Flaws aside, Speakerboxxx more than lives up to its billing.... The Love Below, however, is a revelation.

Comparisons aside, though, the Strokes do cultivate a sound that's enough theirs to make me wonder what their second and third albums will sound like.

The album's songs do not attack you with bombast but rather smother you in a slow burn, like gathering frost suffocating a mournful shut-in.

She retains her unique quality to marry upbeat, elegant melodies to witty lyrics that exhibit a disenchanted but honest take on life and love.

Stories is rich with texture and memorable melodies.

A beautiful, magical, mystical soundtrack; similar to Homogenic, but in a sense, more light-hearted and full of love.

This album is to Unwound what Daydream Nation was to Sonic Youth: the application of wild imagination and ruthless harmonies to a more mainstream format, while largely dispensing with their heritage and experiments.

Low's most accomplished album yet, if not its most creative.

Agaetis Byrjun stands up in overall artistic merit to any record ever made.

A stark, mostly beautiful but sometimes mind-numbing disc.

Yet another shining psychedelic opus.

Rings Around The World takes another twelve bold strides forward, applying the technology explored on earlier efforts like Radiator and Guerrilla and the restraint exercised on the more lo-fi Mwng to a fresh set of songs that stretch the group's stylistic boundaries and provide the young century with one of its first classic albums.

The White Stripes are a great rock and roll band, and White Blood Cells a suitable coming-out party.

One of 2000's best rock records.

Their music is as strong as ever and they certainly deserve your attention.

Throughout, Trail Of Dead make off like indie rock legends at the top of their game.

It has so many promising moments, so few -- and I would say hardly any -- flaws, that I just can't help but think, "what if he saw it through?"

One of the Flaming Lips' most listenable records and another step up the ladder toward pop perfection.

An album of stark beauty and utter honesty.

Somehow The Ugly Organ has enough pop appeal and pseudo-uplifting sentiment to make it listenable.

Hearts Of Oak is one of those albums on which each song has the power to get you thinking, and the hooks to resonate inside your head long after it's through playing.

Mwng fits right in with their unique vision, and shows that the band can happily and productively work outside of the traditional bounds of the music industry.

Unlike past efforts, the songs don't overstay their welcome, evoking more smile-enducing moments than one would come to expect from RHP

Unfortunately, the last third of the CD isn’t nearly as good as the first two-thirds.

Although some aspects of the group's live show threaten to turn the entire thing into an ironic joke, the excellent music here betrays no such mixed messages.

Blood Money should be heard as a complete piece of music -- like watching a play -- and some tracks that might appear thin on their own will be revealed as far meatier in context.

There is no doubt in my mind -- and in this I seem to have a lot of company -- that Transatlanticism is Death Cab For Cutie's best album so far.

Music this laid-back but this deep, so full-bodied and yet so restrained, could only have been made by Lambchop.

This ambient/noise/psychedelic amalgam is limited by tedious repetition and a lack of emotional focus.

As impressive as the early singles were, the material on The Violet Hour is often commensurate, sometimes superior.

It’s hard to imagine what the Plan could do to top Change, but one thing is for sure: growing up and looking forward has rarely sounded so universally satisfying.

Guided By Voices sound more assured than ever before, reflecting on the travails of life in a rock’n’roll band with uncommon honesty and power.

It's great to love an album on the surface just for the hooks, and also realize that underneath there is some true thought going into the concept.

A lot of major label-imposed ideas, like rhythm guitar and a heartbreakingly conventional new bass sound, combine to utterly ruin the record's first half. If you can make it through to News' innards, however, an EP's worth of something like better-recorded, more thought-out Lonesome Crowded West material awaits.

A very pretty, measured album of slow, organ-supported mood crawls. And nothing else.

This album's not a joke. It's too damn good.

In a way, this could be Blur's best record.

The first Mouse On Mars album to truly surprise.

Blacklisted is certainly a high-water mark for Case; a statement, if you will.

It will remind you that Stephen Malkmus is one hell of a songwriter, whether you like him or not.

Fridge seem to have a knack for making odd organic instruments fit tightly with electronic gurgles and glitches. But don't be fooled, ladies and gentlemen, their new long-player Happiness is a rock album through and through.

This mixture of revealing honesty and defiant self-confidence pervades the majority of You Are Free, an affecting and unforced 14-track album that stands as arguably her most diverse and rewarding effort to date.

The Rising somewhat falters in its middle third, as Springsteen struggles to make this a cohesive record.

The Coast is Never Clear's shortcomings fall in Beulah's tendency to recycle the same song and name it something new.... Nonetheless, Beulah is still making some of the most infectious and smart pop songs anywhere in independent rock.

This is fun, fun, fun stuff -- one of the year’s best albums, no doubt.

Whether they came on board at Daydream Nation or Experimental Jet Set, true believers will relish this one.

More in the vein of Built To Spill's Perfect From Now On than the latest Doves or Travis albums, Asleep is structured as an epic, almost prog-rock album that, once spun, reveals itself as a comfortable listen, containing a number of classic pop songwriting turns within its vastness.

An absolutely awesome album.

The Private Press does not break ground like Endtroducing... did, but it showcases a wiser, more versatile Shadow, and in many ways it is a better record than its predecessor.

The Sophtware Slump more than makes up for its repetitiveness with sheer atmosphere and brilliance.

