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.

White, who is deeply respected by his peers, makes some clever moves on All Hits: Memories which clear the way. The first move is to turn toward free jazz, where solo percussion is a bit more familiar than in indie rock. Without doubt he has the chops, too, shifting between groovy phrases and episodes that expand and branch rhizomatically.

Even accounting for his career of uncharitable experimentation, Martin Rev’s eighth solo album is something new again. To wit, it’s a haunting, intricate electro-classical record.

The rehearsal takes are probably the real draw (aside from the customary production corrections and sonic scrub all reissues get) for those already tuned to the album’s contrary wavelength, and they do not disappoint.

Nothing is entirely serious. It’s all in fun--and it is fun, fortunately.

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.

He’s smart enough to be aware of his dorkiness, and by the end of Live From Rome he has almost turned it into an asset.

What makes Strength In Numbers interesting is the way it departs from the usual.

Although there are a few ever-so slightly awkward moments, Portrait bears the marks of a perfect collaboration, one in which two very strong (and very different) personal aesthetics merge seamlessly together into one unified vision.

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

Far from snuffing out, Windsor For The Derby sounds like a band with a new lease on life.

Jet Lag is a modest slice of lonesome lo-fi indie folk as they used to make it back when the para-Pavement galaxy was still busy splintering into its constituent planets, the ruminative Bermans and the verbose Pollards and the melodically off-kilter Barlows.

Nine bracing blasts of terse, catchy noise-pop.

Like a lot of music benefiting from the blogosphere's voracious appetite for the new, Boys and Diamonds is a bricoleur's hodge-podge of style.

The A List of Burning Mountains performance is a stand-out LP, which shows a pleasing growth of confidence to expand beyond the confines of hyphen-rock.

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.

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.

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.

When obtuse means nonsensical and there's no one consistently there to tie the free associations together, it becomes less a case of judging Vast on his own street odyssey and more a case, ironically, of falling back to where we started in the least desirable way: It's good, yeah, but it's no "Iron Galaxy."

A bit melodramatic, but undeniably compelling, Scattergood’s work has already drawn comparisons to Tori Amos and Kate Bush.

For a collaboration that could've easily become a Cocoon of styles and persons past, The Orbserver in the Star House plays surprisingly spry.

This is a wonderful album, easily as good, though perhaps less immediately accessible, than last year’s "Rites of Uncovering."

Calamity shows the Curtains to be a band of great moments more than great songs, and in this distinction lies the difference between the listener that dismisses the album and the one that holds on to it despite its flaws.

Six Cups is a busy, urgent and joyous trip that sidesteps categorization, a feat unto itself in field where new micro-genres are described every few months.

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

Cosy Moments moves slightly toward pop-and-hook than the last Kinski album did, but more than maintains its integrity as an outsized purveyor of aggressive guitar rock.

It seems borne more out of logical considerations than organic ones. It doesn’t mean the music is necessarily bad, but rather that it’s animated more out of a lifelessness than anything else. It’s undead music.

The weird and promising thing is that it works without ever feeling natural. The actual coexistence of the earnest and the smoove stops being so striking after a while, but the best songs on Rules don’t let you forget there is one.