It's hungry, vicious synergy that the Detroit duo's got going here and one can only hope that it's something they can eventually translate into something longer than an EP, or at least something with more depth.

There is always a feeling of constructive clarification at the heart of Clay Class, and that reappraisal of the traditional sense of progress is something that is cemented by the ideology shining through the holes that Prinzhorn Dance School so artfully poke through the fourth wall.

The Horror is one of the label's most tenacious offerings yet.

It simply, like her two (arguably better) albums before them, hurts too good to be ignored.

With Clear Heart Full Eyes he's established himself, tentatively, as a man apart from his band.

While sonically it's different from anything else on Rich Forever, it's a product of the same insecurity machine that produces the rest of the tape's insistent cajoling.

Visions is exactly what it sounds like: it's an aesthetic and conceptual vision, one utterly unique to Boucher, and it's both strange and satisfying.

The record's understandable missteps are minor in comparison to its joyful evocations, and though Lindstrøm seems to be attempting to approach new territory, he does it in considerate measures and comes away with something that still makes perfect sense.

What could come off as a gimmick, however, instead plays like a focused foray into day-glo disco.

Though its pleasures may not be quite as direct as his work with Crayon Fields, and its tempos remain thoroughly slow, it remains a standout among a rapidly-increasing number of hardware and software-driven thrillseekers, more than ample evidence that O'Connor's work is worth taking notice of.

Baldi manages to find a comfortable place in between the all-potential pleasure-all-the-time approach of his first two records and the potential for all-out sad dude sonic violence, delivering a criticism of and break-up message to computer music by jettisoning every aspect of his work that could possibly be labeled as such.

Better to think of this one as a purposefully delineated double A-side.

The majority of Future This is a punishingly noisy, hookless mess that contains precious few of the qualities that endeared folks to the Big Pink to begin with.

Nada Surf have not reached outside their comfort zone with The Stars are Indifferent to Astronomy.

The ubiquity of the Weeknd has saturated their latest mixtape, and ultimately Echoes of Silence struggles under that ubiquity.

Too bad, then, that I Love You is underdeveloped.

Chairlift are perfectly capable of producing a really good album; Something just isn't it.

It's not so much disorienting as it is illuminating to revisit ØØ Void, Sunn O)))'s second release from 2000, recently reissued by Southern Lord. After all, it sounds exactly as you remember-or exactly as you'd imagine-which is to say: glacial-slow riffs, suffocating drones, mind-numbing minimalism.

Though at times deeply affecting, Voyageur is not the great statement of a record one might hope for after a four-year absence.

Luckily, as his focus on formative heartbreak has slowly graduated to the trials of marriage and children, Owen's catalog has likewise matured in sound.

With El Camino, the Black Keys have essentially twenty minutes of worthwhile music, at least as far as partying is concerned.

For either Reid or Hebden completists, Live at the South Bank is a useful and worthwhile artifact. For someone seeking entry to the catalogues of two vital artists, this is a thorny and difficult listen.

The seamless blend of cutting-edge textures and an obvious deep respect for the essential building blocks of classic techno make Sepalcure a pretty resounding success.

[A] lovable shamble of a rock record.

A seriously solid and enjoyable album.

What they've done is only pretty good; it's clear what they can potentially do is far more amazing.

More than any other melodic recording this year, Earth Grid feels truly timeless.

New History Warfare has enough range that it seems to have opened up a whole new fanbase that might otherwise have no interest in avant-garde music.

This freak of a record is almost obscene in its flippant disregard for the core elements of such a well-defined thing as what Boris is supposed to sound like... as crazy and over-polished and un-Boris as it is, New Album is still a new Boris album. And, apparently, that still means excellence.

LIVELOVEA$AP absolutely scorches from front-to-back; its author's ability to command a variety of sounds allows it to sound unified without drifting into monochrome territory.

This record has a way of making you feel alone and alienated even in a crowded room.

Celestial Lineage deserves every bit of attention it's garnered this year. I can personally put it on a shortlist of 2011 records that reinvigorated my confidence in metal in ways that I haven't felt in a long, long time.

It's an appealing, bombastic hybrid of '90s nostalgia, and anything less than audience ear drum obliteration is not an option.

Curren$y drops some of the meanest s*** he's ever done, giving real credence to his attempt to crawl out of his obvious niche.

