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.

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

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

The downside of Counterfeit2 is its uniformity.

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

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.

The most noteworthy aspect of The Photo Album is the band’s upward trajectory. The music is cohesive and even, though still somewhat sluggish.

!!! 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.

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.

Moby continues to do on 18 what he’s always done best, and that is to fuse disparate musical styles with a pop sensibility, while maintaining a moody, almost gothic theme.

Granted, Kweller is still searching for an unique voice, as his music still wears its roots a little too blatantly, but he’s definitely on the right track.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Style definitely outweighs substance in the world of The Raveonettes.

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.

A strange and somewhat inconsistent release.

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.

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

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.

Sleater-Kinney’s weakest album in years.

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).

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

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

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.

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