New Moon feels a little bit long; though only twelve songs, they are all pretty substantial (especially the eight-minute “Supermoon”), and things lag a little between “The Brass” and “I See No One.”

This album creates that space, where both that source of fear and joy are simultaneous, inevitable, and sublime.

The cryptic, empty songs of Rain on Lens and wandering, upbeat folk-tunes of Supper have been usurped by a renewed focus and direction.

What’s happening with Similes is that it’s doing everything ambient music is supposed to do but is finding a very forward and fresh manner of going about it.

Loving Body Talk means finding pleasure in the perfect execution of pop conventions; it means recognizing the click.

The title Attack & Release implies the best aspects of the Black Keys’ music, all sweat and hurt and sweat and ecstasy, but the album neither gives nor takes, neither emotional nor sweaty but still clammy-handed.

This band simply isn’t the same without a little darkness to balance the overwhelming light, and rarely do the songs pick up the slack.

If anything, that’s the trick here: each time the listener pegs it with one of Albarn’s past sounds, the track subverts and confounds the expectation.

To Find Me Gone shows a band as adept at bucking trends as they are at invoking tradition.

But beyond these select numbers ['Empty Bottles,' 'Taste' and 'Bad Dream/Hartford’s Beat Suite'] we essentially get several takes on the same fuzz, inflating a Stooges balloon with Patti Smith’s intonation and hoping that shit don’t pop.

She etches out a style that is as feeble as it is vicious. And she owns it, her voice only an assurance of just how cool she really is.

After all, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart never promised reinvention, and Belong is another solid soundtrack to summer afternoons lounging on bedspreads, making collages, flashing back to one's own days as a teenage outcast-however far in the past they may be.

Fulton’s beat-making is stellar, but devoting attention to it also necessitates suffering the consistently insufferable Kanamori, and stylistic schizophrenia that’s as jarring as it is unique.

The Loon is nothing short of an incredibly focused song suite, minus all the extraneous frivolities that you’ve gotten too used to hearing from an "incredibly focused song suite."

Clearly, this record is boring. Whether or not that’s a good thing remains up to your discretion.

What this band needs is a microphone maestro on the order of, say, an Albini, instead of the deep-fried Southern crunch that leaves these eleven songs sounding thin and brittle, ultimately highlighting their clear melodic and structural similarities until what could have been a gut-punching EP becomes a substantial-but-marred LP.

Let Us Never Speak of it Again is bor-ing.

The record is no departure, but when the form is this strong one isn’t needed.

This isn’t a bad release, and chances are, if you liked Cross, you could like this just as much. But it’s not going to contain any new revelations, and the extra reverb and applause are not enough to justify the release of a live album.

It's a solid, un-embarrassing, simple-minded record that will do nothing to My Morning Jacket's reputation as one of the greatest American rock bands every American can, and will, get behind. Here's to riskier futures.

It makes for a workmanlike listen. For all the frills of doom and cadences of industry firing on all greasy pistons, the dynamics at hand are simple, rounded up summarily when the album presents its glaring contradictions as a matter of fact

The blame for this tedium, as far as I’m concerned, sits squarely with Johnson, whose vocals are an acquired taste to begin with, but here assert themselves even more obnoxiously than before.

Howl of the Lonely Crowd is a strong, seasoned indie-pop record that'll sustain the cult while opening up yet another avenue for the curious to stumble across one of the more tragically ignored bands of their time.

I’m Going Away is a good record, it just doesn’t really sound like the Fiery Furnaces. Though for some, I’m sure, that’ll be very welcome news indeed.

It still is either very sincere or very sarcastic, or both, though these are two qualities which have always been both a justification for liking them and just as easily a reason why not, meanwhile not offering any amnesty or middle ground.

They are a talented, enthusiastic and timely band; I feared that it’s ageist of me to suggest that their debut album isn’t great because they’re too young.

These songs are great expanses, sprawling and glorious.

Faith in the Future disappoints in its lackluster melodies and overall vibe. The highlights here are the more ambitious songs.

They’ve yet to lose it: Farm comes in a bit longer and countrified than its predecessor, but it’s also a more muscular and emotional album.

Clocking in with around thirty five minutes of largely instrumental music, one’s tempted to cast Thank You Very Quickly as a one-off, but both the band’s communicable enthusiasm and obvious technical skill pull it off.

Alopecia exhibits impressive growth and an admirable attention to detail that places yet another unique stone along Yoni Wolf’s fascinating career arc.

Aside from its musical merits--like, it’s really beautiful--the City Wrecker EP is interesting in a typical kind of meta-Krug way.

Its tone is largely exuberant, even when its content seems dour; its ancillary themes seem surprisingly relatable and humanizing, even though its thesis stresses how uniquely untouchable and alone they are at the top.

This music can be difficult, but through its brooding emotional core and sophisticated, understated arrangements To Survive is also one of the most satisfying albums of 2008, melancholic and unloveable though it may often be.

