The result is so refreshing original, it not only cements Gold Chains' position as one of today's best and brightest indie-tech gurus; it also says, coolly and effortlessly, that genre boundaries are "no big thang".

Songs too slow to dance to and too annoyingly repetitive for passive listening.

Mono singlehandedly redefines the concept of dynamics. They are very quiet, and then very loud. It will hurt your head.

Real Gone may not rock your world in the way that 2002's musical one-two punch of Blood Money and Alice did, but you'll still be glad to hear it.

Power is only a slight variation on its predecessors, yet sounds more vibrant and alive than almost anything in the band's canon.

If you peel away the pretense, there's actually a fascinating album at work here.

Damage is definitely more up-front about its hip-hop influences than past Blues Explosion records, but the core Blues Explosion identity remains intact.

Young Prayer is a visceral religious experience, its lyrics forsaken in favor of mantras that are more chanted than sung.

One of the best and most moving albums of the year.

They've truly hit their stride on Universal Audio.

You might expect the resulting album to be disjointed and schizo, but it's actually a cohesive collection of potential hit singles held together by an incomparable performer.

It's powerful, clever, and you can dance to it.

There's an intermittent psychedelia here that lifts even the most deadpan tracks into sunny pop territory, as sweeping, swooning So-Cal melodies erupt from its cavernous grooves.

You will love some or all of these ten tracks, but for reasons you don't quite understand, you may never love the album as a whole.

While the band has adeptly navigated the waters of change, a few moments on Night on Fire are simply too slick for their own good.

City is a noticeably fleshier beast than its predecessor; the album is lush and sophisticated with hooks aplenty.

Where Belle and Sebastian alienate their listeners with emotional detachment and indie superiority, Memphis's songs leave the posing and the cuteness at the door; they are accessible and honest.

American Idiot isn't so much meticulously crafted as it is unflinchingly audacious.

Overall, the album is more centered and collaborative and celebratory than anything Banhart has done before.

As recently as last year it looked like The Datsuns might be next in line to make arena-sized, super-popular rock the way Zeppelin, AC/DC and G'n'R did. They still might, but it's going to take better songs than these.

This is powerful stuff, unrelenting and dark.

As perfect a brew as this is, it's Gelb's voice and lyrics that push the music into otherworldly territories.

The disc's effectiveness comes from the subtlety of the theme as much as its pervasiveness.

Dizzee's voice still sounds like a helium-inflected hiccup, and the beats still sound like they were recorded directly from a Nintendo, if not an Atari.

It's definitely a departure from their earlier albums -- or, more precisely, an evolution -- but in no way did they drop the ball. Instead, they may now be playing a different game.

Listening to Funeral takes a bit of patience. With most of the songs, the payoff doesn't come right away; in some cases, it sneaks up on you after several spins.

If you'd never heard Gotham!, you might very well find much to like about Stealing of a Nation.

Perhaps their sloshing disintegration, whiplashing folk-crunch, honeyed melancholy and deliquescent time-lapse... never quite settle into a stable Gestalt, but the music hints at the presence of more looming somewhere behind it.

Sounds like it's coming from bluesmasters who've lived twice as long and seen three times as much.

The unpredictable song structures are fresh and innovative, too, twisting off in unexpected directions mere seconds before you can remember what they remind you of.

A solid set of shadowy songs with driving melodies.

The question is not whether Medúlla is brilliant; insofar as this can be objectively asserted, it most certainly is. The question is really, Do you like Björk? Do you like her a lot? Obviously, a Björk a capella album is going to be lost on you if you never really liked her vocal style in the first place.

Imagine a troupe of gloomy cow-punks careening down a thundering Hawaiian pipeline and you've got a bead on their wildly divergent sound.

As gentle, elegant end-of-the-summer albums go, Frozen Orange scores top marks. As a David Kilgour record, it's more subjective; some listeners will love the polish, while others will consider it surplus to requirements.

