A puzzling release.

Often dreamy, sometimes rockin', but rarely more than pedestrian.

Starting with track six, Laughter's Fifth verges on unstoppable.

The problem with Blueberry Boat is that, while it's a musical marvel, it's not an album that I'll keep listening to.

When the songs work – it's some of the best material Faithfull has ever produced. But when they don't – you're left... falling asleep in the car.

An uneven mish-mash of musical ideas that is only occasionally thrilling.

While Waves is not quite a knockout, it delivers some undeniable pleasures nonetheless.

The results are not for the faint of heart – beats stutter uncomfortably, disappear without warning, and practically scratch out the walls of your speakers from the inside.

For every misstep on the mostly acoustic Spooked, there's an undeniable classic.

Grand Mal takes a connoisseur's approach to classic rock, and when it works, the best of Bad Timing can stand tall next to its forefathers.

Second disc Chirpin' Hard is the crowd-pleasing Speakerboxxx to Hill's less-accessible Church Gone Wild.

The whole affair is polished to such mirror-like perfection that I have to dim all the lights and cover my eyes when I listen to it.

Little Heart's Ease is a respectable effort - just not by Royal City standards.

On songs like "In the Afternoon" and "Time is Running out," Maclean fails to add even a shred of feeling to his chilly IDM clones.

Despite the relatively spartan proceedings, there is a substantial amount to latch onto here.

And though the album is full of promising leads and sharp-witted initiative, it's hard to shake the feeling that this album is a collection of unfinished ideas, presented with no pretensions to the contrary.

Restraint and frustration are the dominant themes, but the short, aggressive outbursts don't always offer enough release to justify the fatiguing buildups.

What strikes most is a sense of uncomfortable suspension, and what keeps the album afloat remains a true mystery listen after listen.

Solid, if unspectacular.

If you are not in the right mood, Strange Geometry sounds like pretty melodies, plenty of atmosphere, and not a whole let else.

The Radar Brothers have been called "pastoral," "wandering" and "spacey." Their latest, The Fallen Leaf Pages, adds nothing new to this mix of descriptors.

Though the dark atmosphere can weigh Cavelight down on extended listening, it is the record's most lush, emotional moments, like the operatic "Sunday Séance," that are most suggestive of Blockhead's potential.

Last Night is as moody as funk can get, and the results range from soulful to pretentious.

The spoken-word Sonny and Cher act of Chains and Sue does gets tiresome at moments, lyrics like "you be the follower, let's kill the leader" aren't as clever as their authors believe, and the record does run on a fairly consistent mid-tempo bounce.

It's still very plainly the Dulli Show, placing his cigarette-stained voice and oversized heartache front-and-center.

Bumblebeez brings loose, frenetic energy to a mash-up of likely and unlikely sources.

Despite mining decades-old forms, The Anomoanon's honest rock is hard to dislike.

Battery is an album of diminishing returns that sputters out of steam halfway through.