Hiatt delivers a batch of songs that powerfully evoke certain places, certain times, certain characters, with an eye for detail and an understanding of the complexities of human behavior seldom seen in songwriters these days.

Spoon's most ambitious album is also their best.

This disc may have a wilder sense of love-and-adventure about it, and may offer the thrills of an unpredictable ride, but, in its capriciousness and incongruousness, the thing Medulla rarely feels like is an album.

Each of the 12 tracks on the Grey Album is finely tuned -- the precision cut-and-paste sampling DM exhibits is often mind-blowing.

With Noah’s Ark Coco Rosie have truly come into their own, delivering an eccentric sound so one-of-a-kind it could have come from no world but their own.

They are pop and punk and rock and indie and a combination of all these things, but, more than all of the above, they are Harris' personal songs and they are incredible.

This whole is a sum of 14 songs that adds up to an estimable artistic much, the kind of album worthy of nestling in for months.

Eternal Youth is broad and ambitious. Merritt's singing is missing; his baritone would have added a male perspective, not to mention an added playfulness. But Gonson suffices.

Ultimately, I suspect Costello non-devotees will find that too much effort is required to get into these songs and there may not be sufficient emotional payoff to justify the investment.

From the first few seconds of the album, you're hooked.

Honeycomb is a coherent and listenable collection of songs.

Their inventive, experimental-leaning music dances through history, passing from blues to rock 'n' roll to pop to experimental to something uniquely theirs.

Nextdoorland is one of the rarest of things: a reunion album that captures the spirit of what made the band special in the first place.

What's impressive is the way they bring all these elements together, the natural world leading seamlessly into a brighter landscape of surreal otherness.

Orchestral swells, kaleidoscopic tones and childlike fragility imbue All Is Dream with the theatrics of a trip through wonderland.

They combine the angular dread of Joy Division with the slow burn of the Velvet Underground (circa the third album), underpinned with some sinuous rock dynamics and topped off with laconic, sometimes languid vocals.

Cave's latest finds the singer in perhaps the finest voice of his career, armed with a set of melodic ballads and mid-tempo rockers which exemplify his dedicated, traditionalist's approach to the songwriter's craft.

It is hard to say which side of Mogwai is more moving, the quietly beautiful or the transcendently loud, but the great thing about Mr. Beast is that you don't have to decide.

Björk continues to mine the fine line of minimalist lushness that her last album gave birth to; with tiny, crackling, skittery beats weaving open-toned ambient beds in which her breathy, pushed-forward vocals lithely lay, the closeness and drama of her every syllable commanding attention.

It's like Bright Eyes -- urgent, personal, pent-up -- but better; less focused on the individual ego of the "creative genius," more about the group dynamics.

Todd... smartly allows her soaring, angelic voice to take the lead, leaving the sparse arrangement of strings and keys to take a delicate backseat. This also means her lyricism, poignant and wry, stands out.

A dizzyingly crafted explosion.

Although Loveless and Psychocandy are obvious reference points, this album actually succeeds most on its charming, candy-colored pop songs.

Whilst Bejar's songs are blessed with mucho rhythm and melody, you should still be made aware that there's no real beat, no real bass, and little that sounds organic. Yet there's still something quite regal and symphonic about it all, the synthesized strings and horns and piano stirring up a romanticism that goes with Bejar's fancy-pants lyricism.

Overall, it is clear that Hitchcock is having fun creating music with Welch and Rawlings, and that joy comes through in the listening.

A welcome return to that good stuff Gang Starr has delivered over the years.

Their reverb-drenched nostalgia trip is full of enough talent and original thought, though, that the result is respectable and classy, not boorish and (yawn) retro.

Across Old Ramon's sprawling 70-minute set, Kozelek is still a master of his sly charade, disguising sprawling webs of complex guitar chords and considered narratives as humble, simple acoustic ditties.

Like all his best work, the whole of The Rising is better than the sum of its individual songs.

A dozen mini-masterpieces of crisp, multi-layered production and tight, jangly guitar, a cohesive but loose effort that recalls the warmth of summer even in the cold chill of a New York March.

On a musical level these new songs are clearly identifiable as the Poster Children's work, but the band covers a broad array of lyrical turf on No More Songs About Sleep and Fire.

A sturdy reminder of why Warren will be missed.

