Pitchfork

On The Crying Light, Antony Hegarty remains fascinated with the transitions and overlaps between birth and life, life and death, this world and the next, but he expresses them in more universal, more direct, but no less rapturous terms than he did on his New York-tinted breakthrough I Am a Bird Now.

Anticipated to an almost ridiculous degree, no one looking forward to the latest Animal Collective record-- out tomorrow on vinyl and digitally, and on CD in two weeks-- will be disappointed. Everything that's defined the band to this point has here been refined and amplified into a record that captures the group's quirky and forwardly expressive style.

Malawian-born, London-based singer Esau Mwamwaya teams with the European production team Radioclit for a hugely eclectic mixtape that veers from South Africa's marabi and kwaito music to Hans Zimmer scores to French and American hip-hop to Michael Jackson. While strong collaborations with M.I.A., Santogold, and Vampire Weekend include some surprising left-turns, tracks that lean away from the familiar work even better.

Microcastle and its bonus disc, Weird Era Cont., sidestep much of the art-damaged squall of previous Deerhunter records, but they don't embrace 1950s and 60s pop as dramatically as lead singer Bradford Cox had intimated in early interviews. Instead, this 2xCD set captures urgent and imaginative songs that reorganize 4AD haze, off-kilter indie pop, crashing garage-punk, forward-leaning krautrock, and hypnotic Kranky ambience into a singular-sounding call-to-arms, or at least call-to-guitars. Black Lips' Cole Alexander guests.