This week on Stylus

Colin Cooper predicts that Takk could be the record that sees Sigur Ros going overground, even though it is "in many ways a much darker record than any of the band’s previous work, with tempestuous conclusions and moody, almost pouty endeavours making up the bulk of its content". My first impressions: it's another mindblowing album.

Roque Strew proclaims Devendra Banhart's fourth LP Cripple Crow the site's Album Of The Week - "Gone is any splinter of freak-folk purism. Influences crowd Cripple Crow, with the usual suspects appearing and disappearing—Tiny Tim, Donovan, Marc Bolan, Nick Drake. But it’s the collage of styles that distinguishes this album: Cuban and Indian flourishes, Eisenhower-era doo-wop, the smoky Stax groove, bucolic British trad-folk, the eccentricities of American folk, of both the Dust Bowl troubadours and the Vietnam flower-children".

Ryan Potts is disappointed to discover that Black Dice's new LP Broken Ear Record is "more direct and deliberate, grounded and obvious" than previous releases. I really ought to invest in a copy of Beaches & Canyons.

Ross McGowan finds Death Cab For Cutie's Plans the work of "a band that’s consistent to a fault".

Cameron Macdonald revisits Royal Trux's Twin Infinitives - "One could loosely trace the skronk-thrash to the past glories of Pussy Galore, Dinosaur Jr. and SF dada-punks Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. Sun Ra’s Moog freakouts from the 70’s also figure in, along with a sense that Royal Trux is a garage band that must go to sleep every night with the sprawl of unholy guitar feedback coughed up by Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music blackening the sky".