This is a record full of loose ends and fractious energy, not at all compromised by its move up the food chain.

These songs aren't particularly denser or busier than their predecessors, but their burbles and whines serve less purpose than before; instead of sounding overzealous, they sound affected, voluminous for volume's sake.

Despite its scant 35-minute duration, Meek Warrior distills the entire history of experimental pop. Just as impressively, it finally bottles the frantic eclecticism and The Gods Must Be Crazy absurdity of the Family’s live show.

The lyrics lack the indirectness of so much of The Blackened Air and Road to Ruin, just as the piano-embroidered instrumentation skims the surface of what the singer’s band once plumbed with all of its clawing and scraping.

Even more than their last record, the fine A New White, For Hero: For Fool is a wonderfully sprawling mess.

A dream of an album.

Unfortunately, Adem’s efforts to take his music to new places result in the abandonment of much of what made Homesongs so appealing.

Ultimately, Dreamt will reward those who spend time with it, and Sparklehorse fans won't be disappointed.

Human Animal is the most textured and abstract of the band’s “official” releases in years, and while perhaps their methods aren’t new, the results aren’t simply the same old Wolf Eyes.

The cadre of eclectic guest appearances... make it seem like this record would play more like a mix tape, but Shadow pulls it off, and for the most part, each of the guest artists deliver the goods.

It does contain some beautiful songs. Its deficiencies won’t miff his indulgent cult (at least not any more than they’ve been miffed previously). But it doesn’t quite hold together.

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.

The results may not be as jarring as its predecessor - the excitement of their original experimentation is gone - but ultimately they’re more satisfying, indicative of a duo much more comfortable with their vision.

I Am Not Afraid Of You is a one-stop jukebox.

While Jamie Stewart & co. succeed at replicating the fractured nature of their live shows – the mix of sparse and dense, broken and enraged, auxiliary percussion and programming, noise and melodiousness is all here – it's beginning to sound rote.

Despite the relatively heavy guitars and relatively dense production, you’ll notice a similarity to the smart, earnest, complex material Molina played as Songs: Ohia.

Mostly Taiga is about sensation, playful and wild and smart but moving way too fast for contemplation.

Where Horn of Plenty still had spare singer-songwriter arrangements, Yellow House sounds far more elaborate.

Game Theory turns out to be The Roots’ finest record to date.

Your lost loves will not come back, but the morbid and exquisite plummet of losing them will, and rare is the artist that can make such a prospect as starkly comforting as it is here.

The Body, the Blood, the Machine reveals a band that's a bit older, a step slower, and startlingly sardonic.

There's a bit of Starbucks gloss to this record, a too-easy-to-like quality that may at first put off serious listeners and music heads. That evaporates pretty quickly, though, as you recognize that its lucid simplicity, its artful artlessness is not a trick, but achievement.

The Shining welcomes listeners to reflect on the magnitude of Yancey’s career, as any posthumous work is apt to do. Unlike Donuts, however, this newest offering will not leave Yancey’s listeners despondent about what could have been but, rather, will provide a fitting epitaph for what was.

Skelliconnection feels more like a series of singles and EPs rather than one statement.

Their most accomplished and astounding album to date.

The good news is that this is the band’s strongest music since Seasons in the Abyss. The bad news is that, compared to their vaulted ’80s output, the album lacks intensity.

These first five songs are like a good singles collection, every one of them free-standing and complete, none of them particularly relating to the others. The rest of the album is slighter and less compelling.

Most of White Bread Black Beer is almost unbearably lovely.