Nine Types of Light has the same basic sonic patina, but TV on the Radio still have cards left to play.

Through this the mesmerizing plan of the album becomes, at last, apparent. The issue of making sense becomes a far-off one.

This is music at its most carnal.

While Actor’s best moments may not reach the same high points as Marry Me’s, it’s an even more cohesive effort, and one that I haven’t tired of after countless listens.

It is the right kind of unsettling to get your feet and heart pounding with the full power of your soul in total awareness of the moment. Embrace the darkness and appreciate the light.

The fact that Venice takes a few missteps before getting into full strut inevitably takes its toll on the overall body of work.

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.

The album holds to the unambitious qualities deemed upon indie pop and twee pop, exploring no new territory while doing just enough to make it sound like themselves.

Aesop has tremendous control for a syllable-stuffer; he's Kweli with restraint, knowing when to rein in the racehorse flow and slow down for emphasis, never loosening his grip long enough to stumble over the vigorous drum-driven beats, which - to the benefit of Aesop's gruff narration - are simple and unobtrusive and angry and allow whatever he's talking about at the moment ... to sound not only compelling, but also hard.

It has a very laidback, late night, smoky loft vibe going on.

What keeps Last Exit grounded is the laid-back approach to the vocals and beats.

While nothing wholly spectacular, 'Sno Angel is no less an exceptional effort from a charmingly earnest, yet still somewhat self-conscious, lyricist and singer.

Abandon’s hammering slow pneumatic-drill beats are not so much an all-out assault as a grueling siege, in which the beleaguered inhabitants of the psyche find themselves starving, barely existing in a rising cesspool of their own shit and vomit, ridden with epidemic disease, turning to cannibalism and to frantic final Decameronesque debaucheries.

An album of satisfying, summery rock.

If you’re fond of the curious, Icky Thump is the choice White Stripes album.

This album is an embarrassment of riches.

It’s obviously well-crafted and well-executed.

The lyrics here are sparse and, as with most of the album, indiscernible. It’s rare that a rock album could be so enjoyable without a great presence of the English language, but Person to Person certainly is.

It is big, but without feeling grandiose. While Everything Ecstatic was bursting at the seams, bright and flashing with cacophony, Hebden doesn't try to dazzle us with any sudden moves this time around. And the album is a joy.

Their days of wild experimentation seem to be over, but on Hot Sauce Committee (and the fine tracks they left off, some of which have been made available online), they demonstrate that there are plenty of nooks and crannies to explore within that style.

This is easily Saint Etienne's best album since 1998's Good Humor.

Bitchin Bajas is a spa resort for the ears, with many comfortable zones under its pleasure dome.

Kiasmos has the feel of one of those albums that electronic heads will continue to celebrate with each passing decade, a work incomparable to any of its contemporaries that elevates the conversation for them all.

As an album, London Zoo is simply more engaging. Kevin’s production is intense but club-ready, and the lyrics are righteous and relevant.

Musically, the album’s apparent incompleteness--the always dissolving lack of coherence, the mosaic of multiple voices, the chance and chaos by which the songs were arranged--abides by the peripheral pull of curiosity. ... Curiosity perforates the veil and returns, yet remains ephemeral.

She's just as accomplished as a woodsy singer-songwriter as she is a synth-pop Star.

Beyond Belief is at its best when exploring the conflict beneath.

There’s an extemporaneous feeling to A Ways Away that persists amid its clear recording quality and allows O’Neil to sing quietly as though she’s unsure of herself, while still underscoring a natural sort of confidence--she doesn’t have to sing loudly.

In Love With Oblivion is generic in the best sense of the term, a record that blasts a bright light through its otherwise dead sources.

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.

13 Moons is a celebration of fading detail, a reminder that we’ll only ever continue to forget.

Distortion does not reinvent the wheel of alternative rock, but it may have just started it spinning again.

Wrapped in a overwhelming number of influences, Oh No vaults across an infinity of cultural milieus to find itself.

Dancer Equired is a fine and mature next entry in the growing catalog of three of Columbus' finest.

black midi aim to dazzle and perform, and with Schlagenheim, their mammoth ideations never cease to thrill, the product of a boundless creative spirit and unwavering techni

It is no accident; Jaga Jazzist is trying to blow your mind. It is supposed to feel like a masterpiece.

