Everything about Staring At The X is tightly controlled and composed, from its guitar chords through its electronic bass lines right up to the mixing board pyrotechnics that propel the songs forward.

This album is too good to dally over, because it's so good, jaw droppingly good, not a false note in the bunch kind of good.... Record of the year stuff.

Thirteen tracks of exceptional music and a clear-cut success for Boucher.

Out of its many blues like qualities the one that I see potentially defining the album as a whole is its rawness.

Ultimately, the peaks and troughs of Grinderman 2 RMX come from magnifying both the good and the so-so qualities of the original source material and from finding the most imaginative or laziest ways to refashion them.

Both Lights goes a step further in cementing their reputation as one of the Pacific Northwest's best kept secrets.

Elephant & Castle is refreshing, and its an extremely impressive solo project.

I cannot overstate enough the cross genre appeal that is contained within Sentenced to Life. There is literally enough here for everyone; while it lacks a black metal vibe I feel it would still be relevant enough for those that jam out with corpse paint.

The freshness of these subversions reveal spaces you didn't know were there, and achieve a rare expansion of the vocabulary of music.

This is a solid, sonically beautiful album.... [Yet] the problem with her quicker stuff is that, while pretty, it tends to sound all the same; you end up desperate for the chorus, so that you can tell one song from another.

The attention to detail Bevin is known for sounds invitingly open on Kindred and the ending fruition is a thrilling success.

All in all, Foreign Body is a very rewarding and promising collaboration for fans of the more emotive side of droning ambient music.

It's this robust fervor and subject matter that fire up and lift up many of the songs on Ceremonials, but the constant exhortation comes at a price. Listener fatigue sets in as the relentless, up-tempo pace and sharply exclamatory vocal tone overwhelms over the course of the album.

Focusing on the music and what's happening within and around it – enables Hive Mind to deliver a truly excellent aural experience.

Eternal Turn of the Wheel just seems to pack too much of an antiquated, overused style into it without any new innovation and I just can't get behind this album.

This is an unwieldy yet infectious compendium that will satisfy those who need it most.

Whatever the band loses in spastic energy and volatility on Zoo, it gains in melodic constancy.

It's hard not to listen to this album and to think that they've mined this territory already in 69 Love Songs.

It's this sort of wide-eyed optimism [heard on "Near Death Experience Experience"] that lends Break It Yourself immediate appeal.

A hell of an album that reveals further treasures buried in the mix with each listen.

Interstellar may not be the most enterprising album released this year, but there won't likely be another one that so cogently captures the celestial side of an era [the 80's] known for its excesses.

On the whole, it's a winner, and you can take the singles and run with them--the play be damned.

Sleigh Bells' sophomore LP is unlikely to be met with the same peerless adulation as its predecessor, but Reign of Terror still seduces with an uncanny knack for extracting a pioneering spirit out of musty source material.

As Perfume Genius, he's [Mike Hadreas] developed a strong second album with Put Your Back N 2 It, a modestly personal release.

A strong debut.

This is a grating, difficult, unsatisfying album.

Hadreas is one of the strongest songwriters we've seen develop this year, and Learning puts that on display beautifully.

Whatever the circumstances have been in Lana's rise to fame, all that doesn't detract from the captivating quality of the songs on Born To Die.