Throw It to the Universe, number six on the docket by the sextet, keeps pace with past efforts despite dragging at times.

Although Citrus allures with its dizzying waves of sound and airy melodies, the band never let those elements become tangential or spiral off into cul-de-sacs of pointless theatrics.

If there are a few dull moments, that’s all part of recording an album that functions like one extended, magnificent achievement of a song.

It’s as warm and melodic as the Soft Boys’ Nextdoorland was brittle and jagged.

As dense and diggable as it may be, however, its sheer quantity of intel and change-ups can be euphorically overwhelming.

Silver Age is the best album Mould has released since his days in Sugar.

Under the Skin’s tenderly whispered ruminations... are gripping little creations, full of weird acoustic-guitar riffs and uncomfortably intimate vocals and open revelations about the anxiety he feels in trying to reassert his creative identity at this late date.

It's all well and good, but this experiment works best when Ditto showcases her snarly pipes, as on the break-up-themed cruncher "Open Heart Surgery." Otherwise, she's just awash in layers of electronica that dilute her Southern bite.

Throw on those headphones and head heavenward.

If the lyrics weren’t so surreal, you could imagine yourself dining with George and Tammy before a Grand Ole Opry performance.

The title cut is the best of the lot, an anthem about the beautiful chaos of family life where wine is sipped from a jelly jar and “peanut butter is everywhere.”

Ascent is stuffed with psychedelic guitar virtuosity, moments where Chasny leaves this plane and enters one of those transcendental, mind-freaked, head-tipped-back, eyelid-fluttering states that few are capable of.

Humor, melody, and weirdness rule, and that makes Ceramic Dog lighter than both Ribot’s Los Cubanos Postizos Afro-Cuban band and his aggro-noise outfit Shrek.

When Longstreth uses his newfound focus to shake up his methods... the results are often startling.

The template holds.

Rising Down is a grim mirror of a particular time and place, one that will still be worth the look when (if?) things get better somewhere down the line.

There is no mistaking, Parade is Keene at his best.

Suffice to say that with all its slowly blooming beauty, alluring aberrations, and deftly measured brute force, the closest analogue to what Fennesz has done on Black Sea seems to be nature itself.

Although his latest is less personal, it has a similarly broad emotional scope and a warm sonic palette far from the house-rocking R&B that’s the foundation of his four-decade career.

Even at Tesfaye's most awkward, it's impossible not to be intoxicated.

A merger made in musical heaven.

Blending in traditional strings and flutes, singular soulful vocals, trenchant dub pockets, and inventive production flourishes, this is the most powerful contemporary release out of Ethiopia in years.

So many wonderful things happen on Lenses Alien that you can't possibly remember them all. The only solution, of course, is to listen again.

Travels with Myself and Another doesn't quite live up to the band's first studio album, 2007's "Curses," but it reaches the same boorishly absurd heights on the spastic 'Drink Nike' and on 'Stand by Your Manatee,' a catchy freakout about the "shame" of using plastic silverware.

Son exudes the studied calm of a laboratory technician engaged in heavy-duty experimentation.

What makes this inspirational lyrical gimmick work is the quality of the songs and the sure-footedness of Mottet's approach to sound, a not-so-distant European relative of the Elephant 6 palette.

The smooth shape of this album - there's no rising or falling action - and lack of a big concept won't replace 2005's Black Sheep Boy for diehard fans, just as the superior The Stand-Ins didn't in 2008. But Elvis Costello fans should holler.

More than just a slack reunion, the album marks another turning point in a band who may yet wind up describing a circle.