This rocks.

At first, you’re itching for her to tear into such a juicy beat. But after a couple of listens, you realize it’s a tactful deference that allows her to be in the mix without commandeering it. She could if she wanted to, but she’s passed that.

Despite the mystifying veil that has been draped over the album, it’s an insightful journey that has our West Country enigma plotting past projections of the future with mesmerizing ease.

Next to "Knots," the rest of the record feels like a sort of necessary supplement. The quiet before and after the storm, it prepares and relieves us.

In 2016, “long live rock” is way too sweeping, among other things. So long live this. It’s just about right.

At eight songs in 34 minutes, it’s the band’s shortest, but it’s also perhaps the best distillation and presentation of their sound, coming off like a stranger, dreamier sister album to Shake My Head.

Throughout its brisk playtime, Overgrown Path evinces an airy touch with transitions, a knack for phrasing (the pauses and extra beats always find their right place), and an invidiously deft hand for crafting verses equal to their choruses.

The giant, immense void that swallows sound in Part 1 shows itself in Part 5 to be just another windmill, slain by Ambarchi’s guitar and studio magic.

Silver Mt. Zion (now a quintet) extract so much harried beauty and grace out of the world’s sorry predicament that it seems unbelievable that they wouldn’t be dispossessing themselves of something if all their/our problems were magically solved one day.

The caveat is that this is primarily dance music, and doesn't make for a super-compelling listen on a full attention basis.

An incredibly compelling collection of inventive folk-tinged melodies.

This is probably the best album we've seen in the new millennium from a mid-'90s techno producer.

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.

Ed Askew will continue to write, observe, reflect, and create visions and words. This result is timeless enough to remain there if one wants it.

Number 1 Angel is a maybe mixtape, sorta free, but released by a voice that’s constantly solving life’s real problems with the imagined solutions of pop music.

While 936's perpetual schizophrenia is noteworthy, it's Peaking Lights' songwriting that elevates 936.

It’s great to have a thematically consistent and well-executed Thee Oh Sees album.

2011 has yielded precisely one TyM release worth your time, and this is it.

Ultimately, Sold Out is not doing what its title cheekily alludes to. Although it traverses a variety of genres outside of footwork’s typical territory, DJ Paypal never relents on the actual practice of the juke: the core sound of the beat, getting danced on.

The decaying aural ellipsis felt hanging in the aether marks the dusky road of the album’s fist half. This is dark stuff, darker than our main man Hart is known for.

Bill Orcutt is a mid-career eponymous release. This is a familiar signifier of artistic reinvention.

While the conceptual ambitions occasionally overstep the mark, they rarely get in the way of the cerebral and gluteal-vibratory enjoyment that is to be found. It's a work no less beneficial than entertaining.

Sigur Rós are still significant, but Takk sounds safe.

Arm’s Way is a detailed, richly-rewarding album. These are undeniably melodramatic AOR songs--but they’re nuanced in form, graced with melody, and any obvious tropes are usually subverted.

I've rarely heard an album that wields so many weapons--not effortlessly, but with such painstaking mastery that it's almost arduous not to be won over.

Their residency was capped by a performance of their new record, Exotic Creatures of the Deep. Their crowning achievement? There is certainly a case to be made for it.

Ditto and company take indie-rock in a direction many of its fans are not used to, in that the focus is mostly about the human voice and the way the musicians compliment the singer's attack.

Another album to blow up the cemetery to.

Tom Verlaine has delivered yet another beautiful creation to us.

Guitarist Cassie Ramone and bassist Katy Goodman haven’t tweaked much of their fast-paced and fuzz-caked formula this time around, but they’ve certainly refined the hell out of it. Never has the band sounded so imposing in a studio setting, reining their once-uncontainable feedback into a beefy wall of sound.

On Pop 2, Charli XCX returns for more profligacy, yet this time with a keener perspective recalibrated by the nuances of young adult maturity.

Where music fails to tell a story, Beam’s lyricism fills in the details.

Equal parts 007-intrigue and spaghetti western-histrionics, this is music at its most cinematic.

Even if Album doesn’t turn out to be all it’s been made out to be by the reams of hype already bestowed upon it, it’s certainly working at the moment.

