Over five years and around an international filming schedule, Riz MC has managed to use his credentials to mount a dazzling attack on what he sees going on in Farringdon Road, and has emerged with the kind of crossover masterstroke that could outshine the National Curriculum.

To the un-jaded, yes, boring, but to these well-worn ears, Lower Plenty drop some serious knowledge.

The Cookbook leaves the exact same impression on its listener as every Missy album since Supa Dupa Fly. She may have changed the recipe, but the dish tastes the same.

Foals are a tight band with hook-laden grooves. Not worth the hype, but definitely worth keeping an eye on.

The Golden Archipelago falls somewhere in that tenuous space, never able to live up to the power of its initial impression. It’s more the kind of thing that should be fully absorbed over the course of a few attentive, complete listens, then allowed to dissipate into the realm of a beautiful idea.

The Brutalist Bricks, for its moments of torrential fury, sags when Leo occasionally writes outside of an exhausted but all-encompassing formula.

It holds together better [than 'Echoes'] as a complete document, it contains at least seven potential singles, and sounds like a crack band at the top of their game.

My frustration is simple: not only does the record’s production drag down what could have (probably) been good songs, the band deliberately downplays its two best players, and everything suffers as a consequence.

The core of his sadness may still be a mystery to me, but his monument to it, in all its eccentricity, is by far the hardest thing to ignore that he's done yet.

Keeley & Zaire’s Ridin High has absolutely nothing to offer its listener or hip-hop at large except for a fat pile of old rap comfort food and, tucked evenly away from the beginning and end of the record’s runtime, two absolute fucking bangers in 'Addicts for Real' and 'We Made It.'

Wong is at the apex of his songwriting. This is not to be missed.

Aesop Rock’s terrifically brooding new record.

It’s an expert turn by seasoned professions thoroughly in their own comfort zone.

As bland and timid a record as likely to come out in the strikingly boring year of 2006.

Heim is very nice and also very spare. Less ebulliently cheating with surprise and indulgence is Hvarf, worth the band’s typical awe just for the official addition of live staple 'Hafsól' to the band’s buyable repertoire.

Pretty much nothing from Dear Heather is without some kind of significant flaw, and the only thing saving it from being below average---at least in a general sense, and not kept strictly to his own discography----are the few moments that Cohen is kept solitary with as little outside interference as possible.

Crow’s ego and identity have been largely removed from Living Well’s equation, and in its place are a number of undeviating, short, one-word-title indie rock songs that don’t require an explanation or setup.

Whether it marks the beginning of a significant shift for the group or not, Molina's growing confidence as a vocalist and songwriter remains levels above his peers -- and, like Songs: Ohia's final days, proves more than capable of forgiving its own shortcomings.

With shorter, tighter songs far more reminiscent of 80’s post-punk than Southern AOR, Aha Shake Heartbreak can only be considered a pleasant surprise.

I was surprised that it holds up well to close scrutiny--in spite of my reservations, the album is well performed and crafted, with a surprisingly mordant thematic unity touching on mortality and the soured promises of childhood--but I’m still bothered by its anonymity.

[A] lovable shamble of a rock record.

The result is that we have a transitory album, but also a typically beautiful and subtle one.

What makes In Evening Air a great break-up album is the same thing that makes Teen Dream (2010) a great break-up album: it's not exactly that the lyrics espouse these profound, poetic truths about relationships so much as they use sonic patterns and pretty mundane language to create a sad and disorienting sense of something very familiar disappearing.

Of Montreal will always appeal to anyone looking for a world to get lost in. Is it too much to ask for him to visit ours once in a while?

Dälek have refined their work but their work has no reaching trajectory.

Their rhythm section (ooh, two drummers!) is serviceable but generally underwhelming, and song by song the record just falls flat.

