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

Bright Yellow Bright Orange is a much better album than Friends of Rachel Worth primarily because it largely abandons the formers' modern rock ambitions for a reflective and more natural folk-rock sound.

There's a layered, almost psychedelic feel to a lot of these songs, suggesting that Beam may not be the died-in-the-wool folkie some might have pegged him as.

The record's disparate experiments are unified by an overriding darkness, the black light Albarn shines on the dancehall. It's this unusual tone that makes Demon Days intriguing long after it's ceased to be novel.

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.

The album's last third slows to the glacial pace of 2001's Covers Record with underdeveloped song fragments rendered in a numbing, spare style. But the album's first half more than makes up for it with Marshall's inimitably concise songwriting painting roses on demons and frowning children alike.

The album is harsher, darker, and just plain louder than Low have ever been in their 10-year career.

A luminously lovely solo album.

A stunning bit of psychedelic folk-rock.

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.

De-Loused in the Comatorium is a musical gem that captures the soul of Mars Volta in a way that soundly delivers on the hype.

It's every bit as good, if not better, than their first.

Part of the problem with Alligator is that it echoes so many other records, but part of its satisfaction is that it sets itself apart so well.

If you like your indie rock sweet and sophisticated with undertones of despair, you'll want to cuddle up with Universal Audio.

These are songs about horrible times in horrible lives; hearts are rotten long before they break and the sounds they make are awful and haunting and beautiful.

Fennesz does an excellent job of balancing the IDM portions of his sound with more challenging layers of material, making music that is both individual in approach and eminently pleasing to hear.

While all of the sounds that made their debut so compelling are in place here, Broadcast has also branched out, employing a looser approach to strong structure.

[Kasher's] ability to toss off seemingly effortless melodic hooks makes one wonder just what kind of water is in Saddle Creek.

30 minutes of bluesy punk-rock raunch.

It might not be the underground hip-hop record of the year, but it is easily on the short list.

While the music is as delicious and diverse as ever, the Decemberists' meal ticket is Meloy's unmatched lyrical prowess, which borders at times on mod-Shakespearean.

Unfortunately the band sometimes overdoes the sweetness and ends up being too precious.

Aside from the added guitar riffs and post-punk tones, Stars stick with a lush string section and neatly placed horns throughout, and their romantic appeal stays largely intact.

Snaith simply dictates the flow of emotions and events on this record, with the kind of command presence rarely seen.

Tanglewood Numbers, musically at least, is Berman's most fully realized album.

An uneven mish-mash of musical ideas that is only occasionally thrilling.

On songs like "In the Afternoon" and "Time is Running out," Maclean fails to add even a shred of feeling to his chilly IDM clones.

The flaws in A Ghost is Born are almost as interesting as the album's considerable triumphs.