Quality though it could be, if only the vision wasn't so occluded.

While bombastic and ambitious as ever, Tao suggests that Trail of Dead have once again lost the taste for subtlety and texture that's past served to elevate their sound from the prog pack.

Throughout Narrow Stairs, the band allows itself to open up, twisting and tinkering the same old style to their liking with mixed results. [Spring 2008, p.90]

The audio-visual experience, fondly known as The BQE, centers on the history of New York’s Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and its conceit works because of its composer’s breadth of influence.

The results is a mix of creep and fabulous dance hits that will neither change the world nor excite you to start any fires. [Spring 2008, p.97]

Nothing sticks on the LP, and the disc feels recycled, pedestrian and a bit exhausting--at best.

Unlike their debut-which could sometimes have moments equivalent to loud machine-gun fire, occasionally hitting its intended target but blurring together and exhausting itself--the tracks on Wolf's Law are like laser-guided rocket blasts, tighter and more effective.

The Tallest Man on Earth continues his approach; it's both likable and rousing.

The songwriting recalls Davies' Misfits days, which wouldn't be a snipe if he hadn't penned so many masterpieces with the Kinks. [#19, p.92]

Though Hutz might be out of whack, this album is surely no loser.

From the adrenal rock-and-roll guitars on "Cheap Beer" to the guttural shrills on "Cocaine," every song here champions that adult adolescence and "f*** it" ideology that has always made the genre so damn appealing.

Avalanche enjoys an embarrassment of melodic riches and the luminous release blows up the fragile soul heard on the duo’s self-titled debut to heroic proportions.

Floating where they once soared... Doves safely straddle anthemic familiarity and hipster erudition. [#15, p.104]

Regularly swelling with gorgeous string arrangements and Urata's slurring, operatic bellows, 100 Lovers feels like a reverse-engineered soundtrack to a beautiful foreign film in dire need of epic landscapes and intimate moments of romance.

AFD finds the band perhaps at their most serious... and perhaps at their most bestest. [#21, p.102]

The split personality of [Night on My Side] begs the question: which is the real Gemma Hayes? [#5, p.91]

Regardless of the universal, earth-loving edges of this Minneapolis collective's sound (which edges can be trying), what there definitely is in Light Chasers is some supremely beautiful and well-produced music.

The Globes do a nice job of grabbing and keeping listeners' attention throughout the album's 35 minutes of music.

[2009’s What Will We Be's] malady of stylistic disparity has been curbed to the point of what feels like a cohesive body of work.

A somewhat random but enjoyable and welcome compilation.

Too soon for July, the trio tends to fall back into the boredoms of late-summer garage jamming, though.

With less vocals, more warp and looser production, it's a witchier, Midwestern answer to its London, dub-driven predecessors.

Pulsating with synths and guitars and buttressed by determined stomp, Trans Am’s latest robotic brain-fry is a study in sudden sound.

Orcas find a space that floats between velvet vocals and Pioulard's field recordings in a time frozen between dreams and a reality beautifully faded by the sun.

Sylvianbriar brings a sunny openness to of Montreal’s ever-evolving cache with its sweeping changes in styles and instrumentation and adherence to more traditional song structures.

The record feels experimental and alive because of it. That unpredictability breeds some missteps but for the most part the album is peppered with pleasant, sometimes unsettling surprises.

Fans of Animal Collective may enter the Slasher House and revel in Tare’s fun-sized treats, but others might be too disappointed by the tricks, remaining contented with the Haunted Graffiti next door.

[It] starts off pretty much where the previous one left off, with Skinner feeling sorry for himself. This time though, he does so with greatly improved production values. [#20, p.97]

This is a song cycle for those who like melancholy with a side of melodrama.

A record that leaves the listener teary-eyed, standing and utterly, breathlessly inspired. [#25, p.92]

However, even with the musical trappings of contemporary conventional rock, Siouxsie’s voice and look, blessedly, remain the same.

There's glitchy-synth and askew beats through which a craggy Ferry tests an array of vocal tricks for maximum theatricality.

