There’s an unforeseen clarity in his compositions and vocals.

Atmospherically, Barragán falls to a part of the spectrum Blonde Redhead have never found themselves on before, but half of the songs here feel like placeholders for ideas that haven’t been fully excavated.

Short of their obvious opposition, there is little here in the way of meaningful tension between the Angels & Devils.

It’s not so much a new sound as it is a more robust, balanced sound--a beautiful chair perfectly placed in an already beautiful room.

On Green Language, we witness risks. We listen anxiously as Rustie bets a Brinks truck on his emotional wherewithal, and that bet pays out exponentially.

The band may love the sounds of Built to Spill and Superchunk a little too much, but they’re also far too adventurous to settle for apery, least of all on LOSE. It’s their best work yet.

Despite its shortcomings, My Everything succeeds in its primary objective. This is a pop record, clear and simple.

It’s all bolder, fuller, and, well, better.

It starts off brilliantly, but by the end of twelve tracks, it tapers off into an incessant and increasingly underwhelming performance.

In The Wild won’t ruffle feathers, but it’s rarely less than enjoyable.

Twigs’ superb vocal melodies anchor LP1’s flights of experimentation. Were they to be stripped from the album’s bizarre flourishes and dropped into a commercial R&B context, they would stun nonetheless.

While Time isn’t a massive overhaul, Bear in Heaven tweaked where they needed to, and picked up a pretty neat trick along the way. The more you listen to these songs, the more they linger.

They Want My Soul is the sort of mid-career album promising young bands should aspire to, and long-established acts will come to resent.

Shabazz Palaces are often as mystifying as they are mind-bending, but they’re in a class all their own.

hese Days… isn’t the kind of sharp-to-the-touch effort that one associates with excellent rappers who eschew the mainstream.... It’s the start of a conversation; and one can only hope that he plans on finishing it.

Is Trouble In Paradise a groundbreaking work of unparalleled foresight and talent? No. But is it a spectacular assessment of La Roux’s painfully progressive growth over the past half-decade? Maybe.

The album’s 12 bloated, mostly mid-tempo tracks drone on and on, and even when they aren’t technically long they sometimes feel like they might never end because most of them fail to find a hook.

Though her new material is of mixed quality, Sia’s instrument remains uniformly magnificent. She executes vocal cartwheels throughout these twelve songs, delivering great pain with even greater triumph.

Although it exhibits significant growing pains, it still makes for an exciting and entertaining spin.

As it turns out, the Philly collective clean up quite nicely, and Sea When Absent is an involving, wonderfully creative mess.

This album gets a C+ because I really enjoyed the time I spent hating it.

Throughout, Showalter comes over like a visionary risk-taker with nothing to lose, not to mention like a consummate frontman.

Though it never quite comes through crystal-clear, the intensity and sincerity of the underlying emotion manages to bleed through a confusing swirl of altered sounds.

It all comes satisfyingly full circle, but Familiars mostly washes over you when it should be lunging for your heart.

Deep Fantasy is an exceptionally produced collection--really, it’s probably the finest recording job you’ll hear on a rock album this year.

Ultraviolence, a collection of mid-century ballads spiked with blues-rock, is a stunning accomplishment. Its eleven songs whimper and howl, soothe and taunt, hypnotize and thrill.

Black Hours is a throwback, but it’s a throwback that could have benefitted from a few more forward-looking ideas.

Only the opening stanza of “Waitress Song”--in which a major label signee fantasizes about escaping heartbreak by assuming a romanticized working class identity--is outright egregious. The rest is just innocuous.