A disappointment, maybe, but that’s to be expected – and shouldn’t we prefer that he want to give us something new?

Security is absolutely accessible, with a broad, potentially surprising appeal for those willing to listen.

Another quixotic, cerebral, and indispensable album from one of Canada’s great talents.

True, Money Mark has a typical singer-songwriter vocal presence, but lighthearted lyrics sprinkled with clever one-liners here and there do a sufficient job.

All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone isn’t the band reinventing themselves. Instead, you’ll have to settle for Explosions in the Sky perfecting their craft, which is nice to hear regardless of genre.

Sex Change will please both their fans and newcomers; in fact it might be one of the best intros to their work so far.

King for a Day will definitely ‘love you long time’ with its bloated tracklisting, but you’ll soon realize that the attention-getting devices are working in reverse. Sure, they’ll cause you to crook your neck and gaze curiously, but once it all comes into focus, you’re likely to move on to better things.

Although his rough-around-the-edges production and label affiliation suggest he is a folkie or New Weird American, his songwriting harkens back more to Tin Pan Alley than The Incredible String Band.

Their flutters of effects, long, frosted periods of sonic dormancy, pefectly balanced twin vocals, and general sense of space set them apart from the herd with a surety you only see in the elite.

While spare in its construction, Copia offers a bounty of emotion for those who give it the chance.

An unapologetically lovely affair that is sure to soothe the frazzled nerves of its discerning listening public.

Juggling potential contradictions with the greatest of ease, In Advance of the Broken Arm ushers in a new voice in rock, one that seems poised to be blazing trails for years to come.

The more I listen to Tones of Town, the more I can’t get it out of my head.

NMW works as a ‘00s update of British invasion rock and orchestral and baroque pop, just as Jeff Lynne and the boys updated those sounds for the ‘70s.

It’s a difficult album to love, or even like. But, for all its faults — and there are many — there is enough here to make one think that maybe, just maybe, Bloc Party are capable of making, with their third LP, the kind of challenging yet highly accessible pop album they think they’ve made here.

The collages he’s created are undoubtedly lovely, but as they stand, the songs sound more like attractive opportunities for great musicality than confident realizations of it.

Replacing the kitschy DIY aesthetic with intentional roughness and bloating each nook and cranny with some sort of sound, what’s emphasized is its production, not its songwriting.... At the same time, however, it’s the production that makes the album somewhat interesting.

His choruses are instantly memorable and his word-soup lyricism easily places him in the upper echelon of intelligent emcees, somewhere between MF Doom and Dose One.

There’s No 666 will challenge you as much as anything you’ve heard in the last year, in both good ways and bad.

A generous musical vocabulary enables each song to speak with both a familiar voice and novel inflections.

[A] near-masterpiece.

Deerhoof may be more serious this time around, but the music’s still very imaginative and fun.

What makes these songs so positively delicious, in the same way that going on a bender can be a welcome alternative to crying into a pillow, is that Barnes realizes how seductive misery can be.

While Menomena’s sound has matured and their musical prowess has grown considerably, similarities between songs of old and new are unmistakable.

[It] finds her in fine form.

Chalk this one up as a failed experiment, albeit one that ups enthusiasm for explorations to come.

The lyrics are particularly generic, even for a pop band, and they render The Broken West’s mission obsolete.

An album that, much like Pinback’s 2004 full-length Summer in Abaddon, is more immediate in its appeal but suffers from repeated listens.