Happy Songs is epic and subtle, technically savvy and emotionally charged and visceral all at once -- in short, it's a summary of everything that is great about Mogwai's music.

[A] sonic sheen (and the punchy rhythm section) gives the songs an immediacy that the previous reunion records have lacked.

The years are beginning to show on Smith, especially on the opener, "Green Eyed Locoman," but his backing band hasn't sounded this energetic and enthusiastic in years.

A bipolar rock opera for the ages.

Albini captures a recording full of heart, a sound quiet and full, rough and clear.

Lookaftering sees her trading the overly twee vibe of her debut for a darker, more mysterious and mature sound.

There have been releases that have excited me so far, but none that have completely recharged my faith in intelligent rock music. This is the first essential album of the year.

Comets on Fire have also learned to harness their dynamic range, an important step for a band that pummels the listener with a seemingly unending freakout.

The album, impressive in its scope and sense of adventure, is a further reinvention in Björk's already massive discography.

Although Lost and Safe would be a crowning achievement for any band, The Books show no sign of running out of beautiful musical ideas to convey.

The album doesn't break any new ground for the band, but finds Burma at the top of its game, mixing artful music, intelligent lyrics and controlled sonic mayhem.

All eleven songs on Gimme Fiction are immaculately crafted, concise pop gems.

It's on the sonic departures, though, that Feels strikes its most resonant chord.

Lidell has created an album of flawless, imaginative, and radical funk grooves.

The group's cohesion is the cornerstone of the album; no one instrument stands out, while each contributes equally to the whole. And it's the trio's loose arrangements and subtle interplay that leave center stage to the thoughtful and provocative lyrics.

Bright Ideas has an air of excitement and energy about it, and contains some of McCaughan's strongest songwriting to date.

It has an appealing gentle earnestness that most pop music lost somewhere in the past few decades.

Their sturdy, inventive debut, Apologies to the Queen Mary, draws further, fresh blood from the indie rock stone.

Faking the Books loses some momentum beneath a glut of precious, minimal electro-ballads that dot the album.... But the album succeeds brilliantly on the louder numbers.

So New York. So everything. So new. But yet, so much like the hippies saying, "Man, if we could only get Nixon to smoke pot, then we'd have world peace, man."

But despite its flaws, or perhaps because of them, this remains organic folk-pop at its bewildering best.

This is a great band's most fully realized and mature album in a career already dotted with highpoints.

A good album that finds Oldham retreating from the layered solemnity of his most recent releases in favor of a mood that is as intimate and delicate as it is bittersweet and biting.

Part of the reason this record succeeds is that they haven't tried to replace Coxon, but rather rely on their remaining strengths like inventiveness and songcraft.

The Sunset Tree may just be The Mountain Goats's most poetic, coherent work.

A record of remarkable beauty.

The abject despair of The Mess We Made can become tedious, and, more than most artists, Elliott depends on a listener who is willing forgive him his lack of subtlety.

Fans will eat up this new record, as the songwriting rivals, and often exceeds, the best of Crooked Fingers' prior curious work.