The compositions here are rich, complex, and moving, and they consistently bring out the best in their (very talented) collaborators.

Blunt has proven himself to be a master participant in this aesthetic float-game, and The Narcissist II is his demented billet-doux to the gratification that continues to elude.

12 Desperate Lines takes tried-and-true radio rock tropes and imbues them with enough life to make them feel fresh.

The result is a rap album that fundamentally challenges the notion of what a compilation is.

LaValle’s been trading in spitshined tonal conventions and vacuum-sealed beauty for quite some time now, and this might well be his best effort at putting it to record. But there are already three Album Leaf LPs that do this exact same thing, and the prospect of him doing that thing slightly better simply fails to excite.

Ultimately, High Places have succeeded in doing something that, on paper, seems an impossibility: they've managed to make an album that is undeniably focused around rhythms sound like an absolute slog.

Jaguar Love inject a vicious vitality into their neon-hued rock, and the idea of a dance punk with real fury behind the party is appealing. But in order to avoid being merely irritating or simply diverting, Jaguar Love could benefit from fully unhinging, with an increase in wrath.

As a straight-ahead listen though, it’s oddly paced.

It’s not a terrible album. It’s not a spectacular train wreck. It is, in fact, so remarkably unremarkable that neither a glowing nor incinerating score feel deserved.

While some of the tracks on the album may get bogged down in their own slumped posture, tracks like "The Extremists," "A Go-See," and "Soft Light" are instantly palatable and give a take on the '80s which says, blame the decade, not the music.

The impressions made are that the sublime, the relinquishing of the self can only come with work and time. “-” seems to come from a similar place as The King of Limbs’ latter tracks, which speaks to the notion of human fallibility and fragility, helping make News From Nowhere a decidedly beautiful album.

As good a distillation of pop's best qualities as I've heard all year.

Maybe Warzone is better understood as a deep-cut career retrospective than a singular album. Despite its stylistic consistency, the record is uneven and only its closing track, a reworking of “Imagine,” will ring any bells to those casually familiar with Ono’s work.

Here, then, is a songwriter capable of drawing remarkable depth from swinging pop-rock, crafting a distinctive voice among an oversaturated pop-music landscape and leaving a front-to-back winner of an LP as evidence.

Harbors feels mannered, genteel even; the aesthetic is humanness within mechanical complexity, as the jet wings, lungs, and eye on the album art suggest.

Musically, Somewhere Else treads the ground between organic performance and arrangement, as well as the efficiently expansive possibilities of minimalism and pop in electronic music.

If you like the Super Furry Animals you will definitely enjoy this album.

RTX’s Western Xtermintor packs an undeniable hard-rock punch and leaves no question that the band have both the chops and the attitude to back it up.

e Kranky audience is likely to find the work here to be a charming retrospective. Newcomers should approach Reinhardt’s stuff as a pretty gateway to an era whose ideas continue to fertilize today’s pop.

Rarely will one find a detractor when it comes to Cage’s sheer talent, but--thanks to sterile production and the replacement of hip-hop beats with rap-rock thrashings (“Beat Kids”) and corny, overdramatized hooks (“Captain Bumout”)--Depart From Me demonstrates an immaturity that will render Cage’s career difficult to reconcile.

Light Science manages, thus, to be impressively conducted, self-announcing, and well dressed while remaining static, safe, and a tad lonely.

Its intentions are good, but it’s stuck in trying to make itself into something that it is not: frightening or bold or looming.

Yet if “Shattered” and follow-up “Guaranteed Struggle” are Dälek at their cacophonous and incensed best, subsequent tracks like “Masked Laughter (Nothing’s Left)” and “6dB” reveal a band cultivating a lighter, more introspective side.

The consistently laudable performances and production of Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon make for something that appears effortless and remains engaging throughout its 70-plus-minute runtime.

Stars Are Our Home is a passable enough album. It’s just a bit naggingly stale, even for a fan of this sort of thing.

While they haven't completely redrawn themselves, Alpine Static does signify a step forward for Kinski with its unashamed embrace of guitar rock.

The album gets really repetitive and just drones into the background.

In total, it sort of feels like Campbell and Lanegan want to be on the balcony and in the party at the same time, and so succeed at neither.