Talahomi Way is so strongly rooted in a sense of location that it makes little sense in transit on a pair of headphones, where its fine detail is compressed and channelled directly into your ears, and the images painted by the lyrics are forced to compete with your own changing scenery. Music like this needs to inhabit a space, preferably a sunny one.

Woodkid has a sound that is unique in the music landscape, and most of the songs on this album are exciting, evocative tracks that play to the most basic of emotions: love, loss and redemption.

It’s a solid record; put it on and forget it.

The album also crammed full of innovative bleeps and squeaks - if you're familiar with Four Tet you'll know the sort of thing--which add more of a unique selling point which in the end isn't all that necessary, because this is a somewhat dazzling album from some great talents, and it has an abundance of riches.

Ten Kens are hook-savvy, brilliantly subtle at change-ups and they really capture your attention without making your ears bleed.

Not everything dazzles, but it’s truly shocking what does.

With the exception of the more melodious tracks coming in pairs and slightly hindering the flow of an otherwise excellent album, Specter at the Feast is a very good effort from BRMC, and an example of the continued revitalization that started sometime around Leah Shapiro’s arrival to the band in 2008.

The only problem (and I don't even know if its a problem) is that every track registers as an epic of some sort, so much so that the album itself registers as a pleasurable, cathartic blur rather than a cohesive statement itself.

When an album's main faults are that its too upbeat and lyrically too ambitious, it really is one that deserves to be talked about.

Although Kiss and Tell doesn’t quite match the dizzy heights of its major influences, it is without a doubt Sahara Hotnights’ finest album to date.

Get Lost may not be the incredible experience that Living was, but it's still a very enjoyable listen.

Their jokes and concepts and imitations have sunk into their bones and become tools for them to make some of the best music of the year thus far.

It closes with the sigh of "Bramble," another one of the band’s well-crafted whispers that seems more like a lo-fi sketch than a fully realized song. In isolated moments like this Welcome Joy shines as a companion piece equal to their first release, "Invitation Songs."

Ultimately, Time’s liquidity, while mesmerising to some, will be a distance myth to others.

Dinowalrus is at the surface, speaking the language spoken years ago by the voices on those dusty LPs they hold near and dear but that’s part of the problem.

Love 2 is not only the latest chapter in Air’s space-rock adventure, it’s a sequel that triumphs its predecessor.

Digging into Robert Pollard is an invigorating bit of fun, and it's what's made the man a success. By all accounts, Space City Kicks is more of exactly that.

Battle Born, doesn't quite reach those heights [of their debut, Hot Fuss], but it comes close.

Despite being nothing original, Crimes of Passion comes off a good rehashing of the genre, making you rethink what Jesus and The Mary Chain's Just Like Honey really meant.

Penny Sparkle straddles the line between comfort and tension, the woozy synths bleed into one another, the music is warm and enveloping but frequent, unexpected minor chords and bass rumbles mean you can never be as comfortable as you'd wish to be.

Boats has made something beautiful and invigorating at moments, while puzzling and slightly alienating at others.

It’s more of an unconscious escape hatch that Lynch has constructed with intangible aural elements--a fantasy place that he allows us to walk around in for a while until we are forced back into the realm of the painfully awake.

In the Cool of the Day is far from perfect, though. Moore's smooth vocal delivery suits the more minimal productions well, but it can become cloying when the backing track is too upbeat, such as on the irritating Up Above My Head.

It’s not Pixies as you’d like to remember them, but for the first time in years it sounds as if they’re actually enjoying themselves.

It's new, fresh, and energetic, all of which are not entirely surprising from an obviously skilled group, but it's in the execution that everything comes into clarity.

Most of the songs on In A Warzone are full of energy, and it’s hard not to get swept up in the slimmed down punk rock that the album delivers with gusto. However, there is definitely a point where they start to sound very similar.

All in all, it delivers the chuckles and a few guffaws, even if they are hitting up against the law of diminishing returns.

It's a nicely balanced record: It's not as if the 'old' Asobi Seksu has disappeared and been replaced with a slightly more cheerful android version of the band--but there's a definite shift here.