The Morning Benders have grown from playing taut three-minute melodies to sophisticated chamber pop with a focus on ambiance and layered harmonies.

It's Kiwanuka's staggering voice that makes you wince at its unrestrained sincerity and tenderness.

Feathers isn't a bad album, just one without a discernable look--or hook. [#14, p.99]

Chemical Chords is yet another kaleidoscope that hits you as ear candy upon first listen, but like most Stereolab records, further inspection reveal a playground for the mind. [Summer 2008, p.97]

Just in time for spring, bass mastermind Daedelus unleashes Bespoke, yet another cornucopia of utterly unique vibes and big beat journeys that are somehow also Ibiza-appropriate.

It's a bit like Lance Armstrong placing second in the Tour de France--not the finish one is accustomed to, but still a remarkable achievement. [Fall 2009, p.98]

If Silver Wilkinson is supposed to be a journey, it sounds like Mr. Wilkinson got a little lost along the way.

So while Drew’s songwriting roots remain strong, he and the BSS family tree need to watch their creative waistlines, lest the spirited Canadian musical movement they’re responsible for should hit its saturation point too soon.

Her throaty vocals and winsome lyrics recall the Jamaican patois and patience of her youth, while the title track shows off a Grace Jones delighting in a frightening form of future-forward decadence.

While there’s nothing as instantly catchy as Howl Howl Gaff Gaff’s hits, the sweeping grandeur of Our Ill Wills is infectious, with every song benefiting from just the right amount of orchestral glow.

All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu is Wainwright's most personal album since Poses. He makes pain sound beautiful.

It's upbeat even if most of Bulat’s songs dwell on heart-ache and loss. That notion is on par with every singer-songwriter these days but her voice drives these concepts into a feeling that’s genuine. In other words, Bulat can pine with the best of them.

Producer Jacquire King (Tom Waits, Kings of Leon, Norah Jones) gives each song a poppy slant even when the lyrical content wrestles with the jetsam of life.

What Dr. Dog and its principal songwriters McMicken and Toby Leaman have done is carry on a tradition of soulful writing and musicianship. [Summer, 2008, p.90]

Information Received is expertly manicured but never manufactured.

Personal Life comes across dark, lost, and-shockingly for The Thermals-boring. At least Don and Betty Draper shared a bed for a little while.

Where other lo-fi pop registers as slack and emaciated, Secret Cities prop their brittle melodies up with adroit tape manipulation, wide-eyed field recordings, and electronic doodling straight out of Terry Riley's songbook. [Spring/Summer 2010, p.108]

It’s existential, but under piles of heavy thoughts, Broder reaches for little bits of luminescence.

While the album title may aptly describe the plight, this is easily Deer Tick’s most complete album to date, proving that sometimes a bit of good comes from even the most dire of circumstances.

She never gets quite where she's going, but it's good to have her back.

This should be playing in every thump-and-hump club in the world. [#5, p.92]

Where it seemed the individual songs on Danse Macabre filled out and stretched the seams of its pop confines, Wet From Birth proposes a more intricate and ambitious space. [#12, p.93]

The band is not exactly daytripping here and there is a great fervor in what they do, but the fruit is not quite ripe. [Summer 2009, p.102]

While normally "killer flute" and "far-out sitar" playing would feel incredibly counterfeit coming from a white guy based in California, it's his classic roots that keep it all grounded. And this album has both in spades. [Summer 2009, p.93]

This is a sprawling album of warmth, stuttering electronics and rural psychedelia. [#24, p.96]

Just think of it as Diet Strokes. [#24, p.100]

The North Carolina natives mix the boisterousness with the balladry well, while delivering image-evoking lyrics in between.

The result confirms there are few bands that can mix past and progress like these fellas.

Swimming's arrangements and harmonies speak to a contemporary sensibility--one well aware that, for all the beauty of living in the moment, the moment still passes by. [Spring 2008, p.94]

This is Cat Power as strong and mature as we know her today.

In Our Nature is a compelling but not fascinating portrait of an artist at ease in his element.

Divided between a Mongol warrior gallop and Zeppelin III stomp, Warp Riders is a bona fide modern-day mind-flayer. 

