No song seems out of place and every single one will be your favorite the moment you listen to it because of extremely quotable songs.

Hysterical definitely boasts more strong moments than weak.

It’s All Just Pretend offers a steady balance of romanticism and reality, even if the music doesn’t stray past safe styles.

This is the band's best yet. [Sep 2006, p.73]

Where Dear John hinted at cinematic grandeur and prayer-like melody, Hall Music is a spacious and somber affair.

Puzzles' songs are accelerated to the point of whiplash. [Jun/Jul 2006, p.128]

Man of the World may be missing the danceable spirit of Baio’s earlier work, but it’s the album we need in 2017: a juxtaposition of hopeful music and apprehensive lyrics, vocalizing concerns many of us are feeling but few can so masterfully articulate.

It's impossible to deny that not only has Silversun Pickups definitely arrived at their own sound, but that they're one of very few bands around who is finding new ground to break in a genre that most have given up for dead.

The results are mostly successful; occasionally a strange sound seems shoehorned into a perfectly good Decemberists song.

They've made one of the most counterintuitively accessible albums of the year.

An audacious but unsuccessful experiment. [Oct/Nov 2005, p.132]

It’s nothing revelatory, but it works--with all the right pieces of pop music history in just the right places.

If this is a new avenue of self-loathing for Kasher, it’s a welcome change of form from the perhaps more angular output of his screaming past. His gifts for wrangling emotive detours from unlikely sonic realms is his best talent, but he couldn’t do that without his crafty capacity for language, too. Stripped of the angry adornments of his yesteryears, we now may take him at his word.

For Bishop, who’d given up music, it is in that maturity her strengths shine. If Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time marked a momentous arrival, Bishop’s Ain’t Who I Was could be the 21st Century answer.

The whole album sounds like it was recorded to be played in an H&M. It’s bland and forgettable, fuzzed with a faux-depth like an Instagram filter.

He isn’t mellowing with age, but serving up more Cure, as you’ve come to expect.

While the results are neither as energetic and original as the peak Sun Records or Columbia recordings, nor as darkly compelling as the Rubin albums, they’re still a lot better than anyone might have expected.

For the most part, Rapprocher is a tight little album full of melodramatic pop tunes dripping in '80s loving.

Lucius’ infectious melodies, keen self-awareness and shameless authenticity sweep through all 11 songs, making Wildewoman one of the most complete indie pop LPs this year.

This nostalgic psych appeal proves ideal for impulsive summertime road trips. [Aug/Sep 2005, p.128]

Fallon has a knack for crafting sturdy tunes that border on anthemic, and every chorus has fist-pumping potential. He has a full-throated approach to vocals, singing nearly every song, even the slow jams, in a raw, aching voice that conveys a sense of urgency.

Like last time, the new album features Lanegan handling lead vocals while Campbell takes on the writing, production and arrangement chores, resulting in a twilight-soaked bundle of songs for the wee small hours, when the light is low and the mood is too.

Despite the over-production that occasionally takes away from the Clavins’ raw talent, the album itself tells vital truths about the codependence of addicts (“This is hell and I can’t hide / But you’re keeping me alive / Saying such sweet things to me”), the rose-colored glasses worn when remembering the days before being consumed by alcoholism (“Yeah I know how this ends / And I’d watch it again / Every loss and win,”) and the importance of acknowledging sobriety as a continuous journey.

A solidly sung, played and written collection of songs, it is a very fine release that will almost certainly find a welcome reception from her longtime fans.

Wild & Reckless takes a couple steps in the right direction. This band’s optimum path, however, is still several steps away.

Lost In Alphaville retains that fuzzed-out exuberance characteristic to the golden era of indie rock, but little else.

Anyone weaned on the fizzy punk abandon of Bleach-era Nirvana--that holy union of feedback-dappled punk on metal--will identify almost rapturously with The Wytches’ studied homage.

Where A Brief Inquiry… excelled due to its exceptional pop songwriting and well-calculated sonic departures, Notes… is far too ambitious and self-aware (“Will I live and die in a band?”) for its own good.

Glazin' draws from the swagger of glam, the hooky middle-ground of '70s punk and '60s rock 'n' roll, but also demonstrates a clear understanding of the way those sounds have already been appropriated by millennial garage pranksters (like, most notably, the Black Lips).

Anastasis demands intense, patient listening, though it rarely rewards it.

In Colour's palette trades the silver hues of frosty Stockholm for the quivering bronze of cornfields in July. [Apr/May 2006, p.110]

Unfortunately, Nightlife is a bit short, cramming the pair's diverse and ambitious arrangements into a six-track EP when the record would perhaps deliver a more cohesive sound if given more room to grow.

In the end, California Nights has a powerful sound, and some of the catchiest songs Cosentino has ever written. It also lacks the celebration of amateurism that made Best Coast so relatable in the first place.

