Among contemporaries, Calla now stand alone, making dark, beautiful, intensely understated music that's as much landscape as narrative story.

The resulting sound is tougher and more insistent, a succession of incessant rhythms layered with fuzziness and distortion.

Whether it's due to the backing band, or the better studio resources, Banhart seems more self-assured than ever as he sings his songs on Cripple Crow.

When they play, they sound confident and sloppy. When they sing, they sound sincere and sarcastic. They crunch and slash like early punk, toy with country like The Mekons, and use chiming melodies like indie rock. And all fastened together by a combination of mockery and carelessness, they come out with something that could easily stand up against any of the favorite rock 'n' roll records you turn to for a good time.

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.

Sigur Rós piece together breathtaking orchestrations that sound like they're singing to you from another world, telling you why your world is not so bad, that even in all the miserable monotony, something beautiful perseveres.

Amber Headlights fails, when it does, because it's trying to be two things at once: a personal reflection on life and death and a commercially acceptable rock record. But when the album ditches the tricks and conventions that define mainstream rock and focuses on Dulli's songs, it is very powerful indeed.

Never the hardest rocking of bands, Death Cab for Cutie sound positively muted throughout Plans, Gibbard's obsession with the temporary nature of relationships and life itself receiving appropriately somber accompaniment.

No BIG message here; I Am Kloot simply made a good, heartfelt rock record and, without sounding like they had to try too hard, pulled it off.

They've broken their own mold and achieved something unexpectedly fine and durable.

In danger of hitting the point of "OK, we get it" -- when that zap of newness wears off and a successful band suddenly feels less than essential -- the New Pornographers instead come up pretty big on Twin Cinema, transitioning to a sound just as catchy as their old stuff but with more space for the tunes to breathe.

Spine-tinglingly great.

Pixel Revolt feels, at the end, like two EPs packaged together and passed off as a full-length. The justification could be made that the fierce, angry and frustrated responses to international armed conflict and girlfriends leaving are very much the same, though that would seem to be kind of a stretch.

Melding big, weary Fleetwood Mac-esque emotion to stretched-out arrangements, both electronic and folk, the Canadian singer/songwriter's power lies in his dedication to his own individuality.

The songs don't float off into space; the strumming guitars and subtle electronic effects give the fantastic lyrics an earthy feel, rather than lifting them into the air.

It doesn't have the edginess of the Kid's previous recordings, and cloaks its eclectic sense of play in tasteful, textured layers, but in so doing achieves a consistency that has previously been lacking.

Honeycomb is a coherent and listenable collection of songs.

It's the conviction and passion within the singing -- both male and female -- that wins me over in the end.

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.

Chávez Ravine works because, ultimately, it isn't a history lesson or museum piece. It's the sound of musicians, now on the periphery, playing and singing the music they love.

The album succeeds in creating a dreamy mood that is both soothing and slightly unsettling. And yet this mood is relentless, and, ultimately, all the songs begin to sound the same.

You could dismiss Teenage Fanclub as not being original, but that would be missing the point. Instead, appreciate a group that, in 2005, can create absolutely perfect songs that somehow manage to channel the magic of early-to-mid-'60s pop-rock.

This is a compelling debut/reunion, with the two men seeming to push each other far more than any of their recent collaborators have.

Record of the year.

His 12th record holds no surprises for longtime fans, and yet here it is, his best, his greatest.

It is, in fact, what almost every other Oasis album has been: Not nearly as bad as overhyped sufferers might fear, not nearly as good as its enthusiasts want it to be.

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.

In stripping things back Mercury Rev suggest that in their case more actually was more, that bereft of the digressions and expansions they're just another band with a nasal, naïve-sounding singer, a way with a hook and a penchant for using the studio as an instrument.