This is massive music, designed not to move mountains, but the ground beneath them. It’s the sound of deep sea disintegration. It’s the momentousness of accomplishment tempered by an awareness of coming and going.  Full text...

This expansive symphony, refined, decisive, and beautifully-realized, is a unique work, an impressive work, and ultimately, an important work. And Kranky knows it: they’ve acknowledged the album to be one of the strongest statements of their distinguished 14-year career by making it their one hundredth release.  Full text...

After almost two hours we arrive at perhaps the most playful title ever from a band known for playful titles, and also what could be SOTL's defining statement. "December Hunting" is like the band's entire history playing out in a single piece, all the tensions in their music-- acoustic vs. electric, cryptic vs. obvious, joyous vs. sorrowful-- are articulated and probed in 17 heavenly minutes of drone without a tedious moment.  Full text...

The overarching emotions are nostalgia, melancholy, and faint, ever-present hope, the possibility of redemption from the profanity of a world that listens to anything but Stars of the Lid.  Full text...

This double-album is just as hypnotic, just as overwhelming, and awesome enough to win over a new battalion sleepyheads for the next six years and beyond.  Full text...

SOTL's Refinement of the Decline traces the fluid contours of a void through diaphanous lines that reveal all of its miasmal abstraction.  Full text...

Most of the songs consist mainly of keyboard chords fading in and out, shimmering to life like so many glimpses of a sunrise over a landscape.  Full text...