An ambitious, sprawling string of songs.

And while lyrically nothing comes close to eclipsing the pop genius of "Heartbeats" from their previous release, Deep Cuts, several tracks on Silent Shout demonstrate considerable growth both lyrically and musically, making this a solid follow up from a band that has further evolved their own curious brand of synthpop.

This is Mission of Burma’s most aggressive and impassioned record to date.

This is not an easy record to absorb. The band’s rough-hewn production is tinny and sonically chaotic, but underneath the surface noise lurks one of the finest records of the year.

Each listen reveals depth and texture that allow the hooks plenty of room to breathe.

It all unfurls more like a musical than an indie rock record, but don’t let the dissonance scare you away.

Where melody, mood, and technique dominated Logic, Without Feathers sinks into a tuneless no man’s land.

It sounds overcooked, over-thought, and overly ambitious, but such growing pains are preferable to pandering.

They’re not trying to pass this off as original, and it’s not by any means. But it is clearly catchy as hell, if almost annoyingly so.

3121 may be funkier, edgier, and dancier than Musicology, but it still doesn’t push the envelope on a level that would constitute a true return to form.

An astoundingly seductive debut.

In small doses casual, uninformed listeners could mistake this for vintage Pink Floyd, but it lacks the tension of Pink Floyd’s passive aggressive rumble.

They show great promise, but also fall victim to the uncertainty of a band drastically altering their sound and trying too hard to make grandiose statements.

It is a little more scattered than the last few proper Stereolab albums in terms of musical threads, but the urbane electro-funk of “Interlock” as well as the jittery disco pomp of “Eye of the Volcano” prove that Stereolab is still tweaking the formula with one foot in Esquivel’s grave and the other several light years away.

Mr. Beast isn’t Mogwai’s most challenging or daring record, but it might be its most beautiful or powerful.

The Strokes match their innate catchiness with a new found intensity that makes First Impressions of Earth sound like a band hungry for blood.

The weird thing is, without Hawkin's ridiculous vocals, most of these songs would have been sure-fire hits, if only they'd been released twenty years ago.

The album skillfully and confidently showcases all of Martin Gore’s songwriting strengths.

She’s clever and sharp with her lyrical daggers, and she’s frighteningly aware of the impact of her own voice.

The formula has barely changed, although there is a noticeable decline in songwriting quality.

Once all the influences roll off your tongue, however, you’ll find yourself speechless before the excitement this album will invariably instigate.

Gorgeous, lush, and surprisingly optimistic.

Takk is sharper and more direct than anything the band has previously churned out, but that is not to say it’s by any means accessible by normal standards.

Plans is ultimately a pretty boring album, and the primary reason is its lack of diversity.

Late Registration... definitely mines familiar terrain, but West’s zeal for clever wordplay juxtaposed with his unflinching confidence makes for a charismatic and often electrifying punch.

By turns goofy, intellectual, and non-sequitur lyrics are indecipherable without the lyric sheet, but the strangely alluring charm of songs like "The Skin of My Country Yellow Teeth" will have you clamoring for more.

A pompous, painfully tacky string of infomercial rock.

It’s an expansive and stupendously produced record with a handful of remarkable songs.

It isn’t until you’ve given it your full attention that the album starts to reveal its true depth and worth with songs that stick and get under your skin and make you come back for more.

Mediocre melodies ride atop formulaic songwriting.

Albarn’s ability to slither arrogantly from genre to genre while maintaining his charm is truly remarkable.

Not exactly radio friendly, The Woods explores sonic deconstruction a la Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix instead of the preciously catchy indie pop hooks you’ve come to expect.

The tempos all too often meander into directionless drones, while the vocals portray a thin, bratty, post-punk posturing that tends to grate when not underpinned by a catchy chorus.

Gimme Fiction may not be your favorite Spoon record right now, but give it a few years.

For a guy that has so little to say with so few ways to say it, Trent Reznor has mastered the art of making what is old sound new again.

For the life of me I cannot fathom how people can claim this album is any sort of return to form.

Even though Guero sounds familiar sonically, it still pushes Beck further into a league that he all but owns.

Everything that was great about De-Loused in the Comatorium is blatantly absent, while all of the negatives now protrude like barnacled tumors.

The lyrical terrain is insultingly common (girls, life on the road, girls), yet the band has such an idiosyncratic method of expression that makes these everyday themes sound – at least over the course of each song – radically inspired.

On Take Fountain Gedge uses his sharpened songwriting chops to present his case and again proves himself a master of the pop song. It’s just that sometimes it feels like routine.

On Worlds Apart Trail of Dead sounds utterly reinvigorated yet dangerously reinvented.

Nowhere near as affecting as even latter day Sebadoh records like Harmacy, Emoh shows Barlow in a typically maudlin frame of mind, but the starkness of his voice is smoothed over with pointless overdubs

Low sounds fearless in its experimentation. Such personal intimacy juxtaposed with extremely haughty pretension could easily turn off listeners, but it’s all woven together so well that it’s hard to dismiss even the wrong turns.

Suffers from too much open-faced honesty and a serious lack of intensity.

It is pure fluff. And pretty awful fluff at that.

This collection is the antithesis of anything Kurt Cobain would have authorized, right down to the shiny metal packaging.

A sad stab at gimmicky duets with Justin Timberlake and obnoxious production by The Neptunes.

It’s trite rehash after trite rehash followed by pointless filler.

