The band refuses to stick to simple, repetitive rhythms; the guitars regularly squeal with feedback, humming with distortion as they lay down thick 'n' meaty power chords.

It's classy, but also honest. Not a single emotion seems overplayed or exaggerated; you'll dance and sway to it because each song feels as organic as life, and the life it documents is nicely lit.

The music is just as pure and personal and unintermediated as before, but it sounds better in every conceivable way.

Picks up, astonishingly, exactly where the band left off, not exactly retracing old paths but branching off of them into new and exciting vistas.

Summer Make Good blurs the distinctions of digital and analog to the point of opening new categories.

By the time "Our Mutual Friend"'s symphonic percussion and hammering cellos reach their crashing apex, the album begins to feel a little like the fourth consecutive hour at a well-stocked party full of musical theater majors.

Taken as a group, Heroes to Zeros' slower songs are the musical equivalent of a month-long sinus infection: heavy on the repetition, sleepy detachment and sensory deprivation.

Their songs routinely beg for a spoken message, to the point where their originals sound like dub versions.

Whether the band is shakin' its collective art-rock ass to syncopated beats or barreling through treble-infused dueling guitar throwdowns, there's never a dull moment here.

A band more fixated with guitar solos and drunken fist-pumping than in the more nuanced, desperate territory of their former incarnation [Lifter Puller].

Yes, Lali Puna are taking the Radiohead Route. Not just thematically, either: the tone and ambience of Faking the Books is as detached and cold as Amnesiac was, though more straightforward: there are more "straight" guitars and "actual" drums on this album.

Walking emphasizes songwriting over gimmickry; even divorced from the studio fireworks, the tunes are engaging, hummable, memorable, and will only grow more so with repeat spins.

A charming, if often bewildering, set of psychedelic junk-folk ditties.

As ordered as it is wild, as gorgeous as it is gruesome, Lay of the Land is indeed a ballsy record.

Tortoise have created another batch of distinct, inimitable songs that strike a perfect balance between the academic and the playful, the immediate and the eternal.

There's not quite enough to justify the addition of another album to the Blondie catalogue.

These new stylistic change-ups give Of Montreal a contemporary edge, but dull the pastoral chaos that made them so charming to start with.

The Silent League weave lush musical tapestries with a real humility at heart, preventing themselves from ever taking this orchestral deal too seriously, while remaining focused just enough to produce an album of stunning sonic quality.

Deliberately slow in tempo, delicately arranged, emphatically "dreamy" in tone, Misery is a Butterfly is lovely, but also difficult going for Blonde Redhead fans.

Our Endless Numbered Days won't knock you off your seat with ribald lyrics or rambunctious riffs, but its confident, measured chords and precise tones will hold your attention long after they've grabbed it.

The group creates an ornately atmospheric resonance throughout Ambulance Ltd., but their light-weight compositions place the album at serious risk of floating away.

Madvillainy isn't really an inaccessible record. It may take a couple of spins for you to get involved, but once you've passed that initial adaptation, it stays with you.

Truly unlike anything else you'll hear this year, hip-hop or otherwise.

Seven Swans plays like a stripped-down, less thematic counterpart to its predecessor. It's also strong enough in its own right to keep fans arguing for months over which album is better.

Another eclectic, bold and idiosyncratic concoction of modern jazz.

Finely crafted, if modestly affecting, froth-pop that bubbles over with dreary sexual overtones and loads of youthful paranoia.

If you've heard the group's last few albums, Milk Man won't seem like a notable refinement or a grand statement of purpose; they're just breaking the pop song mold, over and over again, and doing consistently inventive things with the fragments.

Though it might be a difficult listen in spots (especially for the rave-ier set), the disc definitely shows Jenkinson stretching his musical limbs, and it's a fascinating sight.