I’m Wide Awake is an uneven product, full of everything there is to loathe and love about Oberst.

If Edan can sort out the dismayingly schizophrenic nature of Beauty and the Beat, he could harness his immense potential as both a rapper and lyricist and create something pretty cool, especially if he gets guest-MCs who perform as well as Insight, Percee P, and Mr. Lif do on this album.

Minus the instrumentals (eight), tracks featuring guest stars (three), and songs whose only redeeming quality is their cool title (at least five, including "Son of a Bitch," "I’m Going to Stop Pretending I Didn’t Break Your Heart," and "Whatever Happened to Soy Bomb"), you’re really only left with a handful of bonafide Eels tunes.

Kaputt is filled with light, sprightly textures, all pleasant and groovy, but the album still seems to lumber along with breezy but basic sequencer rhythms, indistinct melodies, and sax blowing similarly all the way through.

It’s the latter comradely pursuits that this new 2CD compilation attempts to put into a comfortable package for those who just can’t get enough from the twosome, or need a roadmap to understand where it leads into their better-known works; which it just about succeeds in doing.

Many of the songs feel like incomplete character sketches that simply gesture at yearning and crisis.... Salad Days is, nevertheless, an interesting piece of work.

So if you can make it to track six - the lush “Only Love Can Set You Free” - Love Songs For Patriots becomes far more palatable from then on in.

I admire the band's unorthodox approach to its music and its combination of disparate rock and non-rock elements.... That said, I will probably never be able to listen to this entire album in a single sitting.

Yeah, they're good at what they do, but what they do is just not that palatable.

It never really builds steam until the end, when it is almost too late.

It’s not quite the doom-laden disaster that provisional plays suggest but neither is it an easy-to-recommend addition to the Low catalogue.

Street Horrrsing is a solid if still flawed album full of enough cool moments to satisfy anyone who might be interested in checking it out.

In effect, the group have carbon-copied the sound of The Great Eastern but neglected to paste-in an equal number of tunes.

Although annoyingly inconsistent, Infiniheart contains enough interesting tunes with odd arrangements and instrumentation to convince us that Chad Van Gaalen is a talented songwriter and multi-instrumentalist and is capable of producing engaging, lo-fi, ambient pop.

The songs themselves aren’t as outstanding as they could be, and it sure doesn’t help that the production choices give them less of the overwhelming energy that the Pharmacists are known for.

Over all the album is pretty decent and enjoyable in its context. When it feels mediocre, it’s because the ideas, which once made this band and many post-metal bands so ahead of their time, have been caught up to.

The sad truth is that few of the songs top their studio counterparts.

Although most of the songs are good individually, the record is fairly monochromatic, and it can get a bit tiresome listening to it from start to finish.

It’s not that the album suffers too much from being stuck in traction that it won’t still be appealing to fans of the first album. It’s just that, in terms of expectations, it isn’t the game changer that many of us were expecting.

So while the subdued vocal harmonies and acoustic folk influences of 70s pop bands Chicago and America can be heard, there is enough intricately layered dream-pop floating around the fleshed-out orchestrations to keep indie-rock fans contented.

While The Mendoza Line's lyrics may be full of light and full of fire, the music here is not.

It lacks the consistency and unique feel that the original had in abundance, and lacks the quality hooks that defined his debut.

Our Blood doesn't leave me wanting more, it doesn't leave me drooling over another listen, and it sure doesn't leave me interested in more of Richard Buckner's work. But on the same measure, it doesn't leave me sick or angry.

Byrne fans will probably already own this, and probably should, if for no other reason than the final two tracks. Casual fans who haven’t seen the movie will probably be put off by 13 mostly homogeneous tracks of soundtrack fare. Without an emotional attachment to either Byrne or the movie, that’s simply too much for even a solid album like this to overcome.

A simple exercise in bright, energetic--if somewhat vapid--pop music.

Despite Fortune’s several throwaway tracks and sometimes generic alt-country feel, it serves as a reminder that The Mendoza Line’s prolific songwriters are still capable of churning out catchy, accessible pop songs.

Ultimately, the hushed tones of the contemplative indie-twee The Caribbean weave on Discontinued Perfume is moderately pleasing yet unspectacular.

A shock in the uttermost worst way because Wale has suffered from the over-production, guest-crammed, lack-of-ideas style that usually follows with a major label release.