Chthonic offer up an exceptional album that is worthy of praise and closer inspection.

The fluidity of the music allows for interpretive wiggle room. New Universe sounds like a great, sun-slowed summer album, but I can also see it playing into the feel of other seasons, making for a subdued autumn album or a twinkling winter album.

Last Light is a compelling expression of compassion, frustration, and love in a variety of forms.

Where The Messengers Meet might be the best MSHVB can do with their current MO, it's a remarkably compact album of emotionally-swollen, disillusioned folk rock -but you get the feeling that the band might be on the precipice of something much more titanic.

An original and exquisite album full of playful and energetic indie-rock that, while retaining some of the same qualities as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, is also a step in a new direction that suits the band fine.

Emoh is one of the first surprisingly great albums of 2005.

There’s so much going on here that you have to listen close. And still, it’s a fun album, catchy and wild and full of exuberance.

The band's most eminently danceable record, featuring enough grooves to work your dance party while still retaining enough good ideas to deliver a challenging experimental record that fits well with the rest of the band's catalogue and points to exciting new directions the future could take.

It’s a tight, very good album and although it’ll have its unfair share of detractors, like the rest of the band’s albums, it will shine no matter what.

All Delighted People is very succinctly, a superb masterwork from a musical genius--with plenty more greatness to come.

Whilst it has a few unconcealed flaws here and there, that a tighter trimmer tracklist might have edited-out, Say Yes! is a robust, well-rounded and re-signposting listen; which should reward completionists looking for choice off-cuts from their favourite featured artists, remind us to revisit the original source material and hold-up to plenty of standalone spinning.

On the whole, it's a winner, and you can take the singles and run with them--the play be damned.

It's not so much "old sad bastard music," as Barry described it--more like charmingly puerile lullabies.

All of the pop-coated rock that was immediately catchy, aggressive, melodic, seductive, melancholic, and driven from those two albums [Garbage and Version 2.0] can be found here – from the ramped up, unrelenting beats to the bright electronics and propulsive guitar lines, to Shirley's changeable, ever-engaging vocals.

Laswell and company have crafted something deeply personal and profound, and it's destined to be a milestone in his career.

Time to Die reveals a band that is continuing to grow with scintillating results. Luckily for us, no one’s sitting in the backseat here.

If well-crafted folk-pop leaves you feeling lukewarm, by all means join the naysayers; otherwise, I'll be on the side of those dancing and singing along.

Xenophanes might be the most concise statement Rodriguez Lopez has ever made (11 tracks in 45 minutes), and its tidiness is evident from the (mostly) taut song structures, urgent pacing, shortened solos, and singable melodies.

[The album’s final track is] a satisfying conclusion to the band’s best album since 2000’s Black Market Music.

Calla's sound continues to evolve as they explore divergent musical avenues within the context of potent, atmospheric alt-rock.

Ultimately, for a more cohesive and less exhausting listen, the most accessible parts of Dead could have been crunched-down into a more easily-digestible mini-album.

Whatever the circumstances have been in Lana's rise to fame, all that doesn't detract from the captivating quality of the songs on Born To Die.

While Sydney Vermont's shaky, unusual voice might rub some the wrong way, I found it to be awkwardly beautiful - much like the rest of Hello, Blue Roses' debut album.

Combining vaudeville melodies alongside a quirky pop sensibility lifts the eleven songs here above the merely angular and takes us to a unique space, and probably not somewhere everyone would want to go, but to my ears Moonwink's only real flaw is its brevity.

Sing Along To Songs You Don’t Know is another fine example of how múm is evolving and continually expanding on their already diverse musical pallette.

All in all, this is a very impressive record, one that succeeds on just about every little tweak of the pop idiom it attempts.

Talk about a debut album, Panic Movement is worth more than just NME hype.

It might be an altogether superfluous release but when the music is as expertly crafted to begin with, it's a solid sensation for anyone to notice.