CHAMPION, taken as a whole, functions more successfully as painfully honest introspection, 10 tracks worth of the singer working through an endless parade of complex and conflicting emotions. There’s a bit of an identity crisis at play here, and that crisis knocks the record down a few pegs. But Briggs’ struggles through her anguish and isolation were clearly worth the effort, and CHAMPION is worth a listen.

Painting With is a record that just “is,” not very noteworthy, the band nowhere close to fulfilling its potential.

Attractive Sin is a welcome throwback to an earlier era of underground rap.

More than that, it sounds like Bogart is working out some heavy things on Too Young to Be in Love; it's just a bummer that the discomfort is put upon the listener as well.

While the same pared-down, consistent groove that makes Little Barrie such an immediate grabber might play them out quickly, it's a tasty, gristly flavor of the month. [#16, p.126]

The album carries a slight-but-distinct theatrical odor. [Apr 2007, p.56]

It's just not very fun. Wale's conversion to Ross' braggy rap-excess didn't seem like a great idea in theory, and stretched out to an hour his updated, devolved craft starts to wear thin very, very quickly.

A record less overtly conceptual than its predecessors but no less challenging and rewarding. [Jun/Jul 2006, p.114]

On Astro Coast Pitts stared at the bright, unwritten future in front of him, but on Pythons he’s locked in place, rendered motionless by the oppressive chip on his shoulder.

With What Is This Heart? Tom Krell has managed to indulge his experimental tendencies while at the same time achieve his most accessible sound to date.

Black Ice is, in many respects, just a consolidation of all AC/DC’s strengths and/or perceived weaknesses in one easily-digested package. Yes, there is filler among the killers, but in large measure what you have here is grade-A, late-vintage rawk with no frills and most of the thrills intact.

What once made Banhart such a strange bird--roaming from jazz to folk to indie pop, often within a single song, as on the impossibly catchy 'Chin Chin & Muck Muck'--now seems almost mainstream, as if the rest of the pop world has not only caught up with him, but left him in its dust.

It’s an album that rewards close listening. Awake, though, doesn’t feel like much of an evolution for Hansen or his music.

As they’ve grown bigger, their songs have become increasingly interchangeable, and while that’s made for a certain measure of consistency, it’s anything but exciting.

Earle plumbs the carnal underpinnings of the blues: feasting on what can be, never mourning what’s done. It is frisky, with musicians thumping and plucking in what feels almost like a jam.

Unfortunately, disc two’s cache of amorphous, New Age-y, re-recorded Pixies standards falls flat.

A bevy of worthy underground rappers (Mr. Lif, The Coup's Boots Riley, Lyrics Born, and Lateef The Truthspeaker among them) struggle to distinguish themselves over the mid-tempo bootyshake churning around them.

The production of Black Crowe Chris Robinson lends grit, but is never intrusive, letting the scruffy melodies and jigsaw-puzzle interlocking of these stellar voices do the heavy lifting.

It takes the time to listen and absorb the lyrics within to get the full effect. If you’re looking for something quietly magnificent and uplifting, then you may have found it.

With its genre-agnostic, all-the-influences approach, Ricky Music is somehow Porches’ most cohesive album so far.

With no dramatic tension, pathos or even story arc, these songs are little more than piles of slack words from an artist who has confused saying whatever comes to mind with having something to say.

Spin is enjoyable, but inessential.

Much like the band's catalog, this record apes everyone from AC/DC to The Stooges with exuberant aplomb.

Cold Roses comes as a bit of relief, bereft of the posturing that so often attends Adams’ work.... That said, there’s also a sense of retreat that permeates the record, a willingness to offer the comforts of familiar tones instead of ambitiously taking chances.

The chops are there but not always the songs. Still, it’s a committed rock album and, generally, a fun one--excellent fuel for the summer festival dates Harper has booked.

The album runs the dream-pop gamut, from dizzyingly energetic to loopy and surreal.

Reaffirms George's place as a star in the making. [#16, p.138]

Mando Diao has one-upped classmates The Hives and Sahara Hotnights with its superior songwriting and musical depth. [#14, p.109]

On Nanobots they prove that 30 years later, they can still write infectiously catchy, quirky songs about combustible heads, nanobots and black ops that don’t feel contrived in the least.

The fourth album shows the band pushing the barrier of mainstream music and aiming for a breakthrough outside of the Canadian market.

Despite its moments of lethargy, Love & Desperation quakes with an energy that’s simultaneously exhausting and gratifying.

There are some great songs to be found on the record, even for a stubborn folk-rock enthusiast.

