The style of songwriting is remarkably similar to that found on Teen Dream. Yet neither suffers much for it.

When it's good, it doesn't get much better.

For the most part, it works.

A welcome new start for this talented band.

As far as drone or ambient records go, Black Mesa is accessible and melodious.

As is scene tradition, these three don't make it easy to find the proverbial diamonds in their artistic rough, but dispatches such as Imikuzushi make a frustrating journey seem that much more satisfying.

The first four or so tracks of Sees the Light hold their own in terms of melody and momentum....Unfortunately, Sees the Light devolves from there into full-on, committed homogeneity, songs blending into each other with little to set them apart

A textbook example of restrained, stylish writing, Here We Go Magic have found their muse: a 40-something producer from England who just knows well enough to get out of the way.

It is, itself, a joyful record, prickly and playful and sometimes downright bizarre, but never less than welcoming.

There really aren't any bad or outright boring songs here, though Castlemusic's very best moments are largely front-loaded.

It provides the kind of visceral excitement absent in so many of those other albums.

His [Kurt Ballou's] success here makes De Vermis Mysteriis the closest thing to a standout that the High on Fire catalog can claim, and the band makes good on what Ballou brings to the table.

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

Hair is more of a juicy stew than a straight-up throwback record.

YT // ST is a record of violence and of harmony alike, both musical and otherwise. A record that explores the shifting terrain between "A Star Over Pureland" and the scorched earth of a lightning strike. A lightning strike of a record.

It's not the sort of thing one pins their organic, folksy dreams upon, though you get the sense it was born out of that interest and perhaps lost its way over time.

Kill for Love may not be nearly as focused and razor-sharp as Night Drive, but it's twice as much fun and just as confidently personalized--just as purely Chromatics.

It's just wonderfully consistent, satisfyingly familiar.

It's easily one of the strongest efforts of 2012 thus far.

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.

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.

Gemini is an effort so manic and unfocused that it barely coheres enough around it's stilted little center to be called an album.

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