A Little Deeper is one of the truly defining albums of its genre, an album that future artists will look to for inspiration as well as be measured up against. An effortlessly stunning masterpiece.

Holy shite what a record.

This is the album of the year.

An indie pop masterpiece that's easily one of the best records to come out this year.

If Joy Division were to have formed in the last few years, they might sound similar to Calla.

This supremely confident disc is easily an early standout for year-end best honors.

This is a superb piece of rock.

Gorgeously produced, beautifully instrumentated and infused with assurance and purpose, album number four by Australia's wonderkids is simply excellent.

One of the best indie rock albums you're going to hear this year.

A beautiful album -- and it's a double live set, dammit! Brilliant.

This music casts a thoughtful spell that deeper enchants the heart the more times it spins.

Repeated listening reveals Holopaw to be both a richly textured and profoundly moving record, one of the year's first truly mesmerizing folk albums.

A brave and inventive album that refuses to be held down by conventional barriers of genre or style.

It's the detailed complexity and playfulness of the performances that really set Yoko apart from your regular psych-pop release.

Hitchock's hand is fairly evident on here, and it generally sounds a bit more early-Hitchcock than it does late-Soft Boys.

This sounds like a brand-new, re-energized John Mellencamp.

Up in Flames isn't the next revolution of electro-pop, but it's a damn good try.

Bridging the gap between Trio and British pub rock, Stereo Total seem to possess an endless supply of minimalist studio creativity to complement the direct but infectious style of their melodies.

Easily Jurado's most successful album, both musically and lyrically.

All Around is an up-beat look at all that garage rock can be, reminding the listener why garage rock is supposed to be fun.

Steal This Album is still not the perfect SOAD album, but it's by far their most realized yet.

Grandaddy's mellowest, most cohesive material to date.

Once the languid beats and innocent twilight melodies of Mark Mitchell's spacious oddity of an album hits the fourth track, you begin to realize a certain cohesion to this eccentric electronic work.

Log 22 is a collection of apparently simple songs whose catchiness is quickly overtaken by the many quirks and details the band puts into their music.

De-loused is definitely worth checking out, but make sure to keep an open mind and check any preconceived notions at the door.

He spits incisive, abstract rhymes that leave you marveling--and a bit confused, at times.

The result is somewhere between the Pet Shop Boys' meticulous dance pop and the driving keyboard rock of acts like Zero Zero.

Jurassic 5 is sophisticated and mature, yet it's energetic, fresh, and still knows how to have a good time.

This disc is much more solid than Acoustic Soul.

One of their catchiest, most rewarding listening experiences to date.

Some may consider the Super Furries to be treading water on Phantom Power because it feels comfortable and familiar. But when something sounds this good and touches this many bases, I'll take a few more like this one.

It's rich and multi-layered, yet straightforward and deliciously chilly.

He's proven that he can do some beautiful long players, but this just sounds like someone else's greatest hits. Which isn't to say it's not one of the top 20 albums of 2002, because it is. But it shoulda been Top Ten.

Like The Dismemberment Plan's Emergency and I, this seems to glide from one high-energy song to another, each one unique and fascinating by itself, echoing the sparse tones of The Police here and there, or INXS's Kick-era attention to beat in other places.

Laced with bitter irony so thick it drips out of your speakers.

Moments of greater emotional color might have turned what is an exemplary post-breaks exploration by a master into something brilliant.

The lyrics are Echoboy's Achilles' heel.

We Are Science is strikingly gorgeous and powerful. It's also just a little bit cheesy (but in a good way), as though you were watching Patsy Kensit star in Breaking The Waves.

The end product falls short of being synergistic. Neither contender in this sonic duel really lets loose; both Shipp and Anti-Pop Consortium seem too passive and deferential toward each other.

This is a hard, focused album that should both piss off and impress the jazz and rock clientele in equal measures.

Vague and awkward.

This is a good album, though disconcertingly reminiscent of something you could have heard on Modern Rock radio 12 years ago.

It is the kind of album that becomes more endearing with each listen, with each song evincing a gorgeousness missed the first time around.

Life On Other Planets isn't quite as much fun as previous Supergrass releases; perhaps, a sign that the boys are growing up.

Have You Fed the Fish? seems like a bit of a let down. A surprisingly catchy and listenable disappointment, but a disappointment nonetheless.

Human Conditions is the sound of Ashcroft searching for personal and spiritual connections and seeking higher truths in soaring pop choruses. All this existential meditation leaves us, like him, ultimately unfulfilled.

Ikara Colt deliver their rock with a boastful swagger but still fail to generate too much excitement.

As a whole, Man Vs. Machine signifies a dialectic vacillation between lyrics and beats that are refreshingly intelligent, without being pretentious, and themes (manifested sonically and ideologically) that are recycled and uninspired.

One By One, the latest album from the Foo Fighters, rocks. Problem is, that is about all it does.

Hints at greatness, but never quite sustains it.

Slideling isn't a terrible album by any means. It just doesn't have a whole lot of depth to it.

It's all too much like a fumbling Pink Floyd tribute, continually reaching a point where the psychedelica fails to follow up with the required kick, allowing the whole fragile structure to collapse into self-indulgence and bathetic kitsch.

Skimskitta's refusal or lack of ability to move beyond sketchy hisses and glitches makes for a too sprawling, too unfocused affair.

Unfortunately the record sports plenty of filler.

The Datsuns' biggest problem isn't the style of music they're playing, though. It's the sub-standard quality of their songwriting, the uninspired performances on here and the fundamental lack of willingness to stretch beyond the safe confines of their older brothers' record collections.

If the listener is patient, and wades through over an hour of mediocrity, there is brightness at the end of the tunnel.

Unfortunately, the doom and gloom here wears out its welcome quickly.

He lets the technology overwhelm the proceedings and all too often it is used in service of forgettable, substandard melodies.

Slow Motion Daydream is a real treat for Everclear fans since it's just a continuation of the Everclear sound, even if that sound is contrived and average.

If pleasant melodies, electronics, ironic culture references, and played-out orchestration techniques could compensate for the lack of any discernable sense of expression, I could recommend Tahiti 80's Wallpaper For the Soul to you. I probably still wouldn't, but I could.

This is toothless, banal music that is so sweet it's like eating an extra helping of cotton candy.

Please, nothing like this again.

Really, don't waste your time with this.

A far cry from the sequencing prowess evidenced on his 1998 release, Vorsprung Dyk Technik, and a dismally inadequate way of showcasing the music that he's unleashed on the trance scene, this Greatest Hits package is an exercise in frustration.

This is music that took out all of the adjectives.