The range is fantastic but never jarring.

Hospice isn’t uplifting or hopeful; it explores themes of dejection through delicate, beautiful sounds.

There's not much that's accessible about The Most Lamentable Tragedy, but that's a good thing.

Gone are the days when this band gave us four albums in three years, but their enchanting harmonies and eloquent songwriting are as formidable as ever. And that's what matters most when it comes to a new Teenage Fanclub album.

Overall, it's an ambitious and beautiful album.

Most impressive is the lightness of touch Hynes brings to his arrangements.

The album is as focused as its predecessor (both are 45 minutes), but it is emotionally more expansive.

Themes of isolation and solipsism unfold musically as much as lyrically. Produced with help from Flaming Lips go-to guy Dave Fridmann, Lonerism surprises with layers of detail.

Phèdre, combines the best of both projects [Doldrums and Hooded Fang], with impressive results.

Nothing about For Evelyn feels resolved. A restless quality drives each track, resulting in a thoughtful, solitary album that you listen, cry and even dance to alone. Yet after it's over, you're left feeling less alone, because through its intimate explorations, Georgas makes the personal universal.

Like so much of his work, Staples lures us in with stylized storytelling and production (here, primarily overseen by No I.D.) but then hits hard with a jarring line like "They found another dead body in the alley."

It's a determined album, almost to a fault, and like the romance hinted at in lead single Shut Up Kiss Me, the album is occasionally messy and frequently epic.

Singer Glen Hansard moves from quiet introspection to earnest Jeremy Enigk-like wailing and back again, all the while reminding you just how rewarding a listen The Cost is.

You’d think this might get messy, but the arrangements are so thoughtful that the result is sweeping and astonishing.

Their fourth album reveals the breadth of the genre.

Yes, it is Christopher Bridges’s best work (relatively) but ultimately, he might not be capable of a Whut?! Thee Album-level classic. Top track: I Do It For Hip Hop, co-starring Nas and Jay-Z NOW | November 26-December 3, 2008 | VOL 28 NO 13 Go to Music Post a comment : All comments are reviewed.

Quirky melodies and unpredictable, anti-country structures make it interesting over repeat listens. A mid-career triumph.

The hallmarks of Blood Orange’s sound are all here--breathy male/female vocal interplay, rare groove rhythms, jazzy sax, gliding slap bass, honeyed falsetto melodies and flirty spoken word--but channelled into a reassuring, comfortable space that brings together pop’s supposed polarities of accessibility and specificity. Somewhere in there, Freetown Sound finds its own beautiful sweet spot.

Universes builds on that vibe [of a late-night P.A. set] with exuberant bangers full of snappy, discofied drums, repetitive phrases and dusty funk that could fit nicely into a DJ set of classic Philly soul re-edits or slickly produced tracks from the current UK garage revival.

In parts, this is the most melodic--and pretty--Shabazz Palaces have ever been.

For a band so heavily influenced by modern classical music, Mono are not at all restrained, and that's what's great about them.

You could boil Freedom’s Goblin down to “rock,” but the 19 songs offer 19 flavours of the genre--a testament to how many delicious recipes you can still make out of vocals, guitar, bass and drums (and, in this case, a dollop of horns).

The production is unpolished, warm and organic. It had to be. When you hear the pained fury in his rendition of Black Sabbath's Changes, it's clear it would be an affront to modernize Bradley's unvarnished howls.

Refreshingly, they're not only about slick production atmospherics, though some cavernous sonics and electro rhythms threaten to steal the show around the album's midpoint.

Lyrically, the mood vacillates between confrontational and reflective, but House Of Balloons really soars when his blunt resolve collides with a more nuanced or gentle vocal delivery, creating a tension reminiscent of Aaliyah's clear-headed emotional states.

Irony’s the entry point, the aesthetic and intellectual rigging that supports the record, a way into enjoying it.

The complexity of some of the arrangements and the bouncy danceability of most of the songs make it easy to overlook the lyrics initially, but with repeated listens they start sinking in.

Post-Nothing is their eight-song debut, and it goes by in a flash of infectious, sweaty anthem jams about angsty youth problems.