Drone Trailer comes off as one of MV & EE’s richest conciliations of primal rock impulse and agrarian drift – the kind of record that a confused major label would have leaked out into the world in the early 1970s, the last time the underground had any chance of seriously warping the mainstream milieu.

Throughout the album, as soon as the drums and guitar slide into nod-inducing alignment, they veer off-track. The songs simply do not cohere. The numerous instrumental tracks on the album show off the band’s virtuosity, but to entirely unmemorable effect.

The balance--between groove and experiment, organic and synthetic sound--shifts constantly on this very strong album, sometimes prodding listeners to think, other times comforting them with familiar sounds and, occasionally, overwhelming them with ephemeral beauty.

Fans ignore these efforts at their peril, since Chasny’s long-form efforts are often his best.

Lesser artists might fall prey to pastiche, something Murcof artfully avoids. Instead he pulls off a remarkable feat--he makes the forgotten sound formidable, and the contemporaneous sound credible.

It’s great fun, but it’s all boundless energy without centre.

The low tide image on the cover Black Sea suggests that this process of covering and uncovering is cyclical, and the music bears it out by adding a welcome bit of noise and depth to some stately and slowly evolving melodies.

The nostalgia of postmodernity, that backward glance, is apparent in every moment of Parallax Error Beheads You. While it can sometimes seem like a quagmire for the less creative, it’s transformative here.

Reid’s rolling, sweeping, ever-present groove takes on colors and textures, courtesy of Hebden and his suite of gizmos (real or imagined), but it’s always the same hard road, the same track of tandem steel rays that cut through every borough, every station, every hall and every mind.

It’d be hard to be disappointed with Convivial, however. It’s not necessarily an immediate listen; it took a few spins before the leaps Ripatti has made started seriously to sink in. But it’s the strongest thing he’s done, either as Luomo or under his Uusitalo or Vladislav Delay guises.

The squalling sax that wends its way through most of these tracks and Josephine’s joyful, yet solidly unsettled yelps temporarily brings to mind a more professional and spacious Mika Miko, but that similarity mostly traces back to a common debt owed to Kleenex/LiLiPUT--all three bands make the ennui and alienation of second adolescence both incredibly vivid and, strangely, a lot of fun.

With The Red River, his best yet, richer, more fluid arrangements tip his songs from straight folk blues into gospel, soul and even hints of R&B.

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.

These songs are dull because they are about dullness, as sad movies are sad because they are about sadness.

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

Car Alarm feels different, though. What’s difficult to figure out, however, is whether that’s merely a feeling or whether there’s something actually, appreciably novel about the album.

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.

No massive steps forward, admittedly, but I think Wood can justify exploring this patch of ground for a short while yet.

Temper is rewarding in a conventional way compared to the surprise of Precis, less something iridescent found in the sand and more the product of resourceful and masterly design.

When Religious Knives stretch their limbs, they’re still good, but both 'The Storm' and 'On A Drive' lack the power of their more formed songs.

Over its eight tracks, the album never fails to find a musical pleasure center of one sort or another.

Nomad doesn’t particularly depart from the parameters that have already been set by the growing population of techstep tricksters, but it does serve as a concise document of dubstep’s travels to date.

Taken as a whole, however, OH consists of more stellar stuff from a band that’s always taken the tortoise’s view of the race.

So, Offend Maggie doesn’t offer much in way of change. As cynical as the times we live in might be, that could be taken as a polite rebuke, but it’s not meant that way. They’re a creative band.

This final tension--between the desire to exceed perceived aesthetic limits and the reality of the artists’ own limitations--is one that is present throughout Futuristically Speaking. Jwl B and Shunda K are, as of now, stronger conceptually than they are in execution.

There is nothing but the interlocking parts that together combine to become something new, something wholly different than merely the additive sum of their individual atoms: the “It.”

Chemistry may represent an attempt to marshal these influences into a massive, unified sound. Alternately, it could be the sound of Fucked Up fucking around with a big budget in a studio and seeing who might be duped into believing it genuine. Indeed, who will listen to this record?

Ferndorf gains little from its back story but loses nothing without it; to a greater degree than most records of its ilk, it is resolutely what it is.