These songs will undoubtedly knock the wind out of you, but for every dynamic explosion or screeching wall of noise there’s a hook in tow.

Kathleen Hanna’s girlish yelp grates more than usual, practically bereft of charm, and her bandmates can barely write a functional song much less play one.

Astronaut doesnâ??t come close to ranking with the music that made the band world famous, but it has moments that make it easy to remember why the band rode such a wave to begin with.

Despite Hamilton's grittiest vocals to date, Size Matters is inarguably watered-down and bland.

Luckily, the band doesn’t cave into the dance-punk trend without expanding upon its current ubiquity with skillful songwriting and risky avoidance of testosterone.

It’s safe, unobtrusive, and ubiquitously “indie”, if well produced and memorably melodic, at times.

This is just an awful display of gratuitous self-indulgence.

Antics is a grower. It’s not as grandiose as its predecessor, but it still packs a lasting punch.

Last Exit is a monumental debut... on par with It’s My Life or Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.

The Delivery Man is a solid, albeit slightly over-learned and patronizing, collection of bluesy rock.

Yeah, it’s another Silkworm record. It’s not the band’s best and it’s not the band’s worst. It rocks in its own unique, world-weary way.

It’s frustrating to listen to a band run in place, especially when the expectations are so much higher.

The Hives’ propulsive, polyrhythmic outbursts are so packed with hooks and catchy choruses that you can’t help but overlook the schtick and give in to the raucous delight.

Cure fans are certainly used to Smith’s voice being high in the mix, but on this record it can be overwhelming and stifling.

If the fact that Albini seems to bury Falkous’ yelps behind too much dissonance bothers you, there’s plenty of joyous wreckage to revel in.

[Gilbert’s] chirping voice is such a spectacle at times, you won’t know whether to laugh or punch a hole in the wall.

The only disappointment is the fact that everything sounds a tad too familiar.

OnOffOn is the aural resurrection of a band that still matters.

Despite the daunting Radiohead-colored cloud that hangs heavy over Muse, the band pushes the limits of its slick, pre-apocalyptic rock with a self-assured strut.

while the production’s sleek sheen holds tight reigns over any explosive guitars threatening to get out of hand, The Stills still manage to build up enough tension to hold your attention through good old fashioned songwriting.

I’m just astounded by how bad this album actually is.

For every badass mind-fuck like “Out Of The Races And Onto The Tracks”, there are twice as many unlistenable duds in the band’s arsenal.

Beneath all the off-kilter catchiness, quirkiness and aggression lies little of substance.

An album packed with as many irresistible hooks as Whenever You’re Ready deserves to be heard.

There are some good songs here, to be sure, but they’re wedged between too many meandering, indistinct retreads of self-referential bombast.

The biggest problem with Hail to The Thief is its lack of surprise.

!!! fuses the Tom Tom Club’s frivolous white-boy syncopation with ESG’s polyrhythmic propulsion to make your brain feel informed while your feet work very hard to embarrass you.

Think Tank is Blur’s most cerebral, wildly experimental album, ever.

The downside of Counterfeit2 is its uniformity.

Only vaguely hints at what the future holds, relying mostly on its tried and true formula of layered, epic rock and raw, pounding emotion.

Elephant is a startlingly dark and consistent record, incorporating frequencies never before heard on a White Stripes album.

This is arguably Idlewild’s finest hour.

The Blood Brothers pretty much have one speed: murder. This will tire even the most patient ears after about fifteen minutes, although, the album does show signs of expanded musical breadth with slower, albeit, brief melodic interludes and unconventional instrumentation (xylophones, toy pianos).

Every single song is an hummable masterpiece of pop experimentation.

Give Up is pure, unadulterated dance pop from start to finish.

Style definitely outweighs substance in the world of The Raveonettes.

So what’s the appeal? Sure, there’s a kitsch factor, and her fearlessness exhibits a respectful amount of bravado, I suppose. But none of that changes the fact that the music is insipid and boring, “sexually explicit lyrics” and all.

We Love Life trades Pulp's characteristic risk-taking for smooth accessibility, which works a gray, rainy day magic over the proceedings.

It’s far from the level of a Magnetic Fields release – or even The 6ths for that matter – and, therefore, won’t appeal to casual fans.

Spoon rebounds from the insurmountable challenge of following up the colossally brilliant Girls Can Tell with an equally impeccable album.

Don't be fooled by the constant references to other bands. While the foundation upon which Interpol is building, certainly is borrowed, its music is not a miming act.

Sleater-Kinney’s weakest album in years.

This album is an extraordinary display of Oberst’s songwriting prowess. It’s obscenely ambitious and pretentious and ridiculous but unquestionably memorable and affecting.

Orton seems to be embracing the humdrum, schlocky sound of New Age crooners and adult contemporary mush like Dido.

The album definitely has a few remarkable moments, but it’s really just not very good.

Less than half of the record actually sports the rock I salute it for, but when it does Superdrag shines like a blast from the past but without the feeling that it’s a calculated throwback to anything in particular.

While Torino is most definitely not a Wedding Present album by any stretch of the imagination, it should win back some of the die-hard older fans that may have boycotted Cinerama at the onset.

With Murray Street the band has made a persuasive case for its ongoing existence for the first time in over a decade.

High Society expands upon the hurried schizophrenia of Schmersal’s previous band, Brainiac, elevating songwriting to the same level of experimental deconstruction to both the detriment and advancement of the band’s core sound.

Silkworm as classic rock? Yep, and it’s damn good, too.