Super Taranta! cements further the untouchable status of Gogol Bordello.

Goddamn if the entire mess doesn't sound great. [#12, p.93]

Largely favoring grayscale tones and sedated sentiment, Lower Dens' highs achieve with an understated ability to evoke emotion.

Manages to artfully encompass all that sucks about post-pubescent life... within an exquisite ball of heady poetry, cold composition, and the kind of warm brilliance that comes from only the most inspired of collaborations. [#15, p.96]

The result is a vibrant 13-song album that is overlaid with chanted lyrics that sometimes turn dull.

The Con is a startlingly dark, yet characteristically vibrant offering, featuring a band that’s learned to harness the energy-highs, while tempering pretty (even pastoral) pop-folk with a new, deeply-affecting brand of melancholy.

Unlike Cave, who drags all those poor characters of his down into that gruesome purgatory he calls a soul, Calvi simply lays hers unabashedly bare before us. Never have the aesthetics of doom been called to the service of so much exuberance.

An unflinching major label debut, as well as a straight rock album that straddles confidently that tricky space between rawness and posturing. [#10, p.95]

Yet another firework-filled post-modern work of true art. [#24, p.89]

Although it perhaps lacks the wasted acrobatics and distracting volume that populates today’s popscape, Give The People What They Want nevertheless reminds us that it’s both range and heart that helps compelling soul music survive both a century of cynics and existential close calls.

Many songs here warrant praise, but those spontaneous wild riffs have sadly been sacrificed, along with a bit of singer James Petralli’s gnarled, impassioned bite.

For the most part, the popping bass and booming horns keep Ya-Ka-May simmering smoothly, refelcting NOLA's rich musical history while still manageing to sound unmistakably out of this world. [Winter 2010, p.98]

Listening to the record as a whole is sort of like meandering through an exhibit of miniature, spasming wire sculptures.

A charming if adolescent collection of bubblegum harmonies and none-too-complicated pop. [#17, p.101]

Silver Age [is] his strongest, most searing collection of songs since Sugar.

This is stately, gentlemanly music--the sound of aging gracefully.

Borrows the Afghan Whigs' ballsy romanticism, Velvet Underground's late-night cool, Peter Gabriel's raw passion and a few post-punk riffs for good measure. [#17, p.100]

May be one of their best. [#5, p.90]

A beautiful album with an amniotic vibe, Dive can be a bit repetitive.

{Awayland} tends to feel without reason or necessity, as if thrown together more in effort to get something down than to say something that needed saying.

It's simply one of the best rock records of our so-far shallow year.

The brevity is a disappointment and the songs at times feel like B-sides of something more un-inked, but Radiohead are (and definitively always will be) musicians capable of emotion at the rawest base and somehow binding it to melody and lyric-forever haunting and influencing future generations too numerous to count or imagine.

Awash in trippy reverb and surf-rock riffs, Arabia Mountain is further proof that the Lips have matured.

It's everything we love about Blackalicious, but with a little more neo-soul vibe than we're used to. [#17, p.94]

Amidst the fuzz and noise, Segall has turned out a raucous blitz of an album that deserves your play, if it doesn't break your speakers first.

While Breaks takes a few tracks to pick up traction, Bachmann's true grit comes through.

Our six-string savior not only makes his guitar do things that will have you forgetting that Page and Plant are never to take to a stage together again; he is also keen to remind us in just whose hands now rests that Hammer of the Gods.

Visions refuses to rest on its laurels.