The giddy shift towards pop and even traditional dance music structure that Mouse on Mars take here is so irresistibly fun and persuasive that the very thought of loyalists furrowing their brows and crossing their arms is comical.

Radian boasts a sound far deeper and richer than most of their push-button contemporaries.

Half Smiles of the Decomposed isn't quite the guns-blazing finale I always imagined the last GBV album would be, but it never becomes a limp-wristed approximation of the band in any of its previous guises.

Whereas Walking With Thee was a wonderful relief in the indie/retro-rock world, pushing the band's internal parameters and the idea of what pop music should sound like, Winchester Cathedral feels more like a roadblock, or at least a pit stop, rather than a step forward in Clinic's previously innovative evolution.

You won't be sure whether you blacked out from a seizure, gave birth to twins or simply had one of the best musical experiences of your life.

She Loves You's real triumph is the fact that it sounds like a Twilight Singers record first and a covers collection second.

Kinsella and his crew finally seem to have found a way of expressing themselves that doesn't feel introverted and exclusive.

Green Imagination succeeds because it rarely seems obvious or disingenuous, even as it indulges in copious quantities of shamelessly retro fun.

McNeely and Matz have found their calling and left a lasting impression with this fierce yet fragile album.

A terrific and long-overdue reissue that's sure to satiate established fans as well as the new converts it hopes to earn.

His most compelling, not to mention complete, work to date.

There are some bands who were just meant to be great pop acts -- pop in the George Michael sense, pop in the Fleetwood Mac sense. Phoenix make music that your mom would like, and it's not a bad thing.

Homesongs is his minor key playground, filled with masterpieces in the making. All you have to do to enjoy them is slow... down...

It's all so beautifully simple, especially moody acoustic guitar/piano laments like "Fewer Words", that you almost miss how effective the arrangements are -- gorgeous, heartfelt melodies yield odes to a life that's consistently surprising and alive with optimism.

Unless you're fifteen and were raised with a mouse constantly in hand, the Mae Shi can get overwhelming... but their saving graces (lots of genuine energy, naming their songs things like "Hieronymus Bosch is a Dead Man") charm you into liking them.

This is great stuff, and a significant advance over both of Comets on Fire's previous albums.

Slick, well-constructed and mall-friendly.

Tyrannosaurus Hives has hit garage rock's heart like a huge syringe of adrenaline, and even if it doesn't awaken the hibernating beast, its furious tempest is a blinding final gasp for a genre that has repeatedly rewarded mediocrity.

Sorry I Make You Lush runs on fresh sounds and non-drowsy wit.

This is a big, sprawling, difficult but rewarding album, from a band whose reach exceeds its grasp, but only by a little.

A gleefully cohesive miasma of sound.

It's disappointing to hear them following trends rather than inspiring them.

Soft pop isn't everyone's favorite genre, and there are those who will find Soft Commands too sweet for comfort Still, even at its most pop-friendly moments, there's enough muscle and intelligence here to keep the album from cloying.

The Johns (Linnell and Flansburgh) are firing on all cylinders here, wrapping their suitably obscure and sometimes ethereal humor in the most capable songwriting of their careers.

Despite the band's penchant for uneven electronic dirges, Out Of The Shadow is a very accessible work -- perhaps too accessible for indie enthusiasts who thrive on innovation and sonic exploration.

Sparta seem a bit too retro-focused for their own good.

IATWTC do '80s-influenced dance music the way '80s dance music artists wish they could have.

A gorgeous work of art.

There are too many ambitious singer/songwriter albums out there to easily justify any water-treading.

Magic is liberally scattered throughout the album.

It's as enlightened and as interesting as Ministry has been in years.

It takes Ta Det Lungt a while to lay down its grooves in your head, but once it does, they stay there.

The Real New Fall LP is as solid and interesting as anything the group has released in the last ten years.

The problem is, it all feels a bit contrived.

