Pierce seems to have lost the magic that he once seemed in total command of.

It's the sound of someone crashing and burning in a heap of misguided, grandiose intentions.

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.

The album is surprisingly consistent despite its unbalanced components.

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

Tortoise have, in the past, asked more from their listeners. This time they let us off a little too easy.

Superior to its predecessor in just about every respect.

While the dizzying mix of musical styles and absurdist lyrics is still there, Camper are a much more skilled, mature band.

Bobby Gillespie and company come up short here.

It's hard to figure out exactly why everybody is so excited about this record.... There is something there to like -- plenty, in fact. But it is also disjointed and sometimes maddening.

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

On their second proper longplayer, Air project that melancholy forward, depicting romantic recollections from a future world in which "technology" has attained sci-fi levels.

Mind you, Kelly Jones' voice is an acquired taste. If you warm to it, however, you'll then enjoy a wealth of simple country-tinged pop songs.

Buried at the 11th track on the compact disc, "Satisfaction" makes everything else on this album seem better by its presence. It's the one true standout cut, giving the album a jewel in the glittering, if ersatz, moving-outta-the-ghetto hip-hop-princess crown that Eve places on her own "bombshell" brow.

The conversational rawness that drove the previous albums is gone, and the band loses something as a result.

Combining brute force with melody, Worlds Apart is a stunning showcase for AYWKUBTTOD's mature sound, full of unexpected subtleties, musical wild-cards and detours.

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

I don't expect people outside the shadow of the Rockies to understand this music.

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.

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.

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.

As an EP, the premise of Lovage would flourish.

[He's] invented a loud and severely impassioned polished rock sound.

While these are accomplished musicians distilling their favorite musical influences, they fail to transcend those influences.

A strong return to form.

On this disc, which bustles with other artists' flashes and flourishes, the different personalities sometimes vie for attention.

The problem with Warnings/Promises is the material: the band failed to bring enough good song ideas with them when they went into the studio.

Not as consistent as its de facto partner, Digital Ash still contains several euphoric highs.

It's nice to see him seek stronger production; beatmeisters like RJD2 and Joey Chavez provide supple soundscapes for the Ace Man to rock over. But ol' reliable Acey kinda forgot what makes him one of the essential MCs of the last decade: ridiculous wordplay.

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.

Just another bloated arena show.

Surprisingly misguided and disjointed.

Though it's not quite the folk-pop album that some post-Head Music interviews with Anderson had foreshadowed, the ballads do outweigh the rockers, which puts the lyrics in the spotlight, for better and for worse.

Throughout Love and Distortion, the Stratford 4 convey through their music that sounding like other good bands that came before them isn't a bad thing.

Strung with just the right amounts of room-filling tearjerkers (lilting keys and strings), the record is likely to raise a lump in your throat, or at least make you feel fuzzy inside and go "awww" at its prettiness.

Where Maxinquaye was both engaging and coherent, working up to a kind of weird gestalt by way of good songs and dark sounds, Blowback is hit-and-miss.

Really, there are few surprises here, but there is a crucial one, which is that Continental gradually reveals itself to be a solidly constructed and rather strong collection.

It's simultaneously refreshing and amusing. And it rocks hard.

Lyrically, I suspect that part of the problem is rust, while part of the problem is age — a song about bumping into an ex-girlfriend, then coming home to tell the wife about it ("Jane Allen") just doesn't stick to the ribs, while the more overtly political numbers feel heavy-handed and preachy.

They're sure punching with more punch than they did when resuscitating the stand-and-deliver sexlessness of analog-electro past with blank face and vacant stare.

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.

As far as songs go, Barlow hasn't been this good in years.

A very strong -- albeit front-loaded -- album.

An improvement over his lo-fi solo debut and his over-produced second disc, but it misses as often as it hits.

My feeling is that Rehearsing My Choir is an odd, initially indigestible album that is far more interesting than most people are willing to admit.

Overall, the album lacks the cohesion that would make it a keeper.

TA have now officially run out of original ideas.

Auf der Maur plays the kinda late-'90s alt-rock that Veruca Salt's debut (American Thighs, the one with "Seether") hinted at (too bad this isn't the late '90s...).

No one who bought Vegas will be disappointed by Tweekend, unless they're looking for some statement of artist growth. That's the only area where this album falters. It is otherwise a solid collection of thundering Big Beat grooves.

Just like an album of guitar solos, an album of battling fancy-fingered trick-pony turntablism is an utterly artless endeavor.

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.

Lacking the startling mark of cool-hearted covermongers such as Cat Power and Mark Kozelek, this is still an easeful album of mostly slow-blooded tunes.

An album that, despite all its misty melancholy, is filled less with lyrics of heartache, and more with words of warmth and romance.

Brings to mind an image of someone stuck on a treadmill who has been fooled into believing that he's actually moving forward.

Rainer Maria have never been more skillful in their playing or stronger in their singing than on the slickly recorded A Better Version of Me -- which some may see as a problem.

Guitars riff, drums pound, the bass plods, and the singer yowls -- but nothing gels.

In the future the restless, insecure South-men may perhaps harness their broad tastes into a more cogent sound, but From Here On In finds them a well-produced but overly expansive mess.

This is gloriously trashy glam-rock with an updated cybernetic edge.

A set doing less of the poker-faced electro revivalism and more of the palette-diversifying pop-song penning.

The New Danger is overambitious and undercooked, adventurous and bland all at once.

[A] tired, uninspired collection of music and songs.

The gear is buffed to such a productional sheen that its every sound seems like a reflective surface, the compositional complexity leading to an album as confusing -- and, ultimately, distancing -- as a hall of mirrors.

It's well produced and mixed, but lacks the edge to make it really interesting.

The disc is basically a more straight electro-pop variation on the Gold Chains angle.

Yes, the overall sound is more uniform. Uniformity, however, is not necessarily a bad thing.

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.

Let's face it, no one else today is making music as cool and original as that of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Their debut album flits between uneasy ambient pieces, pop songs buried in layers and loops, and crunchy takes on the IDM sound.

It's not bad, it's just so goddamn mediocre.

Left to his own devices here, Marr has penned vague lyrics and delivered them in a monotone, coupled with uninspired melodies that only underline the singer's limitations.

His songwriting shine is soon obscured behind the dark clouds of densely layered home recording.

Gemstones is shit. It's awful. It really, really is.