If you're an Old 97's fan you've been waiting for this. If you're not, you just might be when it's all said and done.

The only thing that holds this collection down at all is the fact that you're listening to it at home, and, no matter how good your audio setup, it will never come close to the band's famously loud and beautiful live sets. And, at that, this comes close.

The tunes hop as often as they whimper, with stand-up bass, slap-happy drums and wordless vocals fleshing out the reverb-rich arrangements.

The album feels underwhelming.

For those who prefer less academic wave crushing and more pop elements in their electronic music, Player, Player pleasantly delivers the goods.

Gelb creates masterful songs for the ages.

Your Blues is some kind of masterpiece, the work of a truly original and iconoclastic talent.

In a time when consistency is rare, and integrity even rarer, the Sea and Cake have made an album that highlights where they've been.

A beguiling blend of astute social commentary and first-rate music that rocks, weeps and testifies.

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

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.

Of Montreal have safely entrenched themselves as an institution in the indie rock world, and Satanic Panic shows them as dependable as ever for some of the best pop songs around.

Occasionally, you might wish for a more generous-sounding lead vocal or concise song structure, but 10th Avenue Freakout is populated with stimulating, rather than easily accessible, music.

Zedek somehow twists her troubled characters and haunting tunes into things of beauty.

Starting with track six, Laughter's Fifth verges on unstoppable.

Coomes' blatant, almost hilarious, display of his guitar mastery is fun to hear. His solos and fills ride front-and-center, perfect and expansive and insane.

This is at once a record to rock out to, a record to contemplate, and a record to immediately buy if you think it impossible for a band this well-hyped to defy their own press.

Repeated listens... reveal the album's complexity and highlight how far the band has come in the four years since their last release.

A lucid and diverse record.

Is Malkmus treading water? Well, maybe. But despite the complaints of those fans who can’t let Pavement go, he’s still making valid, adventurous and - most of all - fun music.

It's endearingly all over the place, but depressingly self-referential.

An almost uniformly excellent outing.

Adherence to stock chord progressions, interminably chugging guitars and a dearth of new ideas since 2000's The Sophtware Slump gives the impression that Sumday is Grandaddy-by-rote.

Their best album since 1996's brilliant Under the Bushes, Under the Stars.

Dramatic and dark.

Despite the fact that Prekop isn't really pushing himself on this album, it's a near perfect distillation of his art.

The result is a tad muddled, with the valleys unfortunately outnumbering the peaks.

No Wow is pure sex, pulsating blues-based rock and roll from start to finish.