A modern day West Coast classic. [#7, p.90]

It's easily the most focused album of Schneider's career.

His latest, Cyclops Reap, amplifies the warmth of his signature bedroom recording.

The former Split Enz and Crowded House frontman goes for the jugular by taking a chance with a delightfully fresh sound.

Though the mood has been lowered since 2006, it’s clear that Midlake can still reach beautiful heights.

The Soft Moon's sophomore album Zeroes is an experimentation in industrial sound that doesn't fully hit the mark.

On Coconut, the group softens the sharp edges and buffers the beats; the end result is like going from high contrast black-and-white to eye-popping Technicolor.

In Heaven is just what you would expect to come out of a summer house in the depths of winter-dreamy and blissful, but at times lonesome and haunting.

While the melodies and rhythms won't escape most listeners, it is the aforementioned instrumental prowess and attention to detail that help build appreciation with each listen. [Winter 2009, p.94]

It's a mess--not without some tidy bits--but what's better: these songs could be the death throes, finally, of these guys' unfettered id.

Another resplendent nonpareil from Eno (and a collaborative improvisation with Leo Abraham and Jon Hopkins), this is veritably a spontaneous soundtrack to an inferential film, one that is essentially revealed in the imagination of the listener.

Vows is a step ahead of your average candy-coated pop. [#48]

This ambitious LP is an acid-tinged, ambient headfuck that's guaranteed to blow your brains out all over the couch you've sunk into.

Glacier is a journey.

A massive concept album that is so gluttonously huge-sounding that it makes The Wall sound like a Sebadoh record. [#10, p.94]

Written in part after Dee Dee was put on vocal rest, Too True infuses the band’s eyeliner-heavy songs with moments of quiet reflection that bite almost as hard as those delivered with snarl.

Natural History is an invigorating listen, which may say as much about today as it does about the band.

Lust Lust Lust, the fuzzed-out, starry-eyed return-to-form by The Raveonettes, takes you there and then kicks you out at sunrise. [Winter 2008, p.94]

No surprise here-it's a dance album filled to the brim with beats that could make even a corpse twitch.

Might well be his most brilliant yet. [#10, p.86]

With lush instrumentation so rich that non-vocal versions of the songs are also included on the album, these pills aren’t exactly chewable, but they’re easy to swallow.

As equivocal as its title but just as emotionally arresting, A Thousand Shark's Teeth is magnificently bewitching, while eerie and spectral. [Spring 2008, p.96]

The Flower Lane provides width for Mondanile to freely explore bluesier, spacier frontiers, and the fresh air to achieve a cohesive clarity that builds on the successful points of his previous efforts.

Common throughout is a scorching sensuality that is destined to make Free Reign the soundtrack to a lot of smoldering affairs.

Sun Kil Moon's Mark Kozelek revels in the succulent melancholy of sad autumn evenings in the backseat, garlanded with the shadow words of life's heaviness, clearly woven by a master of spiritual spelunking.

The sense of movement is missing here, that raw immediacy that powered "Full Collapse's" better tracks; the howls and breakdowns feel almost like quota-meters. Still, though, there are enough feedback squalls and keyboard squelches in Dave Friedmann's production to suggest Thursday have yet to run their course. [Winter 2009, p.100]

Dulli is the king of building to a pinnacled, string-filled moment and he nails it here. The burning edifice of the heart rarely sounds so transcendent.

Avant-garde impenetrability has been passed over for hallmark accessibility. [#11, p.92]

Think Damien Rice fronting Coldplay minus the unabashed bombast--and reveal a future of nothing but promise.

Port of Morrow is transition time for The Shins.

It all combines to form a truly sublime album of heart-wrenching, heart-warming beauty.

Beck-ish vocals kick through the facade of slow and steady rhythmic pacing to reveal an emotional potency hiding behind the often formulaic hum of Handsome Furs.

With Rat A Tat Tat, there's plenty of unforgettable melodies to make this his strongest and most accessible work to date. [Winter 2010, p.96]

Broder has created his own brand of amalgamated Americana: moody, mixed up and damn beautiful. [#6, p.85]