Devotion's half-submerged, half-weightless ambience feels like a shaky yet sure transition into something even more abstract and fragile.
In the absence of a new Grizzly Bear album, In Ear Park provides a valuable service while showcasing Rossen as a skilled composer and arranger in his own right.
Scaling back the frenetic pace and combustible forcefulness of 2005's Apologies To The Queen Mary, Wolf Parade no longer sounds like a band pushing itself excitedly to the breaking point.
From the monster first track, "What Up Man," onward, Cool Kids ain't saying nothing new, but they have a damn infectious way of saying it; they're charmingly obnoxious in the best possible way
As a collection of songs, Brighter Than Creation's Dark ranks among Drive-By Truckers' best, even though there are a couple of skippable tracks.
The Mates recapture a bit of brio of 'The Re-Arranger' and 'Help Help,' but the rest of Re-Arrange Us is only useful for putting the kids to sleep.
His trademark gloom still dominates, but his ability to bend glacial chords around pure poetry remains vital. In fact, it's stronger than ever.
April, his third full-length under the Sun Kil Moon moniker, and the first made up of new songs since 2003, easily bears the weight of expectations, proving once again that he really does transcend any slowcore or singer-songwriter tags that have been tossed his way.
Though its conceptual component feels fuzzy and abstract at best, The Cool oozes geek chic with terrific songs, smart, dense lyrics, and nimble, eclectic production.
Barrow and Utley provide deep spaces for Gibbons' raw emotions to sink into, and nearly every track provides some little sonic goodie midway through as a reward for continued attention after all these years. For once, it's worth the effort.
Narrow Stairs finds Death Cab comfortable with all aspects of its musical personality—and on top of them all.
It's a challenging, even frustrating listen, but Amerykah stakes out Badu's place between vinyl crackle and tape hiss among things to be fond of, no matter how outmoded they become.
The young band's saving grace is compactness, which not only saves thousands of dollars in kora-player and backup-singer bills, but also keeps things alert and accessible.
A record made for blasting and getting blasted, Stay Positive makes it easy to follow through on its title.
The album evocatively conjures the loneliness of a long northern winter, placing Vernon's lovely songs in a distant, blurred vacuum of physical and emotional isolation.
Hold On Now, Youngster—an appropriate title for a bunch that looks barely post-pubescent—makes its case with sunny, sarcastic looseness and an unfakeable sense of joie de vivre.
In "The Blue Route," it hits home like a 30th birthday—and as the standout "In The New Year" points out, realizing "It's all over anyhow" can be invigorating, a way of readying oneself for the next, far more interesting chapter.
On Dear Science, TVOTR finds a more traditional consistency, transmuting that dirty experimentalism into a lush cleanliness that eases—rather than hurls—its songs into the art-making ether.