The lack of distinctiveness is what ultimately makes All Years Leaving utterly forgettable.

A loose, fun collection.

Nothing's Lost is heavier, denser and in its best moments, verges on pop nirvana.

It's a crackling, concise collection.

Despite mining decades-old forms, The Anomoanon's honest rock is hard to dislike.

It's funny and smart and a little annoying in large doses.

The sound, which blends a little of the pastoral, John Fahey-influenced digital music with calm, focused songwriting, gives a sense of romance to a fairly limited musical vocabulary.

You're a Woman, I'm a Machine might be the best party record on this side of '79 that your local abandoned warehouse has ever seen.

Behold 2004, your kings of yawn-rock, Son, Ambulance.

Cave's songwriting chops and incisive lyrics have, if anything, grown stronger.

Rendezvous is among the group's finest works.

Sounding like a lost classic from Britain's 1979 art-punk scene, the Futureheads' debut is an assured masterpiece of twitchy, nervous pop.

When layers of choir-boy vocals are added to the group's singing ("Hun Joro"), when feeble, naturalistic sounds are used in questing improvisations ("Sigur Ros"), or when acoustic instruments coalesce with a swath of electronics ("Dogun"), you'll find your jaw on the floor, too, stunned as ever.

Those who can overlook this slightly dumbed-down approach will find This Island is not without its moments.

As hit-and-miss as its 2003 predecessor.

Dents and Shells matches the intensity and concision of Impasse, while adding an organic, spontaneous feel to the proceedings.

[Disc 1 is] a revealing, if not quite essential, portrait of the artist.... [Disc 2 is] an inventive, rewarding look at the Pixies esteemed catalogue.

Love Songs for Patriots picks up exactly where American Music Club last left us: producing uniformly excellent music filled with heartbreak, loneliness, and - yes - politics.

In a way CVB's New Roman Times is on par career-wise with Rush's 2112 - well, minus the klezmer anyway.

Summer in Abaddon delivers an all-inclusive perfection that sets it apart from any other record this year.

The spoken-word Sonny and Cher act of Chains and Sue does gets tiresome at moments, lyrics like "you be the follower, let's kill the leader" aren't as clever as their authors believe, and the record does run on a fairly consistent mid-tempo bounce.

Mason's songs wander from folk to rock and dip their toes into country, but sound fresh, and never boring.

As long as they continue to compose such memorable material, there is more than enough room for Mono in the post-rock pantheon.

For every misstep on the mostly acoustic Spooked, there's an undeniable classic.

A buzzing, raw jewel of a record that hints at seemingly limitless possibilities for Beckett's songwriting.

Absolutely brutal.

For pure intensity and soul, Damage is now THE album in the Blues Explosion catalog, and essential listening at that.

Far less lucid than his past work, even by Animal Collective standards, all nine untitled compositions reflect a man whose soul is adrift.