Word has it that the band had more studio time than ever before, and the result is a concept album which combines elements of Lennon-McCartney experimentation with elements of Yoko Ono eccentricity.

Most of the time these low-key meditations on enduring love and friendship ring true...

It's the sound of a man finding a new place for himself, liking it, and reveling in it.

It is a strange album for Sunny Day in that it lingers in an abstract realm that the band previously only hinted at.... album is SDRE's most mature work to date. It is so musically dense and complex.

If you usually enjoy pop music made by young white males with guitars, you'll almost certainly like Parachutes.

It's the sound of musicians realizing how good they are at what they do. And then doing it.

All in all, a really great debut for this quintet.

Where most rock bands that try to play pop forget that pop music requires pop songs, Sefchik and Laguana are constructionists in the classic pop tradition.

A coming-out party for one of the most important artists of our time.

Groove Armada have a knack for producing fantastic underground dance tracks, in a variety of tempos, and packing them full of hooks.

For the most part, Richard Ashcroft's debut solo disc delivers.... an album full of soulful and genuine expressions of hope.

Buy this album and hold it dear, because you won't hear a better one any time soon.

Their disparaging wails and hums are strangely magnetic?

A fundamentally unselfish record, as simply enjoyable as a day off or a light beer buzz.

This album is truly affecting -- it is an instant, irresistible, bounce-in-your-step morning cup of coffee of an album.

Where Kraftwerk, MC5, and Miles Davis used to tempt them to excess, here the production unites their diverse influences, every track attacking the speakers like an angry lunatic thrashing against the walls of a poorly soundproofed room.

We Are Science is striking, very bold, and very sexy.

Closer than any previous mass-market Sonic Youth album to the avant-garde sound that's always popped up in their extracurricular work.

An exquisite collection of thoughtful lyrics and lovely harmonies.

It's made up of some songs you think you shouldn't like, some you weren't ready for, and some you'll have to rewind to make sure you heard correctly. It is an album with no peers. And that, my friends, is a recommendation.

Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, despite a couple of missteps, is brimming with life.

The material hints at strength, but pieces that should have been severely pruned and used as a song's bridge stretch on and on. Perhaps they're just too thrifty or unwilling to toss anything out once they've gone through the trouble of recording it. The First Of The Microbe Hunters is for completists only.

More interestingly, it gives a peek into Yo La Tengo's working methods. It's been a long time since they brought finished songs to the practice room; instead the combo jams together and lets the improvisation mutate over time into tunes which sometimes become the basis for songs.