Ringleader of the Tormentors feels rushed and underdone in both the songwriting and arrangements.

The songs are subtle and powerful, full of pain and humor.

Utterly modern and utterly compelling.

Road-testing new material has produced a tight and confident work that transcends many third and fourth attempts by artists of similar caliber.

Pyramid Electric Co. is a vast step forward for Molina. It provides ample evidence of his spiritual growth and shows him once again evolving as an artist.

The earthy tones, accomplished songwriting and passion within Full of Light give Mendoza Line newcomers good reason not only to hear their new album, but also to dig into their back catalog.

Blacklisted proves that Case's musicianship has evolved alongside her songwriting skills.

A Certain Trigger has Maximo Park inserting enough creativity, energy and personality into their music to get away with lifting sounds directly from such post-punk bands as XTC, The Jam and Wire.

Whether they're shrieking or pleading, dancing or shivering, they're always exuding an intensity that never fails to find a way to hit you hard, really hard.

My Morning Jacket are much more upfront, and pretty easy to share. Band of Horses keep a lot shrouded in effects and indistinct lyrics.

It's a classic case of debut album as faux anthology of musical influences, but it's also a successful collection with a marked sense of individuality, massively helped by Murphy's dry sense of humor, which demonstrates a willingness to embrace the contradiction at the heart of his musical personality.

While Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes is far from a perfect offering, this album provides a plethora of outstanding moments reminiscent of the musical exploration the band's heroes The Pixies exhibited on their debut longplayer, Surfer Rosa.

There's more body here, more barroom spill and rollick. There's also a feeling Ward is pushing at the fabric of his music, trying to expand and progress. But the same cinematic mist hovers, the same old, old intimacy fans know well.

Crimes is nothing but poetry, poetry in that way that song lyrics never are, profound both on page and in song.

The music roars along, occasionally slowing to build tension, then letting loose with a corrosive guitar assault.

The grooves are righteous and the vibe is right.

Doss on his own delivers a more controlled sound that recognizes quality over quantity without falling off the deep end of electro-dabbling, a fault that plagued some of OTC's later recordings. The result is clear, concise and powerful.

Low Kick and Hard Bop doesn't necessarily lend itself to all listening situations, and may even be tiring at times. It can, however, enlighten and surprise the listener.

The record spans time and genre, reinterpreting everything from ska to country-tinged folk as if it were the product of a whimsically inaccurate translation device from another planet, and in the process creates a new musical language altogether.

The music is mysterious and moody, with an unusual blend of instruments and lyrics full of strange imagery, but no real narrative.

If you know the Divine Comedy's previous work, it's hard to imagine how Regeneration could disappoint; if they're new to you and you're a fan of literate, orchestrated pop music, give it a try.

By corralling five hungry producers with a flair for the earthy funk and slippery samples that guided some of De La's best albums, the veteran trio have recorded the true successor to 1996's Stakes Is High.

Singer/writer/producer Jason Lytle has a little bit of Neil Young in his voice and Radiohead in his production style.

The marked contrast between the deadpan vocals and the lightness of the music mostly works, although because of the limitations of Merritt's vocal range, he is not always able to project the same depth of feeling detailed in the songs' lyrics.

They don't always sound consistent on this debut, occasionally misfiring with underworked material, but overall the strengths overshadow any weaknesses, and when they truly hit their stride they're devastatingly effective.

The Private Press is full of rollicking beats, spectral tone colors, and enough subtle textures and supple surfaces to fill a textile warehouse.

There's a lot of empty space in these songs, the better to focus on Kim and Kelley's up-front vocal harmonies and classically off-kilter lyrical ideas.

Things We Lost in the Fire finds Low enamoured with harmonies, drawing from such disparate sources as Swans, the Beatles, Wire, and Simon & Garfunkel.

Drawing notions of rhythm, tonality and structure akin to the work of avant-garde greats Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra and Kool Keith, Antipop vs. Matthew Shipp is an inventive, spaced-out fusion of classical free jazz and futuristic electro hip-hop.

Let Us Never is the latest sophomore album to make its creator's (actually really good) debut sound kinda paltry.

The most shocking aspect about You Forgot It in People is just how easily everything seems to be accomplished. Every note and transition is smooth and effortless, and there is such a wealth of brilliantly executed music.

