At this crossroads between excitement, adventure and melancholy, Gold Motel resides.

The result is the raw and crunchy folk record Total Dust.

The band's latest album, Join Us, expresses the group's signature nerd pride with a combination of simplicity and fantasy fit for ex-losers, children and those weird kids in high school.

As a debut album, Eagulls proves that this band has tremendous potential.

It cannot be denied that this album can’t help but fall short of the previous two records’ effect, given the massive quantity of pioneering moves captured in those albums. Nonetheless, whether or not Fucked Up can see it, they’re still doing the music world some good.

A solid, ambling around, summer daytime soundtrack, rather than the numerous nighttime ruminators we’ve already been frequently offered this year.

Where the Beets lacks flair in its musicianship, the players make up for it in their singing.

While he might not be saying anything groundbreaking or mind-bending, Alcala's lyrics speak to his band's earnestly lovable and saccharine nature.

Throughout all 13 of these tracks, whether fuzzed-out and aggressive or scuffed-up and jaunty, the band is so laid-back and mellow that there's never a break in the mantra: Nothing Bad Can Ever Happen [sic].

If you're fording a desert highway at dawn, these songs will get you across. They're consuming and expansive, steady and constant.

Plan The Escape and No Crimes are largely uplifting, though the descending bass line and drum combo on Crimes sounds like Queens Of The Stone Age doing Go With The Flow Light; and pseudo-ripped Depeche Mode lyrics like, “All you ever wanted, all you ever need” make for the album’s most clichéd moment.

The emotive howls of their pub rock provide catchy blasts of energy that are more familiar than groundbreaking but who’s quality should not be discounted for failing to meet the hyperbole that preceded them.

Instinct is an electro-pop album, but it's got that New Order-style darkness that gives it a comforting weight; this is that kind of bummer music that will make you dance.

It's too cavernous and intangible to dance to but too wired for relaxation.

Despite some loopier diversions, DeGraw’s solo flight is more precise than GGD, and the appeal of his technicolor melodies rely on that cleaner simplicity.

Like the cosmos itself, Interstellar is a grower.

On record, there is an irresistible sprightliness in the songs that says these guys haven’t worried once about their near-tribute sound.

The past four albums have focused mainly on the singer/songwriter. On Tripper, Johnson turns that formula around and focuses everything outward-the lyrical themes, the more-involved instrumentation and the mood.

Love Is The Law sounds like what would happen if The Memories took Lou Reed’s “serious musician” face and splattered it with neon-glow paint after a particularly inspirational train ride.

This album has the potential to appeal to imaginative listeners with a wide range of tastes.

There's a studio slickness and a consistent attention to detail here-crisp hand claps, crystal-clear acoustic guitar strumming, clean drums-that most contemporary garage-rock bands have little interest in.

For all of its work with dance music, some of Canyons' strongest tracks rely more on sounding like a band rather than a production duo.

What the album seems to lack in originality, it makes up for in classic rock 'n' roll sensibility.

The guys are able to transform the tangible aspects of their journey into sounds that turn the listening experience into a traveling experience.

Brittle, spare yet maximalist in sound, Content Nausea is mostly successful, with a few key missteps.

It unravels itself while unraveling you at the same time. It’s happy-go-lucky on the surface, more mellowed out underneath.

To match the classier trappings, Bronson puts on a slightly more professional showing--gone are the botched lines, the charming flubs and the repetitive stalling of Chips--and, for the most part, he pulls it off with style and grace.

This new album of old ideas hits hardest at its softest, most melancholy moments.