What Fortino and Harris have done here and across Foreign Body is construct a kind of suspended reality, where the consequences of day-to-day life fail to adhere to their distended sense of duration.

A relatively straightforward rock record with no shortage of epic flourishes and catchy choruses.

The music of The Iron Gates at Throop and Newport is about as universal as this stuff gets.

Clumsy it might be, familiar it might be; redundant it sure isn't quite yet.

Built as they are on rock 'n' roll clichés, these songs hold the listener at a distance. It's a bit of fun, but nothing more. Unlike their influences, something about this band doesn't really stick.

This record speaks into the empty vastness of our endless music consumerism, and all it says is "me too."

Habits & Contradictions is a pleasurable listen with head-scratchingly pretty samplings and lyrics more or less liberated from value care of Q's devotion to "weed and brews" and the delirious enjoyment of something so simple as saying "fuck" a lot.

Even reduced to a proper ten songs, Revolution is still a bit front-loaded, if only because the band will never be as adept at slow atmosphere as they are upbeat rock.

If dubstep is dead, then Burial is some magnificent tower of dust and light built on the remains.

With Julia Holter, with this profound and inexhaustibly gorgeous album, we can transcend our own transcendence and find the greatest bliss in the joyful renunciation of what makes us us.

The sparsity of their arrangements allows textures--the shushing of brushes on the snare, the scratch of the violin, the edge of distortion on the guitar--to shine through.

It is maybe a bit surprising that it's so damned interesting to listen to, and that, along with everything else on The Something Rain, is a powerful testament to the skill of the musicians Staples has surrounded himself with.

If this isn't the most mature mixtape K.R.I.T.'s produced yet, it may very well be his most honest, and coming from this guy, that's high praise indeed.

The best way to package this album-Flying Lotus, Madlib, and Ian Curtis in the weirdest musical threesome ever tailored for the likes of DOOM and Ghostface Killah-as the normal routes of genre identification don't quite do it here.

In a graceful return to form, Jan and Andi make it clear that they're as present as ever, ready to jump into the game like it hasn't been six years since we last met.

Arrow, the band's fourth album, doesn't differ significantly from their prior efforts, though the fiddle and pedal steel flourishes of 2009's rootsy The Mountain have been largely excised in favor of more hot shit guitar soloing care of new recruit Mark Nathan.

It is a bright and rousing thing.

For all its supposed politeness, this is distinct, sharp music.

Blues Funeral generally succeeds because Lanegan knows exactly what his audience wants and is willing to play to his strengths.

As one may ascertain, the world of the Caretaker is a potential rabbit hole of nostalgia, anxiety, and all manner of undisclosed obsessions, but a distinct sense of calm washes over the best of this material.

For all its seriousness, it's the absence of big moments and Hadreas' refusal to give in to easy outs that make what he does so compelling.

Frankie's doesn't bear the weight of an obviously solo effort and at once succeeds in creating music that rivals any full-band effort from any of her peers.

The band manages throughout Onwards to the Wall to keep things just about as industrial as they can get. And without abandoning pop for metal by always maintaining a strict allegiance to simplicity.

This album creates that space, where both that source of fear and joy are simultaneous, inevitable, and sublime.

Mr. M is something to behold in its details: the kind of record that seems to open up gradually over time, graceful and pretty sure but brimming subcutaneously with many yet-undiscovered pleasures.

This attention to economy marks these records [I Don't Rock At All and Man With Potential] as two of Swanson's most digestible and re-playable releases to date.

From the ground up, Plumb is through and through the work of a band that has absolutely mastered its craft.

The Russian Wilds is a demonstrative bid for being taken seriously, and these guys simply exhibit too much enthusiasm to be relegated to mere also-rans in the long shadow of Miller's previous band.