Sonically these songs are crafted out of beautifully thin, translucent textures that brush over one another to create half hues and harmonies. And lyrically, too, they pile evocative, not definitive, images one on top of the other, until a song can encompass two diametrically opposed ideas without any tension at all.

It’s worth making it through these bare patches for the two gorgeous glimmers of light at the end of the album.

The Gathering is weighted in every way, heavy with distortion-crusted guitars, sluggish tempos and an earnest, perhaps even over-earnest, search for meaning.

There can never be too much of this kind of music--so there's a built-in safety in Ways of Meaning for Dunn as an artist and for its listeners. It's automatically successful if you take it up on its own terms, but I get the feeling Dunn is inching his way toward something that elicits a more nuanced response.

Bad News Boys works more as a collection of singles than a continuous listening experience. You’re constantly switching gears as you move through it.

Fields, the third release and first full-length album from the Swedish trio Junip, both meets and defies expectations.

It's hard to think of a more reliable, compulsively listenable formula for new wave guitar pop romance than the one that Wild Nothing has so quickly perfected.

With I Have Fought Against It, but I Can’t Any Longer, the Body have generated a record of power electronics, descending at times into harsh noise, punctuated at points by mournful passages of ambient beauty.

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."

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.

For most artists, this album would be a significant achievement--but we've come to expect more from Massive Attack.

A decidedly pleasant listening experience, if not an altogether important one.

A lot of what's contained on this disc reaches for the transcendent and often attains that lofty goal. Even when it doesn't, though, it's still very much worth the listen.

Their debut conveys a unique sensibility that's endearing without being cloying or calculated.

It succeeds, unequivocally, as usual.

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

Kowton’s clarity of vision after eight songs and 41 minutes leaves no doubt at the intent of its creator. You’d be a fool to argue with the results.

It hops around from elliptical soundscapes to bright pop songs to surfy psychedelia to brashly incisive rock, just as its progenitor does, and it’s an engaging if discontinuous ride.

Far Enough is the first of this band’s albums to get a wide U.S. release, and it’s a doozy, no question. ... This is no over-earnest diatribe. It’s a series of party anthems about stuff that matters. One drum flattening call to arms insists that “Anger’s Not Enough,” and that’s right, there’s a lot more here. But it’s a really good place to start.

A graceful, thoughtful, utterly modest triumph, wrapping its twisty modal melodies in layers of fuzz and convening a junk shop orchestra of synths, drums, keyboards and, occasionally, harpsichord to fill out their fragile contours. Like all good pop, the songs have an emotional ambiguity.

Mountain Battles gets less right than Pod or Last Splash did, but hits the target more often than Pacer or Title TK. Either way, it's probably a bit better than you expect.

They may only be covering a small slice of what they’ve achieved previously here, but they so totally capture their moment that these songs blot out much of the world around them, so that they only exist, with you, blanketing day and night.

On It’s Up to Emma, her sixth album, songs like “My Man” and “What Can I Do” are a bit of a shock--lusher, denser, subtler, their gut-punching intensity smoothed with sustained sounds.

It's to Ejstes credit that he's stayed his course, continuing to pull together nostalgic and post-millennial sounds instead of chasing a mass audience that he probably couldn't have kept anyway.

Bands like Eternal Tapestry ask listeners to slow down, to be less antsy and goal-oriented, and to simply let time and musical texture wash over them. That's fine, but wouldn't you rather have an instrumental psych track grab you by the balls? Let's have more galactic, more derelict, more excitement next time.

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

If not for the wisdom, lend an ear to these marginal spaces for the sounds within are their own reward.