Rachel's has produced one hell of a gorgeous concept album - a sort of Dark Side Of The Moon for the Debussy set.

Rouse pushes the envelope in a completely different direction, and with modest, although not total, success, he delivers an album that will rival the New Pornographers' Electric Version as the -- for lack of a better word -- most fun album of the year.

The uninitiated will still perceive these songs as music to slit your wrists to, but The Covers Record is actually the first time Chan Marshall lets her hair down for more than one song per album.

Over the course of this album, you may laugh, frown, cry, cover your ears, or reach for the remote to fast-forward. But then you'll want to listen to it again.

Insignificance’s length of less than 40 minutes perhaps indicates that O’Rourke is not as serious about producing a pop opus as he is interested in getting a kick out of screwing around with pop song writing.

As musically far away as it is from OK Computer, the record is actually a logical progression.

Ghost have helped Damon & Naomi reinvent themselves on this dream-pop excursion.

It's not that the music is bad, per se, it's just not very interesting.

Regardless of how much noodling, compromising or second guessing this trio does, Martsch and crew remain the best band America is not listening to.

Un-inspirationality aside, Gorky's still exhibits glimmers of sonic uniqueness and loads of pop craftsmanship throughout the record.

Possibly a step forward from The Boatman's Call, but far from being a return to form.

With patience, 13 reveals itself as sort of a poor man's OK Computer, only instead of Radiohead's airborne sonic journey through the future, Blur investigates the murk of its inner-city swamps.

For all its minimalist musical approach and inherent gloominess, Is A Woman over time proves a creative masterstroke.

An odd, almost schizophrenic collection.

On Pawn she chooses to rock, but in her own unique swinging way. Her songs are not ballads, but epics of rock, classical and postmodern music.

Of Montreal are at least three indie subfads too late.

The record could quite possibly be one of the best of the year with a dash of self-control.

The true strength of Elephant Shoe lies in its transcendent quality, in its ability to sweep you away with its hypnotic beauty and transport you to the heights of your own imagination.

A maddeningly ambitious album, Lifted fits into the pantheon of the great concept records of the past few years, joining the likes of The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin, and Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea.

The album is arguably better than the group's much-heralded debut, if by "better" we just mean more sonically impressive overall.

Tweedy, O'Rourke and Kotche push each other in exciting directions, with songs building on the contributions of each.

Retains the experience of its formative years in the heyday of psychedelic collective Elephant Six, but expresses itself in more of a straightforward manner, with a set of agreeable pop-rock tunes.

Sounds how Radiohead should sound live: brutal (the cacophonous sample layering in “Everything in its Right Place”), catchy (the bass line of “I Might Be Wrong”), danceable (the beats on “Idioteque”) and mesmerizing (the simplicity of “True Love Waits”).

Many adjectives have been thrown around in reference to this latest album: lush, atmospheric, beautiful, summery, melodic. All apply. This is R.E.M.'s pop record.

GBV have made a record that should please any fan still listening.

Despite the presence of a few misses, When I Was Cruel will be well worth the purchase for anyone still trying to work their way through All This Useless Beauty. It's a straightforward, catchy, and of course smart record from the meanest man in the British Isles.

With her second solo album, Timony returns to earth, revitalized by a renewed sense of adulthood, while continuing the experiments with mood and texture.

While Live In New York City does nothing to diminish Bruce and his bandmates’ reputation as one of rock history’s finest live acts, it doesn’t offer many listeners a substantial reward for purchase.

Its boisterous, melodic rock is invigorating to hear from a storm-weathered, 24-year old band.

Effortless, breathy pop music that you just have to close your eyes and smile to.

It is hard to shake the feeling that these songs may actually be leftovers.

Vapor Trails is a great, straight-forward hard rock album from a band that actually seems to be getting better as it ages.

While not every song is a gem, the ones that are have pushed the band's already high standard of compelling indie pop one notch higher.

Twelve songs of quality, with an impeccable overall arrangement.

Unfortunately, talent alone doesn't always make a great record, and Howdy! lacks the excitement to put it in that category.

Amazingly, the entire package coalesces without sounding tacky, no matter how funhouse-quirky the instrumentation gets.

What is really so special about Gotham! is its infectiousness.

Once again, the enthusiasm of the delivery and the fun of being absorbed into the music belies the fact that the group's four members are amazingly talented at what they do.

A subtle pop album that needs multiple listens and draws upon 1970s soul harmonies as much as it does Lou Reed’s repetitious rhythm guitar.

An across-the-board triumph.

To long-time Jayhawks fans, the new album -- almost entirely acoustic -- is a welcome return to form.

Certainly Blonde Redhead's most accessible yet.

On first pass the album might feel like a lateral or even backward step. After repeated spins, however, its subtler arrangements take up digs in your head like pesky squatters who one day, inexplicably, start doing chores or even paying rent.

Dog has a strong, old-school rock and roll feel to it.

A strong, cohesive and surprisingly soulful record.

With White Pony, the Deftones have crafted the kind of top-notch album that Tool and Korn have been wanting to make for years.

SDRE has always flirted with prog-rock machinations, but some of these songs are just too over the top to be written off as experiments in musical nostalgia.

Maladroit combines the best parts of the three previous Weezer albums: creamy guitar riffs, addictive beats, staple "hoo hoo's" and the brilliant mystique of Cuomo’s lyrics.