Always ambitious, occasionally experimental, and sometimes even radio-friendly.

It's an effortless move to help firm up No Age's place as one of the most bi-polar party bands around.

White Chalk is more chamber music, and a dark chamber at that. The only flickers of light come from Harvey’s voice: high, airy, and imperiled as she weaves her echo-coated and darkly soulful spell till the story’s bleak finale.

It’s Dulli sounding like Dulli at his best. And Lanegan delivers some of his more devastating vocal performances.

Although it doesn’t attain the career-defining cumulative power of 2005's "Gypsy Punks," it's a broader, more intricate disc.

The dreamwave immersion and haunting power of Hunter's vocals invite comparisons to fellow Baltimore mood-wizards Beach House, but whereas Teen Dream aimed for beauty even at its darkest, Lower Dens keeps things weird.

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.

Somehow, though, they forgot the crucial dollop of excitement or charisma, so we're left with an earful of directionless heartbreak and failure.

The King of Limbs, a breezy exploration of the depths of subliminal glitch-folk, is this band's admission that the labyrinth of post–OK Computer zigs and zags they've led their audience through may never again lead to an arena-rock goldmine.

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.”

It's a bummer that Visions ended up as a fever dream of a record: unnecessarily oblique, listlessly long (48 minutes!), and painfully shapeless.

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.