Immersed in beautiful, stirring string arrangements, heartfelt melodies and an all-around warm and welcoming down-home folk feel, the new album is sincerely soothing.

The Black Album is a spectacular farewell if that's what it turns out to be.

A gorgeous and moving collection of love songs.

Whatever the lyrical content, though, the pleasures of N*E*R*D ultimately come down to their exhilarating production, flush with the breathless energy of rock and starry-eyed with the psychedelic potential of the studio.

Her songbird's voice has never sounded more beautiful than it does here.

A funkdafied smart-bomb that's one part Brooklyn, one part Madchester, guitar-meets-echo-chamber, a little Kompakt but still a little sprawling.

It's no different from the formula that made Fatboy Slim and the Chemical Bores such big hits, but something's different this time around: Basement Jaxx have soul.

Lyrically Black Cadillac is exquisite. Musically it's far more than a country record, expanding into those mighty rooms of roots music and pop-rock where Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind and Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road shine and burn against their own dark palettes.

At their best... Pearls & Brass churn out hard-rocking sculptures of distorted sounds at buffeting volume, but with a meditative, trance-inducing core.

While the album is not as cohesive a vision, many of its songs are more focused.

Ultimately, Woman King promises remarkable things to come for Iron and Wine, especially if Beam continues to expand his musical palette.

Throughout the album's dozen tracks, the sentiment Lightbody conjures evokes real pain and real beauty.

One Bedroom does tend to lag in parts, perhaps lost in the legacy of the band that created it, but in the end it comes off as an unified organic being, both necessary and pleasant.

I'm not clear on everything Cex, but I've heard enough to know you want to hear this.

Their sound is dirty and raw, sexy and wrong.

Musically, The Argument represents Fugazi's best collection of songs from their 13-year career.

This isn't music about angst or ego, hooks or licks, or lyrics we've heard before.

Idlewild are rapidly outgrowing their influences as they forge a unique identity that leads me to suspect that they may soon be inspiring a slew of like-minded new bands.

Ghosts of the Great Highway is one of those albums that you want to have around for when life gets you down.

Come Feel Me Tremble is a bit of a mess, like they stuck the disc on a wall and threw the songs at it.... But you could say the same thing for Hootenanny, and to me this captures a bit of the same magic.

The band doesn't quite manage to reconcile its mannered appropriation of a distanced, underground frigidity with its boisterous forays into abrasive, psych-tinged garage rock, but this is probably a good thing, because it's this resistance to homogeneity that gives them the sort of edge they'd otherwise lack.

Basic but gorgeously textured pop-rock with a country tinge, Rilo Kiley's music is led by vocals that'll stop you in your tracks.

Fans of the movie who are attached to the film renditions have no cause for concern; none of the songs here are dramatic reworkings of the originals. But almost all of them pop with the same buoyancy and joy, demonstrating that the artists covering the songs are Hed-heads too.

Cex's production style favors an air of deep melancholy and foreboding, similar to the style of the Anticon Collective.

Written with some basic, inviting rock structures, the album replaces the hyper energy and angst of older material with slowed-down, complex textures and delicate grooves -- but still rocks out intermittently.

It's basically more of the same sort of wistful, sometimes hard-charging melodic rock of the group's first and better release, Up the Bracket.

This is intense, serious music for serious times, and writing off Sparta as the "other," less interesting half of their previous group would be a major mistake.

That unholy alliance of punk guitar and drum machine now shows off the organic contours of "real" band interaction -- check out how smoothly they funkify with one another on "Fake French."

One of the best, if not the best, of the Brooklyn-based, Gang of Four-worshipping lot.

The Beachwood Sparks balance deft restraint with hot guitar licks, making Once We Were Trees the best Byrds album since Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

Confield presents one of the purest approximations of "machine music" we've heard yet. It's profoundly unsettling, but that's half its beauty; it's a sonic Frankenstein that refuses to let its plug be pulled.

A shimmering set of utterly gorgeous songs.

An album that is both emotionally powerful and truly beautiful.

While not as dark, muscular or streamlined as the band's excellent, eponymously titled 2003 album, Flat-Pack Philosophy grows better and better with each listen.

What makes Quality worth it is exactly what dragged down Train of Thought -- the slow and syrupy songs.