The key is minor, the tone is melancholy, the concerns are callow, but the leitmotif is redeeming.

You'll hear a hint of Arcade Fire in the shout-along choruses, a whisper of Neutral Milk Hotel in the tales of deformed love, an intimation of the Decemberists in the pantomime sea shanties that explode into rock. They're all pretty faint echos, though, the vaguest kinds of familiar outposts in a sea of strangeness.

In the Maybe World feels like an (unintentional, perhaps) sequel or response to Geek the Girl, turning down the intensity while sharing a twilit mood.

If it weren't all so much fun, CSS would be really objectionable. But if it wasn't so objectionable, it certainly wouldn't be this much fun.

You could easily call this the sequel to Secret Wars - it has the same mix of baked acoustics, crushing organ and electric guitar lines, staccato vocals, and a meditative finale built around interlocked piano and drums.

The Avalanche is, perhaps predictably, a middling reconstitution of its legitimate predecessor.

Offers taught electro evidence that conviction and innovation can be found in the most minimal environment.

The good stuff (those [first] three tracks, and maybe the indignant “Al Green”) provides Kool Keith an appropriate showcase and sounds like nothing else, but for much of this disc, the main man appears AWOL.

Thankfully, the music that accompanies their lyrical flights of fancy and ever so stoned imagery soothes the chafing caused by such unabashed and often lurid flower power ranting.

What a disappointment.

The layered caramel of [Brett's] voice stays thick from track to track, but finally, it's Rennie's poetry that gives Last Days Of Wonder its legs.

The slower songs on The Warning have a kind of raggedy, pioneering charm.

The opening seven tracks on The Sun Awakens are probably the strongest sequence of songs on any Six Organs release so far.

It’s a fitting overview of everything that’s always worked for Sonic Youth in the past.

The songs are simultaneously more richly detailed and more succinct than those on Segundo and Tres Cosas.

Yet for all its surface appeal, the record has a curiously soulless quality, a lack of vulnerability and humanity that undercuts most of its songs.

Neither of them could truly be called “free” players - most of their own music is fairly composed - and it sometimes seems like they don’t really know what they’re doing with each other.

Puzzles Like You... is not at all Halstead's best work, and what has sounded simple and subtle before begins to feel simplistic and blunt; the songs here move with an energy that seems either forced or mocking, and on the whole embrace the kind of triteness they used to offset.

On the stereo, Who Loves the Sun is almost too pretty, coming perilously close to that "beautiful music" vibe popular in dentists' waiting rooms.

Now You Are One Of Us is worth checking out for its amazing production alone.

That shiver of foreignness adds interest to what is essentially a frothy pop sound, as does the occasionally mesmerizing distortion.

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

No easy listening feat by any stretch of the imagination, Scott Walker's The Drift will provide critics and general music fans with talking points for the next 10 years. It is, simply, a work of staggering emotional sentiment and complexity that few will be able to match.

Last time, the surprise was that after 20 years of hiatus, the band was just as good as ever. This time, they're even better, more cohesive and confident, louder and funnier, still learning from life and each other, and using that experience to create ever more compelling music.

A puny, ill-conceived record in comparison to both Alphabetical and its predecessor United.

This is a decidedly unhurried album, and it takes a while to find the small pleasures within each song. But once you do, it’s really fantastic.

I was really hoping that some critical insight the bigger publications had missed would shine through here, and on this front I am let down, albeit pleasantly: all this record strives to be is a power-pop record, of second-string Lennon/McCartney-crossed-with-Americana type that proliferated in the ‘70s and has carried on, doggedly, through the decades.

Ultimately, the album is explicitly notable for its musicality, rather than its content.