In a way, this is representative of the album--it's got all the right moves in place, but MSTRKRFT's handle on content is still slightly lagging behind their facility for tone and form.

They’ve been slowing down for a while now, but here they feel nearly worn out.

There's no getting around the fact that June 2009 acquires most of its value, if not all of it, in context with Causers of This and Underneath the Pine.

The kind of music that Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, La-La and Po might enjoy kicking back to after a hard day's romping with bunny rabbits.

While Rap-Metal 101 drums bang away in the background, the basslines are replaced by chugging guitar riffs reminiscent of your high school hardcore band. What remains, though, is the exceptional quality of Pharrell's voice, which, unlike the bass sound, doesn't lose its intensity due to repeated radio exposure.

It can't be said that Senior fails to meet its modest wallpaper-ish aims, yet it hardly represents the best Royksopp has to offer.

As a benefit for earthquake victims and as an outlet for Batoh's grief and fear, there's plenty to recommend. As a pure sonic experience, it is a very novel, very undeveloped idea mingling with some very old ones.

Domesticated is a concept album whose concept falls flat; a shot at the future that’s too in debt to the past; a brilliant idea consumed by inertia—less back-breaking deep clean than half-hearted tidy.

Although Everything Touching is post-rock at its most winsome, and rarely unpleasant to listen to, closer "Murmurations" might be the key to understanding why several years of triumphant live shows hasn't translated into the ultimate debut album.

Geist's contributions to electronica have always seemed fringe--label head, remix specialist, in-demand crate digger--and it's once again nice for him to have something to put his own name on. But after years of waiting, Double Night Time confirms that Geist is most valuable behind the curtain.

Future Bible Heroes frontman Chris Ewen just isn't a Merritt-caliber composer, and this EP suffers in comparison to the Magnetic Fields.

Though each track is named for where it was recorded, there’s not much to distinguish one stop from another, and though you could connect the locations into a journey, these tracks don’t form an arc but play as if stacked atop one another.

All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone is the musical equivalent of a late Woody Allen film (possibly a good or bad thing, depending on your temperament): The action unfolds predictably, but the dramatic effect can also be increased by your fondness for and familiarity with the idiom.

The result sounds like something that's already been comp'ed to death by Putumayo.

Shine isn’t dark. But it feels like an exercise in avoidance as if Wale took the advice to ease up too far.

Even as he shifts from his typically elliptical songwriting to more structure-bound forms, he never sounds overly fussy. It makes Former Lives a brisk listen even when the songs themselves aren't particularly innovative.

The countrypolitan aspirations of Bury Me often make it sound hollow--there's a basis in roots music, but it isn't "rootsy" by any stretch. Instead, the clean-shaven guitars, pedal steels, and violins (not fiddles) achieve an eerie minimalism.

A good deal of this album sounds like it could've been recorded by a lone foot-stomping folksinger, carrying over the intimate, around-the-kitchen-table ambience of Ebert's 2011 solo release, Alexander.

As impressive and encouraging as the production is, Pemberton's rapping isn't up to snuff. He's still overly dry and often noticeably amateurish, and he sometimes pushes himself to do things he can't.

The biggest difference between the two 6ths records is obvious: Wasps' Nest allowed some of indie rock's finest vocalists to lend their talents to a grade-a batch of Merritt tunes; Hyacinths and Thistles pairs remarkably average Merritt songs with largely substandard vocalists.

In general, the album is sequenced awkwardly. The first two tracks have vocals and are around 19 and seven minutes long, respectively.

A Positive Rage isn't much of an opening gambit. It's a memento for the fans, for better or for worse. But if you were too loaded on Halloween 2007 to remember much from this show, maybe this is the album for you.

There’s nothing here that touches the band’s creative peak--and, honestly, even the best of these nine songs falter next to Wonky’s highs--but there’s just enough pleasure to be gained on Monsters Exist to justify the album as a worthwhile endeavor.

Revisit older Factory Floor tracks like “A Wooden Box” or “(R E A L L O V E)” and there remains something tantalizing there--the way they morph back and forth between live band and broiling techno, a trompe l’oeil for the ear. On 25 25, they’ve shed this dimension, and the results can feel depthless and a little flat.

The aesthetics of her songs with Hershenow remain timid and careful.

The upshot of these six tracks seems to be that Adult. have been listening to a hell of a lot of Bauhaus. And I have to give them credit: They've followed that impulse right out to the sweet spot.

Despite a couple of intriguing, spaced-out interludes that have much in common with Boards of Canada's inky psychedelia, the album carries on predictably, checking off boxes: punishing banger ("Extrusion"), acid workout ("Spirals"), piano-led stomper ("0I0x").

Most of Tree City sounds lifted from Britt Daniel's songbook. By that, I don't mean it sounds somewhat like it. I mean, it sounds like they stole the tapes from Britt's house and scribbled their name over his.