This is Rhys wholly in his wheelhouse: offering up a handful of standalone highlights and clever deep cuts, hitting pleasure centers along the way, and quietly adding to a catalogue as deceptively substantial as anyone currently working the pop circuit with fifteen years behind and at least another fifteen ahead.

This album maintains youth and vigor through dirty language and clean production, but eventually settles for something very middle-of-the-road.

In the end, Fuckbook is a disappointing Yo La Tengo album, but the band’s made it clear that it doesn’t want it to be that, instead just a pretty good Condo Fucks record.

The starburst drum-fills, the jackknife stabs of guitar, the vocal melodies bronzed with catchiness-all of it soars, nodding at vitality, as though the aesthetics of joy might, if stressed enough, smother sadness until it's finally gone for good.

Motion Sickness is an unnecessary document that is almost disquieting in its puppet-like manipulation of the facts. It’s a live album masquerading as a bunch of inferior studio cuts.

There was just so much I loved about Damien in Absence and so much that disappointed me.

It is a cohesive suite of powerfully effective songs with one thing on its mind: "the inexorable march of Time."

In the end Love Is Simple is less than the sum of its parts. Its balls-out rock is fun but hopelessly overloaded (like, how many vocal tracks do these songs really need?) while its softer sections sound like brief intermissions before the guitars pick up again, making them relatively limp.

The best way to package this album-Flying Lotus, Madlib, and Ian Curtis in the weirdest musical threesome ever tailored for the likes of DOOM and Ghostface Killah-as the normal routes of genre identification don't quite do it here.

The result is a whirlwind of a record, tight but decidedly fleshed-out, doting on death but still affirming life, and definitive proof that Widowspeak looks and sounds best in rapturous tones of earth.

It just simply seems that Stuart Murdoch isn’t a very portable songwriter: he may be able to write Stuart Murdoch songs for Stuart Murdoch, but translated to anything but his music frequently exhibits its participants’ weaknesses, and the end result is unsettling and unfulfilling like few Belle and Sebastian products are.

Shaolin is simply tiresome, a heap of cliches with no animating force beneath its husk-like frame, not so much a follow-up to anything but our long-held anticipation for something better.

They've proven themselves able to change drastically in the past--so, even though Minotaur is one of their lesser works, I can't help but hope that a band as consistently transcendent as the Clientele will continue on into the future.

This album, despite its merits, doesn't do much but position the band as a bunch of revivalists in serious need of reviving.

Half-baked and juvenile, sloppy but cheerful, fresh and joyful, the Beets may be plugging a gimmick, but at least they're doing something with themselves.

This album is the hot shit.

The band has a noticeably meaner, more muscular sound than on previous records.

Doctor’s Advocate is essentially a long album of just okay rhymes, just okay rapping, and (without the benefit of best-of-year sublimity like Cool & Dre’s “Hate It or Love It” production) a lot of just okay beats.

In the end, a few weak verses are easy to brush aside on an album this likable.

It’s a cohesive, well-produced, well-written set of songs that coheres as an album.

Volume Two is a record, of occasional charm, that comes off all-too-aware of how cranky a response to it other than “charming” will seem.

The problem, then, is that “Blessing Force” sucks and most of the rest of the songs imitate with varying success the music of the band’s staggering 2005 output.

Their experiments have only caused them to stumble off the path they’ve tread, finally tripping to one side of the thin line between smash and schmaltz.

The Spell cannot break free of the band’s successful formula without something a lot more challenging than this.

I'm not sure what this one will sound like when the heat lets up--but what matters for now is that Beach Fossils have crafted a breezy and charming debut that renders such questions, at least for right now, unimportant.

Which isn’t to say that the rest of the album isn’t impressive at certain points, though the law of diminishing returns weighs heavily here.

The Aliens' retro-future, interstellar, ex-Beta Band stylings force the listener backward in time and inward in space, resulting in a weird cosmic navel-gazing that is ultimately the reason this album is only slightly more than moderately successful, and cannot be described under any circumstances as “innovative,” “refreshing” or “a step forward.”

