someone breezing through its clean, familiar architecture. You should check this place out. It’s pretty sweet, and I think you’ll like the light.

Basic, unassuming, and calling to mind a grip of classic material without going to great lengths to mimic it, Rush to Relax, the band’s third LP, adds almost nothing new to Eddy Current Suppression Ring’s repertoire.

It remains a little bit of all its influences, at times more like soul, at times almost straight country (particularly on “Here Is Where the Loving Is At”), but more often the proverbial blender mix.

Over the course of Spike Field’s 50 minutes, the songs’ prevalent mood can prove hypnotic if you’re receptive to its atmosphere. MBC is certainly adept at conjuring and sustaining a melancholy, nocturnal scene.

The 13 songs on What It Means to Be Left-Handed are all, in their own way, enjoyable. The ideas and collaborations on display are impressive, as is the stylistic range. But there's still a bit of cohesion missing there--something that makes What It Means to Be Left-Handed feel more like a collection of individually good ideas and less like a singular artistic statement.

Admittedly, this is a record with a specific style and set of concerns: if you don’t like your post-punk hyper-focused and with Van Morrison-levels of nods to mysticism, you may lose patience with it quickly. For those who appreciate the iconoclasm involved, however, there’s plenty to savor here.

Zeroes and Ones, like Eleventh Dream Day’s early work, has the direct, immediate quality of a live performance.

Seek Warmer Climes is still more visceral than cerebral. It washes over you in a foul, cold, gritty spray, and you can hardly breathe when it’s coming straight at you.

The quality of the album isn't the issue, it's the qualities, the contradictions, the duplicity: it's what makes it as durable a listen as ever, but oddly empty when it comes to empathy.

While Dulli has mined the same vein of pop music for almost 25 years, he has nonetheless accomplished an awful lot with it.

Flat Worms doesn’t go anywhere strange or new. You can lose your way in the record’s middle section, where songs become easily exchangeable, one for another. That said, the first three and last two tracks on the record are noisy fun.

So it continues with Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, an album with no missteps...because every trick that Mogwai has used in the past is present in almost comically balanced fashion.

Rhyton is never quite that simple. Here it becomes a vehicle for pretty much all of Shuford’s obsessions, sometimes two or three on top of each other at once, and honestly, it works pretty well.

There's something lunky and crude that weighs down the chaos, even if it outwardly resembles arty contrariness. Motorik without motor skills, New Brigade actually sounds new.

It takes time to acclimate to the album's frenetic fog. In that sense, Centipede Hz is both a return to and rejection of form.

This album's problem is a very, very shoddy sequence.

Ultimately, Conquistador contains few surprises, but its stark beauty and understated textural depth prove that Carlson is still finding new and engaging ways of repeating himself.

The few moments of clarity don’t diminish Sleepwalk’s seductive anesthetic, which may be one of the album’s drawbacks.

"Jarvis"... is essentially a patchwork drawing from low and high points of his career - a quilt meant as a cover as well as an ornament.

There’s a sense of stagery in this album, as there is in all JSBX discs....

The spoken words mix wonderfully with excellent musical arrangements, but the original songs primarily suffer in comparison.

Their attempt to weld the cerebral and physical is not always smooth but part of the attraction is to sit in on a work in progress, to hear the musicians grasping at handholds and swinging for the next ledge, fearless in the vulnerability of thought and action.

Devotion goes down a little easier is both its strength and a feature that proves a bit disappointing in the end.

Working almost like a glorified mixtape, many of the tracks bleed together or start mid-scene with field recordings of corner action. It adds to the feeling that you’ve dropped in on something important.