Tender Buttons feels more urgent and alive than anything Broadcast has ever recorded.

Frankly, this is an odd listen.

She still has yet to manage a really killer album, but There's No Home finds Hunter well on her way.

The Baseball Project is one of those “why the hell hasn’t anybody thought of this before?” ideas that is carried out exceedingly well.

It is, itself, a joyful record, prickly and playful and sometimes downright bizarre, but never less than welcoming.

The Odd Couple from its superior predecessor (just: the writing is a bit weaker, the arrangements sleepier, the production effects a bit thicker) and so its most glaring flaw is that it simply lacks St. Elsewhere‘s invigorated tone, following the same blueprint with cheaper components, producing off-putting retreads whose only appeal lies in their similarity to more effective tracks on Gnarls’s former effort

What’s clear, however, is that Heartland is a huge leap for Pallett on every level. These are the most accomplished songs he has written, and he makes up for the ground he cedes--predominantly his willingness to present conventional, immediate song structures--by making everything else so uniquely his own.

The third Foals album doesn’t represent a huge leap forward from Total Life Forever’s formula so much as a refinement.

The Air Force has a lot of good songs on it.

Seriously, if there’s one thing on No Way Down that doesn’t at least momentarily hook you, even in the basest, more familiar way, where do your roots go and where do your loyalties lie, eh? Maybe in that sub-dermal nostalgia something about this EP truly resonates, well beyond its frugal runtime.

What this means in terms of structure and pace is that Tommy is leisurely, which to some people might suggest “boring” except that this is a very dynamic sort of leisure.

The album’s accompanying trappings do little to dull its impressiveness or the band’s command of its lineage.

It’s a good record, and doesn’t try to recreate The Decline, but it doesn’t manage to capture its energy, fear and grandeur.

The result is light as a feather, with laid back songs that would be perfect played live during some lazy afternoon outdoor festival, sprawled on the grass and drinking a cold beer.

To an extent, this album is too predictable.

Tiger plays like a huge pastiche of past releases.

These are good songs, catchy enough to claim a place in your head while grounded by enough passion to put them close to your heart. It’s just that the Long Winters have proven themselves capable of even better than that.

Whatever thematic consistency existed on Yoshimi or Soft Bulletin is completely absent here. Or just so vague and bloated that the sentiment’s useless.

"Murder," "skimask," and "gangsta," all appended with the word "shit," are the terms in which Gibbs characterizes his oeuvre. Str8 Killa is all of those things. It is also breathtaking in its execution.

If there’s one major complaint to be made, it’s that Compass is simply overlong. These fourteen songs are proof that there is far more longevity in Lidell’s work, even if at over fifty minutes too many moments seem frivolous or forgettable compared to the striking highs.

Like singer Zooey Deschanel, Volume One is endearing and unpretentious.

Dead Man’s Bones is about death, right, and about love, testing where one touches the other, flirting with sensations similar and enduring the inability to confront or frankly deal with that intimacy. Had this record a thicker dramatic arc or something less confining than a spreadsheet of rules, then maybe the songs wouldn’t so inevitably miss their obvious marks.

They capture and transform generic ideas about space and environment in ways beyond the grasp of most bands. Sadly, this approach limits their accessibility; even so, theirs is a world well worth, at least, a visit.

It is logically a bloated, uncomfortable, saturated throwback to no genre, time period, or movement in particular.

Amok is a palatable piece of 21st Century electronic pop that generally sounds complex without really being that complex at all. It’s as smooth a surface as Yorke has ever painted, without grain or contour. It seems designed to say little, to equivocate, to slither around the perimeter of our expectations.

Through its overarching range, it ably balances silence with noise, restraint with reckless abandon.

I can identify the album’s merits and appreciate the craftsmanship but, to employ my second cliché in too short a span of time, the magic is gone.

None of the songs quite scale the heights of a "Stuck Between Stations" or "Your Little Hoodrat Friend," but it's to the band's credit that Heaven goes down considerably easier than Stay Positive (2008), fortunately bereft of the obvious clunkers that rendered that album's Side B such a slog.

Ceremonials is a sumptuously produced album of mystic pop anthems.

Moments on Hera Ma Nono sound a little AOR for a label as experimental as Thrill Jockey, and one suspects that a tasteful re-branding is all that's keeping Extra Golden and their fascinating dance music from the heights of legitimacy currently enjoyed by much less challenging, much less "World" bands.

I’m happy to hear Prodigy sounding engaged and excited again, even if the quality of his lyricism doesn’t match his newfound enthusiasm.

Another World desperately labors to keep fans satiated and ends up overburdened, somewhere nicely between all its scattered intentions.

Each of these eight leftovers can be divided into rote, by-the-numbers Modest Mouse rock jams and meandering pseudo-experiments that feel, uncharacteristically and disappointingly, like nothing more than filler.