Despite the inessential nature of some songs, and perhaps the inessential nature of the album as a whole, for sympathetic ears it serves as a kind of skeleton key to White Denim's bewildering powers, as much as any collection of demos or rehersal tapes.

Whatever these songs lack in immediacy, they rebound with an artistry.

It still is either very sincere or very sarcastic, or both, though these are two qualities which have always been both a justification for liking them and just as easily a reason why not, meanwhile not offering any amnesty or middle ground.

Welcome to Condale is a study in tactless excess, the sheer volume of inebriating nostalgic moments intended to overwhelm the lukewarm medium by which they're delivered.

Fernow's more melodic output on Bermuda Drain is somehow even more punishing, a new development in the ongoing creation of what he calls "negative energy."

This album, despite its merits, doesn't do much but position the band as a bunch of revivalists in serious need of reviving.

Ceremonials is a sumptuously produced album of mystic pop anthems.

If Drake had it his way, one imagines he would deliver this album via fan newsletter. He made this record for them-which is why his aesthetic so thoroughly encases this record like a cocoon made of syrup-and he'd rather any stone-throwers politely evaporate.

In essence, Ferraro has crafted a noiseless noise record.

It's not perfect, but in the context of its subject matter one feels like its accidents are worth more than another album's successes.

As a whole, An Empty Bliss is a remarkably cohesive listen and one that achieves its goals, but whether or not it, in and of itself, is an entirely creative work is another question entirely.

On the surface, Replica's focus on the measured emergence of harmony seems to capture a bit of the modern struggle to find some sense amidst a constant bombardment of careless repetitions, to uncover a beautiful pattern in the digital noise of the everyday.

Perhaps the best thing about this catchy, super-short record (it'll take less than thirty minutes of your time) is the balance it strikes between tight songwriting and a loose, improvisational feeling.

Powers definitely has the compositional wherewithal to make something special--he just has to put more of himself into it.

A well-crafted doorway into Thee Oh Sees' lovely DIY funhouse, and leave your rock 'n' roll expectations at the giant lips-shaped entrance.

If McCombs' first release this year evoked a sense of baroque horror, this one does loosen up, offering at least a few degrees of clarity in a catalog more defined with each passing year by its creator's desire to subvert the tropes of his genre and refuse anything resembling an easy reading.

Anyone expecting the nocturnal looping he usually cooks up is in for a shock-Passed Me By is a jagged little tangent designed to make that warehouse seem spookier.

The record has more than its share of enjoyable moments, and more than its share of predictable "genius," but a seemingly new dread, a latent, sometimes crippling anxiety, lends the album a certain emotional edge, a hint of vulnerability, that is normally absent in the work of this Baddest of singer-songwriters.

It's a rare thing how it manages to be both accessible and inclusive without giving in to any of the current trendy concessions, all the while demonstrating the practiced purist's taste for measured, genre-specific experimentation.

With II, the Psychic Paramount have created an record both gratifying in its dense magnitude and equally rewarding in the fragility of the elements that the album is composed of.

Its overcast may be thick like a dustbowl, but well-placed rays of light make this record an especially accomplished return.

Where † crafted sly treasures out of gaudy detritus, single-minded as it may have been, Audio, Video, Disco simply settles for canonizing the forgettable.

Though it's fun, pretty, well-constructed, and hits the buttons, those very facets are in danger, in the absence of Cox's beautiful vulnerability, of becoming what this sound is all about.

XXX is something much more complex, challenging, and rewarding than a dirty joke.

It feels both classic and surprisingly new; this is Real Estate, and this is all Real Estate will ever be.

Extra Playful is fun in the worst kind of way and, at times, bad in very fun ways, but as a whole it presents rather discouragingly the attempt of an auteur marooning--perhaps on purpose, but hardly with purpose--as an amateur.

To Coldplay's credit, amidst the over-production they still manage to reach their quota of flag-waving festival rock songs, some of which could be considered career highlights.

Leslie Feist has managed to produce an even more intriguing character, one with depth and doubt and apprehension and dread and all the other things that make up the other, harder, larger half of the human experience.

It's okay to mourn Apparat's past and question his trajectory. Just don't ignore what rests at the center: a record that, if nothing more, soaks in the present moment.