The first nine tracks of the record, referred to as Death, are solid, listenable, weirdo rock that fans, or anyone who appreciates creative music could enjoy. ... Two minutes into “Cradboa Negro,” the last track of the Death portion of the record, it all starts going south. The subsequent 14 tracks of Love, aside from some funny song titles like “Chicken Butt” and “The Asshole Bastard,” are utter baloney.

The instrumentation here is expectedly psychedelic, anchored in both freeform jams and trip-hop grooves. But somehow the collective makes the two opposing forces, which read like they were picked via pulling genres out of a hat, actually work thanks in no small part to Steven Drozd’s delicate instrumental blending.

It has some great guitar—satisfying our expectations on that front--and doesn’t offend. It’s a great record to throw on when DJing your parents’ Welcome To Spring community mixer.

My Best Friend is You is peppered with pettiness, too, but it's a little more grown-up-and way more amped-up.

Soundtracks are often merely time capsules of their era, and Barbie The Album captures the bounce, bravado and occasional bad moods of 2023 in technicolor.

The elegance of Solar Power is in its warmth, how you can put it on and not pay much attention to its details, and still catch yourself hitting replay.

Goma and Pratt help contribute to what is perhaps the most sophisticated sound the Pains of Being Pure at Heart has yet achieved, but there’s something to be said for the immediacy that came with the raw and more spacious feel of the band’s previous albums.

There’s plenty of meat-and-potatoes rock and blues here for you to chow on and wash down with your favorite domestic beer.

Achieves a slinky grandeur surpassing that of its terrific debut. [Sep 2006, p.75]

Oh! Mighty Engine returns to the land of sublime bedroom pop, all acoustic-based and velvet-vocaled, sincere but never strained, pretty and bittersweet.

Perhaps the album's sides are the opposite of what they initially seem: even when gripping a weapon in his hand, Harper chooses to sing quiet, pacifistic songs of love, while he finds the courage truly to speak his mind only when staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. [Apr/May 2006, p.104]

In its song choices, if not necessarily in its treatments, Run for Cover is more ambitious than it needs to be--than it should be, in fact.

Song-wise, it’s as damaging and heavy and dark as anything he’s put out prior, and sneakily supports the idea that Osborne is no one-trick pony.

Over nine songs, Carey crafts a number of bright, warm, sweeping moments that fit with the album’s theme of the American West, land of exploration and possibility.

For the most part, she chooses her films wisely, picking songs that not only give her a lot to do vocally but also create sonic rhymes across the album.... Compositions with lyrics give her a bit more trouble.

With puffs of backing vocals and a shiny bursting guitar solo, all escaping emotions are artfully contained. Lissie sounds most comfortable in this mode, chugging meticulously forward.

Gone is the orchestral saturation that sometimes bogged down Crooked Fingers, replaced by gnomic acoustic folk that's stark to the point of nudity. [Oct 2006, p.84]

As it turns out, Holy Ghost! haunts with more consistency under the sheets than on the dance floor.

For an album with a swimming pool on its cover, it doesn’t exactly submerge you in its sonic layers. Rather, it’s a wade through the shallow water heading to the deep end of the pool.

He’s nodded to his Texas roots before, but on this collection meant to play up his twangy side, he seems scared of edging too far into the darkness of country music’s long, rich tradition. And what a shame.

The bottom-line is that these guys do what they do very, very well.

Standing on the Rooftop sounds like a self-consciously boho summer album: pleasant enough for a backyard soiree and a bottle of verde, but too breezy to linger once your guests leave.

Bridwell has never sounded more assured as a songwriter, exploring bold new ideas and penning some of his most poignant lyrics.

A grandiose pop album that applies certain ToD formulas to the ambitious agenda taken by bands like Mercury Rev and Doves. [Dec 2006, p.97]

This stuff is often pretty infectious in spite of itself--you know, "so bad it's good." [Apr/May 2006, p.118]

Payseur offers little besides the opening track that looks forward. Clash the Truth suffers because of this, playing as an introduction for a band that is to come, a band that will have sonics to match their musical ambitions, that could break free of their hazy daydreams to which they remain shackled.

Sia's ostensible rebirth falls apart once We Are Born detours to bleak balladry with I'm In Here, a pale imitation of her big claim to fame.

The songs are stronger than ever. [Apr/May 2005, p.139]

They've left a weird, unforgettable stain on the shirt of indie-rock.

Side B of We Are Undone calms down with a few bewildered ballads, but ultimately, Two Gallants’ return marks the most polished release of their long and diverse 13-year career.

Bogart takes his listener on a jangled journey that doesn't always make sense.

A lot of the miffed disappointment could come from the fact that Butler pulled the rug out from under his solidified, circa-2008 sound, but if nothing else the new incarnation is a lot harder to fall in love wit

In Somewhere Else, Sally Shapiro dip from toe to calf in new soundscapes and are enlivened by the feel.