But no matter how much I sit here listening to Broken Social Scene, and no matter how special most of these tracks are, they lack the cohesiveness that made You Forgot it in People, and even Feel Good Lost, something to get ecstatic about.

The Visitor seems especially appropriate in this age of additive excess. It’s less a demonstration of O’Rourke’s ego than of his conceptual vision, which has always been relayed with an innate sense of purpose--a rarity these days.

It is a delicate alchemy of tight metronomic grooves and carefully parsed instrumental interplay, to the point where nothing steals the show.

Black Holes and Revelations is probably the least restrained album of 2006, which for some is a blessing, for others a pretentious annoyance. It is, however, a focused album.

Neither a remix nor a remodel, even less a tribute to an inspiration, these songs sound the same yearning breathed in different breaths.

Within the extravagant walls of Versailles, this cosmic, spacious work must have been transfixing. Coming through a humble set of headphones, it’s still pretty enchanting.

Something Dirty has something of the reliability and surprise of rediscovering a trusty, well-trod paperback on the shelves of a particularly high-quality, secondhand but not-to-be-outdone bookstore.

Suspending cynicism for a moment, this is their strongest release to date.

Thee Oh Sees are keen students of both the restrictions and liberations of rock music, and therefore continue to thrive with the glad clutter that is reinforcement over renovation of their sound.

Fabulous Muscles contains some of the band's best songs since Knife Play.

AlunaGeorge have built a happy marriage out of the slick and the smart, and with Body Music, they just might manage the trick of making everyone else--from old fans to new ones; from critics to their record labels--happy too.

Canopy Glow sees the band returning to a more straightforward pop format--as straightforward as a band with a penchant for the theatrical may ever get--with successful results.

At times, the record is just classically Surreal, a bucolic unheimlich provoking a fleeting confrontation with the unconscious. What remains most alluring about this experiment’s broken logic is the sense that you’re furtively occupying someone else’s dream.

A tightly-controlled, affectively capacious accumulation of sound that communicates beyond speech. In its collection of styles, histories, and genres, it weaves a mesh for the listener to inhabit.

Rather than attempt to recruit other players and resume business as usual, Broadcast subsumes House’s spectral compositions within a framework that suits every one of the duo’s strengths. If there’s anything scary about this at all, it’s the ease with which they’ve made the corpse of pop songcraft climb from its grave and walk anew.

For anyone with ears tired of the sirens, the red herrings, surfing the more visible peaks of the endless ocean in search of something worth combing over, you'll find this spacebound lighthouse a good place to put your feet up; and get up on your feet, if so inclined. Thoroughly recommended.

Now seven full-lengths into their career, Xiu Xiu have hit a milestone with Dear God, I Hate Myself. Over 12 songs, they condense the best aspects of all their previous albums to craft what may prove to be their finest hour.

This is music for that, a form of attention, a voice answering a voice.

Yet another charming balance of winsome melody, subtle studio twinkle, frolicking rock, and tinges of country meshed against traditional song structures.

There may not be clear answers to the riddles of identity and agency posed on My Woman, but even in all of its knotty uncertainty, to be caught in Olsen’s web is such a sweet place to be.

Like Plowing Into The Field Of Love, this album is rich and complex.

It’s certainly a strange pairing at first glance, but it’s a testament to both Prudhomme’s versatility and Lopatin’s curation that Remembrance is a perfect fit for the typically hi-def, post-internet sounds of Software.

Swift hasn’t put out a bad record yet, but The Atlantic Ocean is his most solid effort yet, his best attempt at managing the dark-lit record store in his head.

Gamel is OOIOO remembering themselves and what they do best, which sounds like something they’ve never done before.

Drawing from the rock pantheon as well as personal experience and fascination, Chris Forsyth presents a guitarist’s record that is decidedly group music, and Solar Motel should whet appetites and blow minds of shredders and weirdos alike.

Lullabies is one of the strongest albums of 2005 thus far, from beginning to end.

Blues Control are one of the most intriguingly unclassifiable outfits in contemporary music, putting forth music that is clear and refined while also being absolutely incomparable.

The Boris of New Album never hesitate and seldom falter, realizing the potential they've left untapped for years.