It is ridiculous. It is overblown, it's pompous, it's aggressive and it's absurdly ambitious. But, here's the rub: it's actually pretty damn good. It rocks, often pretty hard.

Battle Born, doesn't quite reach those heights [of their debut, Hot Fuss], but it comes close.

Despite being nothing original, Crimes of Passion comes off a good rehashing of the genre, making you rethink what Jesus and The Mary Chain's Just Like Honey really meant.

Penny Sparkle straddles the line between comfort and tension, the woozy synths bleed into one another, the music is warm and enveloping but frequent, unexpected minor chords and bass rumbles mean you can never be as comfortable as you'd wish to be.

Violet Cries is the kind of album that will find a niche audience who will it defend fiercely. Broader appeal is unlikely for songs that seem so blurred around the edges and on the point of evaporating.

While enjoyable and familiar, this set of songs reflects a band who knows what music they don't want to be making but haven't--at least, not yet--determined what it is they want to be defined by instead.

[The music] is not exactly bad, but has about as much creativity and passion behind it as a spreadsheet.

Boats has made something beautiful and invigorating at moments, while puzzling and slightly alienating at others.

As an album, it's probably the dullest anticipation of the year.

It’s more of an unconscious escape hatch that Lynch has constructed with intangible aural elements--a fantasy place that he allows us to walk around in for a while until we are forced back into the realm of the painfully awake.

In the Cool of the Day is far from perfect, though. Moore's smooth vocal delivery suits the more minimal productions well, but it can become cloying when the backing track is too upbeat, such as on the irritating Up Above My Head.

In conclusion, solid record, but it simply does not hit home hard enough.

It’s not Pixies as you’d like to remember them, but for the first time in years it sounds as if they’re actually enjoying themselves.

Their name alone relieves the listener of the expectation that anything they do will make much sense, but for those willing to suspend their notions about things such as song structure, St. Helens can be an entertaining, if befuddling, experience.

It's new, fresh, and energetic, all of which are not entirely surprising from an obviously skilled group, but it's in the execution that everything comes into clarity.

Just download the good stuff or buy the album and don’t expect much from Rivers because he never really gave you more than a few minutes of cheap thrills in the first place, which is plenty to thank him for.

Most of the songs on In A Warzone are full of energy, and it’s hard not to get swept up in the slimmed down punk rock that the album delivers with gusto. However, there is definitely a point where they start to sound very similar.

So while it’s worth checking out, DVA lacks any real core.

All in all, it delivers the chuckles and a few guffaws, even if they are hitting up against the law of diminishing returns.

Much of the album’s electro-lite flavoring does provide some hummable moments, but as the cringingly tricked out Mexican Fender and stomping chants of La Mancha Screwjob suggest, they’re most likely to suffer a slow and gradual death at your local Forever 21.

Colonia has an awful lot of ideas, but doesn’t really know what to do with them and the majority of tracks end up sounding messy and--like the rest of us following Christmas--carrying a little too much extra weight.

It's a nicely balanced record: It's not as if the 'old' Asobi Seksu has disappeared and been replaced with a slightly more cheerful android version of the band--but there's a definite shift here.

It's easy to criticise Talk That Talk but it's actually a fun and enjoyable record.

The bottom line here is that this is a boring album, plain and simple.

They manage to satisfy the listening needs of die-hard Fleet Foxes fans, but fail to truly carve out their own unique musical identity. This isn't to say Poor Moon doesn't offer up some great moments-they really do-just not ones that stick with you long after the record is over.

They’re playing the blues, man, and obviously, nobody does that anymore. And really, even on a good half of From the Fires, the fast-tracked major label signees don’t even try to really emulate their esteemed deities’ dangerous sexuality and, instead, bafflingly resort to half-assed emotional platitudes.

This album’s got plodding drum work, tasteless guitar work, and some of Paulson’s worst lyrics ever, but it’s also an interesting album.

Instead of the dynamic sound Mayer is capable of, he has instead continued along the same nicely-paved road he has ridden his whole studio career, a path that has always elicited the same reaction from this writer – a shrug.