A fairly average jaunt into familiar indie rock territory.

Revolutions is pretty breathtaking.

Winds Take No Shape's compositions are not as varied as their debut, but it's a more atmospheric, cohesive and significant work because of it.

There's nothing wrong with her performance -- it's just undistinguished.

True to its title, The Slow Wonder is a much more relaxed and toned-down, yet no less complete listen than Electric Version or Mass Romantic.

This is utterly original, honest, intelligent music that sounds like nothing you'll hear elsewhere. It's not an easy listen, but it's well worth the time it takes to get to know it.

[Congleton's] studio wizardry shows in the bolder array of sounds he's plundered and the crispness with which they're delivered, while his improved songwriting shines through in bolder arrangements and a tighter instrumental focus.

Russian Doll is defined by beautiful tones, imprecise boundaries, world-weary subject matter and a Phil Spectorian sheen that obscures as much as it illuminates.

Their music is interesting, intelligent and exciting, and it'll make you smile really, really big.

This is the smartest fun music (and the most fun smart music) I've heard this year.

Plenty of albums split the difference between gems and junk, but the biggest problem with Glass House is that it lacks any discernible anima; the band seems to be phoning in their performance from a comfy armchair somewhere in Milwaukee.

The resultant songs encapsulate the pop-rock aesthetic that made The Strokes' debut so much fun; every tune is tailor-made for dancing.

I Com proves that this talented singer/producer is as adept at making her own music as she is playing around with others'.

Sung Tongs resembles the freakiest of '60s psyche, the outward fringes of Elephant Six-dom, the craziest excesses of Tom Ze -- yet it is a warm, deeply human work that winds its way into your heart.

There's a fragile beauty inherent in Printz's slapdash slop-hop that belies the duo's goofy profile and bodes well for their future endeavors.

Write good songs. Record them simply. Don't preach. There's a concept that works.

A pretty and meticulously-crafted collection of songs.

A sensitive, fully mature contribution to the pop music lexicon, it proves that, like the rare child actor who actually works well into adulthood, The Cardigans have weathered a difficult transition.

The band's most realized effort to date -- a brilliant amalgam of dense future-primitive soundscapes and heartbreaking twilight flourish, bolstered by curveball arrangements and a sense of unified purpose.

Hotel Morgen doesn't change a thing, and really, with results this consistent, it shouldn't have to.

For a band that regularly draws comparisons to Beta Band and Pavement, Vehicles & Animals is all too pedestrian.

The New Year's sound is fraught with contradictions, soft melodies and pretty strumming stretched over tricky rhythms and acerbic lyrics.

Like Hot Hot Heat with a less annoying singer, The Fever offer a glimpse of everything that's good about dance-punk.

Though Faded Seaside Glamour proudly wears the jacket of its influences for all to see, the band stitch it up so well that you could never accuse it of being a knockoff.

It's definitely nothing like the laid-back experience of listening to him live, but it's his best album yet.

Unwieldy psychedelic dinosaurs like "First Wave Intact" and the title track hint that they're looking to become the new gods of bong-powered thunder -- but then they drop a bomb like the sleek, urbanely scoffing "Road Leads Where It's Led" and instantly re-cast themselves as black-clad top forty gatecrashers looking for a fast ticket to fortune and fame.

It's almost as though, by writing what can be experienced as one long, explosive track with pauses, they have created a different way of hearing small variations. While this trick has been used to good effect in any number of electronic albums over the years, it has rarely worked this well in a rock context.

The beats aren't as strong here as they were on his debut, so Skinner lives and dies by his delivery. It's a clear sign of his ability that even in the album opener, when the tempo is strange and the backing track is kind of dull, you feel compelled to listen because you want to know what he's saying.

Despite his gray hairs, Moz's approach to You Are the Quarry is youthful and energetic -- perhaps even punk.

The only real problem with i is the sheer volume of excellence we've all come to expect from Merritt.