It’s not that Rated O isn’t a good album. At least half of it is one of the best albums of the year. It’s that Rated O is just good enough and in a straightforward enough way to make you miss the Oneida that was about joyous, staggering confusion.

For anyone who legitimately enjoyed Blood Sugar, and think that they might actually want to purchase this thing, Stadium is unquestionably Red Hot Chili Peppers’ finest release since.

While Summer in Abaddon features Pinback’s by now trademarked sound and cryptic lyrics with a few nice developments, it falls victim to a sort of malaise of consistently indistinguishable mid-tempo rockers on the second half of an album that starts very strongly.

What will always make The Be Good Tanyas stand out, in a roots/folk genre replete with superstar solo artists, is that they’re capable of juxtaposing their own songs next to the classics of the genre and tricking listeners into playing name-that-era throughout an entire album.

Magic manages to creep into a flat din, and tact is lost to nostalgia.

Far more unabashedly romantic than One Time Bells, the Kicks have let go of any lingering desire to be a rock band and are warmly embracing new wave style pop a la the Cars or New Order or Elvis Costello.

The Floodlight Collective exudes something astonishing and rare, particularly for a record on the fringes of indie rock, scoping into abstraction. It is, more than anything else, sincere.

Even with their glut of talent (Bejar not included), the band is sputtering for ideas.

Grass Widow have channeled a number of distinct influences, tones, and anxieties into an eccentric and strangely cohesive album. Past Time solidifies that there's nobody else out there right now who sound quite like them.

Sure, the record isn't very functional outside of its given context, but if you've tuned into this program before then it'll be nice to know that one of the most congenial of indie pop acts can still deliver on their good name and to their respective audience in equal measure.

And while every song contains allusions to forgotten surf rockish guitar chords and Duke Ellington violins, the real fun is in the way the Pipettes play off each other in harmony.

While not punch-for-punch or track-for-track the heavy-hitter "War Elephant" was, or even offering the tonal variety of "Born on Flag Day," the consistency has come into its own doleful focus, the lyrics have reached a blisteringly high point and for any/all flaws, and, in the end, it just leaves me holding the broken pieces of my face in my fucking hands.

It's true that Riceboy Sleeps is no departure from New Age, is in fact a strengthening of at least Birgisson's place at the centre of its indie iterations. But it also takes the formula of another band a lot of people like and bends it just enough to make that formula interesting again.

Old 97's have maintained a kind of winking positivity, which is perhaps the key to their longevity. The Grand Theatre Vol. 2 embraces this unashamedly.

If Stamey had chosen to go one way or the other — straight covers or an all-out album full of originals--- A Question of Temperature would be a much more interesting album. As is it stands, nothing here really captures the imagination.

The Else is good, surprisingly and simply so. It’s also frustratingly focused.

La Cucaracha is still a bit of a disappointment, short on memorable tunes and a bit muddier and more piecemeal than it should be.

This is a power-pop album released by the biggest Fall Out Boy-ish band working today, on a major label, but it’s also 50.4 minutes of Fall Out Boy music--an extended, incomprehensible and surprisingly marketable clamor, ambulance siren loud, of contradictory signifiers.

Down to the near-microscopic details, down to the faintest rough edge on his smoothest vocal landscapes, down to the last moments on the final track: it's a self-sustaining, well-rounded album that stands well without Bon Iver-especially without a drum solo.

Cansei de Ser Sexy is a catchy, brief, and sweaty romp, but nothing that will wow, nothing that’ll smart, nothing that’ll leave a phone number next to the dildo on the bedside table the morning after.

The Citizens have a clear knack for arranging and a commendable ability to tackle a series of genres and combine them into an enjoyable full-length. The only real problem here being that the actual songs aren't nearly as good as their talent might hint at.

The album's aesthetic conceit may read better on paper than it plays on record, but it's hard not to be impressed by Oneida's continued dedication to experimenting with what is now perceived as their core sound.