Her writing on Real Hair sacrifices none of Major Arcana’s verve or crystalline observations in spite of being notably denser, with Dupuis layering syllable over syllable, image over image, until these songs should burst apart.

The fact is that Black Cascade is half victory lap and half turf statement: it hones in on their strengths without sacrificing originality; it pays off magnificently on all the chances they’ve taken in the past; it is fucking brutal; and it is another high water mark in the band’s catalogue for the New Wave of American Metal.

Total Dust is a very nice record with a good melancholic mood.

The inherent awesomeness of Boris is essentially intact.

The hooks don’t sink in quite as quickly as compared to prior Monkeys’ efforts, but there’s also a lot more going on, and the newfound emphasis on atmosphere prevents Humbug from having the Side-B blahs that were prevalent on "Favourite Worst Nightmare."

Winds Take No Shape is a great album if you like soft, catchy eclectic pop/folk music with smoky serious beautiful vocals and lots of eighties-like effects.

As a whole, We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves doesn't necessarily offer the highs of his past two albums, or something as immediate as "Rights for Gays," but it is a remarkably cohesive listen.

There’s no question that Oxford Collapse, like an awkward teenager, hasn’t figured out exactly what they are, and the added pressures of a larger label release have caught them slightly off guard.

It’s the instant gratification--the sheer consistency of fun--that makes Midnight Boom so irresistible to begin with. It is what it is, basically.

There's no doubt that I Bet on Sky is a very good record. But at this point, the second honeymoon is over, and there's a barely perceptible distance growing.

Yes, the album drags. Yes, the tracks bleed into each other. It is, ultimately, a tiring listen from a band whose sole aim seems to be to innervate every neurone in your body.

Despite all the ingenuity on Foley Room, it’s hard for me not to miss the days when Tobin belonged as much to jazz as he did to any electronic genre.

Even if this time around the music takes a more prominent role, it’s this delivery that gives ExitingARM a sense of unity.

With The Moonlight Butterfly, the Sea and Cake are in no danger any time soon of fasting in light of their diet of quality white bread, and it's not like anybody who is purchasing a "mini-album" from this band expects otherwise.

It’s hard to tell if this disc will have much in the way of staying power... but it’s a hell of a fun listen.

The Knot may not be a full-out Great Album, but it does contain a lot of moments that are dangerously close, and taken as a whole it is surprisingly well-developed for a band still getting started.

Get Lonely is a record that requires multiple listens (itself a first) but which absolutely forbids them -- I've been unable to listen to it in one sitting after a month. Not out of its weakness or my boredom, but in its relentless despair and my weakness.

As seventeen-track records go, it's edible, and should qualify him for another wave of buzz when the Mercurys come round next year.

Two of Drake's favorite topics on Thank Me Later are I'm young and I'm rich stated with precisely that level of eloquence and imagination; should we start calling him the Justin Bieber of rap?

The Secret Machines are still super tight, Josh Garza’s still got restrained guitar awe on his side, every song’s arrangement is still an ebb and re-ebb of soaking synth and organ drone, and the lyrics still battle with neo-adult ennui. Is it any wonder, then, that there comes a time when this can just get dull?

Hynes expands his melancholy pop palette just slightly enough on Cupid Deluxe to create an album at once slickly cohesive and subtly textured.

He’s good at what he does, and, to boot, he continues to release consistently enjoyable music, perhaps single-handedly keeping the obsolescing trip-hop out of the next decade’s dentist office.

What keeps Consolers of the Lonely from being an outright shit affair is, predictably, the assembled chops of its musicians, a group never so much fussy as amicable, wide-eyed about the righteous licks and insensitive tempo shifts they solder together so tightly.

This is an album about getting shitfaced.

There are hardly any virtues to this record at all.

Belle & Sebastian are in transition, as they were in the early 2000s, and I can only hope that we don't have to wait another four years for the likely superior follow-up.

These seven songs (eight if you count the intro) sound great in the car, are loaded with Hammond organ and Fender Rhodes, and Miller’s throaty bellows are higher in the mix than on the first Howlin’ Rain album

Blues Funeral generally succeeds because Lanegan knows exactly what his audience wants and is willing to play to his strengths.

Callahan's made plenty of fine albums-some of which boast higher highs than this one-but Apocalypse is such a satisfying and downright elegant listen because of its commitment to a narrative arc; as soon as it ends and you step back, the album takes the shape of a remarkably complete thought.

They’re all about mucking around with monstrously catchy, juvenile surf riffs and then suffocating those infant laughs with a tight plastic bag of reverb; warm, gleeful guitar tones are stripped to their menacing essentials and left to bake in rancid West Coast heat.

Simple as that: this, their sophomore release and first for Sub Pop, is shamelessly gorgeous, totally in control of every threatening exigency and bombastic color.