The cacophony raised by this album is not so much the kind that unsettles us in important and challenging ways, but is the commercial noise of a spectacle without a center, of emotion so generic we are instantly desensitized to it.

Minor quibbles are easy to overlook on a record that is, the majority of the time, flawlessly executed.

While I wish that Only in Dreams offered more adventurous songwriting or a more varied sound, it's still an achievement in its emotional tenacity.

Folks, to my ultimate chagrin, this Divine Providence album wallows in such unencumbered, unmoving crap-it breaks my fucking heart.

On the Water is too uncompromising, too disinterested in being for anyone outside of its circle of two.

What follows are a series of maybe-serious experiments that aren't much fun.

With Get Lost, McGuire has nudged toward both goals, and while in many ways, for long time fans, this is exactly what you'd expect a 2011 Mark McGuire album to sound like.

What makes American Goldwing so disappointing and, frankly, dull is that Blitzen Trapper seems entirely unconcerned with sounding either fresh or interesting.

It is as "original" as this band is going to get, and for that we should be contented.

Ashes & Fire might mark the first time he could ever been described as simply dull.

Enough Thunder certainly offers up enough for any Blake fan to both love and hate--and at the end of the day still be entirely unsure of exactly what to hope for.

When it's warm it offers a cool side, the underside of one's pillow, and when it's frosty it offers a coverlet of weight or the stable resting of a hand.

The results are occasionally--surprisingly, even--very nice.

The Imaginary Adventures of Pardon, Mannerfelt, and Co. just happen to be a wonderfully suitable and measured vehicle for the dense and compelling work of Roll the Dice, and In Dust is sure not to leave anyone wanting for a more promising wilderness to explore.

Life Sux is no King of the Beach; if anything it's a minor diversion on which Williams seems to be toying with the idea of slowly toeing into maturity.

Somehow Portamento is snuggled amidst St. Vincent and Braids and Tim Hecker and Colin Stetson on my year-end list.

It's a realization in retrospect that occurs too often throughout In Heaven. And in those moments one can't help but be disappointed, hearing Twin Sister such a cut below what they were doing just one short year ago.

It's an album both in tune lyrically and out of time stylistically, and that's what has All Things Will Unwind approaching relevance.

Tweedy's lyrics have recaptured much of their surreal, grammar-defying, sinister charm, and he has mercifully spared us the smug, privileged nihilism that Clayton so rightly lambasted in his review of Wilco (The Album).

Looping State of Mind both conquers and surpasses the only-so-many-pieces-in-the-box standards of most traditional dance forms by appeasing those crescendo/break/denouement expectations in name only.

Loney, Dear hasn't changed much, and that's what makes this inimitable album such great company.

Though these variations are often enjoyable, particularly on an individual track level, taken as a whole they're just too slight, making Civilian difficult to fully engage with.

As seventeen-track records go, it's edible, and should qualify him for another wave of buzz when the Mercurys come round next year.

It is a more mature record.

An Argument with Myself seems like more of an attempt at an encapsulation of Lekman's talent--to use the smallest things as gateways into work more ponderous but still relatable, achingly pretty but still occasionally biting, adventurous but familiar--than a showcase of new directions.

New axe-slinger or not, I'm With You is a given for this band--at least four songs too long and Rick Rubin's nonchalance leaves everything sounding precisely and consistently the same.

These guys have the tools, and God knows they have the chops, but Thundercat has yet to develop a compelling sound of his own, and no amount of production wizardry can ultimately disguise that.

While there's nothing wrong with the production displayed on When Fish Ride Bicycles, Inglish laid down the blueprint for supporting this duo so well that the oft busier and more varied work on this outing feels like too much to digest and too much for them to wade through.

Nothing on Thursday sounds like filler.

Pleasure essentially satisfies, even if I have to admit that it's hard not to feel absolutely, completely, and totally lied to by virtually everything about Pure X that isn't their music.

Fourteen tracks may seem slight for someone with that kind of longevity and creative drive, but if it means we get a listenable, often times surprising collection as opposed to a bloated vault dump, then I'll take this over something more "complete" any day.

Wild Flag is concise but jumpy, perhaps a party record in that sense.

Strange Mercy is Clark's most tense, nauseous, kaleidoscopic album yet.