With both "Everybody" and now Car Alarm, the Sea and Cake would appear to be in the midst of an inspiration streak unheard of since their first three albums, and we’re richer for it. Impressive for a quartet of mid-‘40s post-rockers on their eighth record.

I’m convinced that Beck Hansen has a few more good albums in him. One thing’s for sure, though: The Information isn’t one of them.

Unfortunately, too much of Snakes and Arrows is dominated by mid-tempo, lumbering behemoths.

Striking stylistic tics like this pop up all over Clues, and the contextualizing effect is undeniable: for good or ill, it’s nigh impossible to hear this album anew, free from preconceptions.

It’s rather difficult to describe the feelings and aural excitements wrought by Blood, Looms and Blooms, but suffice to say it’s the work of a powerfully brilliant and individual artist.

While Lightning Bolt may fall somewhat shy of that goal ["the Best Album"], it is a more than solid effort to satisfy the legions of fanboys born between ’77 and ’84, and a convincing argument for their continued existence.

You Can Have What You Want is like "Turn on the Bright Lights" (2002) without the drama, without a voice as deep or distinct as Paul Banks’, and without the hooks. Instead of all that, Papercuts opt for a vague, beige production and generally indecipherable lyrics that may or may not be about some kind of futuristic utopia/dystopia.

While this solo venture is a unique take on the sound developed with BMSR, his song structures and instrumentation are built-in with monotony, practically usurping the purpose of developing a creative solo project in the first place.

As a pure, balls-out rock n' roll record, Half Smiles of the Decomposed is certianly on par with the likes of Isolation Drills and Universal Truths and Cycles.

Considering the extent to which they seem to follow whatever musical desires grip them at the time, rather than following an overarching path, it's not much of a disappointment to suggest they haven't quite graced the heights of their best work here

True, it is also the kind of soaring, gleefully overwrought, overproduced, folk pop that drive detractors to acts of libelous message board violence and depravity. But if "inauthentic" means commercial then it should be noted that Hazards is essentially the definition of a passion project.

The hyperactive channel surfing of most punk music is here eschewed in favor of rumination on individual sounds, hypnotic repetition having more in common, perhaps, with ambient or noise than conventional rock. And like the best of those other genres, the album is finely scoped to just these eight complimentary, textural songs.

Dancer Equired is short at thirty minutes, but it does the job of re-leasing Times New Viking's mad energy.

Ross seems to lack any sort of awareness of his shortcomings, dutifully plowing through middling, obvious shit-talking.

Here, they succeed just by doing what they do best, taking few chances, but sounding more comfortable in their own skin than they have in a very long time.

For an established pop writer like Thomas this sort of effort is long overdue, a necessary rung on the twisted, misdirecting ladder towards writing one of those singular, inexplicable albums.

The record is a virtuosic display of talent (I don’t even know what sounds I’m hearing on the chorus of “Juliann Wilding”) but it comes across both too eager to impress and too self-satisfied to edit.

With the gentle, delicate soundscapes of Let Go mostly replaced by energetic guitar riffing, Nada Surf can only transcend the limitations of the '90s sound for so long.

An Object scales back the ambitious and ostensibly ambient sound of Everything in Between (2010), but it remains gloomily meditative.

Sky Blue Sky’s only ambition is to capture the warm tones of the early '70s rock FM they grew up on and clearly love. The execution is flawless. One can’t help but ask, however, “What’s the point?”

Devotion is a delicate, often gorgeous listen that flows remarkably well, though I can’t help but attribute its coherence to the utter lack of variation among its eleven songs.

The full-band songs rarely manage the sort of charismatic country-rock crunchiness that made What Comes After the Blues so endearing on repeated listen. On the other hand, the solo tracks can’t really match up to the almost uniformly excellent offerings on Let Me Go.

The results are occasionally--surprisingly, even--very nice.