Although they don't quite hit the emotional peaks and valleys of some of the tracks on labelmates Mojave 3's last disc, they've got a similarly fetching combination of lush music, terrific voices and sad but hopeful songs.

When the formula works, the results are quite impressive, but at other times the songs simply fall flat, victims of their own overly simplistic and repetitive arrangements

Without a doubt one of Callahan’s most inspired collection of songs to date.

Absolutely essential!... It’s a coming-out party on the level of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless.

Taken alone, each of these songs sounds exciting and raw. Taken together, Low Kick and Hard Bop is further proof, if any was necessary, that this is a woman posessed of a singular talent and an even more singular vision.

Mercury Rev's unique talent lies in their ability to take a page from nearly every book and mold it into their own nuanced brand of music.

Wonderland is the sound of a band embracing and then discarding its past in order to forge ahead into a new tomorrow.... Undoubtedly one of the group's finest recorded moments.

Coast... sounds more logical, deliberate and downright organic than its predecessor. It's simply a more accomplished recording; because the band had enough time in the studio, they were able to fine-tune the sound to their satisfaction, creating an album that moves them forward on every front.

While it has a few rough patches, the Hartnoll brothers' latest effort proves that they're still at the top of the electronic music heap.

Although its quality and creativity never falter, as Fugu 1 goes on it becomes a little redundant.

Unfortunately, it seems that the only thing he really learned was how to write a Pavement tune, and he's having a little trouble trying to figure out what to do with himself now that Pavement is no more.

Although Sound-Dust's revisionist zeal is mostly exhausted by the thirty minute mark, its spirit is alive and well in the album's streamlined production aesthetic. Rarely, if ever, are these songs muddied by an obvious surplus of musical ideas.

Bold, adventurous, whimsical and witty, this debut offering from Circulatory System proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are still signs of life to be found in the Elephant 6 collective.

Imagine, if you will, The Creation, 13th Floor Elevators and Bruce Haack allowed to run wild in Abbey Road studios for two weeks, and you’ll have an insight into the Howl’s sound.

Perhaps there's nothing here as immediately catchy as "Tally Ho!" or "Getting Older", but the latter-day Clean are still amazingly good.

The more I listen to The Sword of God, the more I appreciate Quasi’s ability to create smoothly flowing, catchy songs without sacrificing their trademark complexity. My only problem with this album is that the whole package is just so drenched in irony...

If "We Are A&C" was the album's low point, the album would be in great shape -- but there are a few half-hearted tracks that stake a more legitimate claim to that dubious honor.

It's good stuff, to be sure -- but if Hot Shots II excites you at all, it's probably time to lay off the pot.

It lacks the freewheeling, go-for-broke gusto of its predecessors.

The beauty in all this melancholy is that, interspersed among the reverberating guitars and mournful keyboards, you'll find an assortment of cheerful instruments, such as the accordion, that help to create an underlying tone of optimism.

Überzone's constant changeups in style and tempo breathe fresh life into a stale genre.

Can Our Love... is a minimalistic jewel, a soul wonder and an anomaly in a pop world.

Make no mistake about it, The White Stripes are the real deal, and if they can continue to kick out the jams as they do on White Blood Cells, everyone else would be well advised to get the fuck out of their way.

Remove "Girls" and "Wonder Woman" from Blowback and you'd have a solid album.

Few electronic artists working today have the balls or the skills to pull off an album as unconventional and uncompromising as Go Plastic...

Other than the last three songs, Everybody Wants to Know is an album you should know about.

I so want to hate this album.... If only the album flat-out sucked, I'd be on much firmer ground. Too bad it doesn't.

Double Figure is as instantly memorable, not to mention listenable an IDM record as you are likely to hear this year.

It is, like all the best pop music, silly, pointless and thoroughly lacking in high-level intellectual discourse. Thank heaven.

The danger that Ladybug Transistor faces in working within this retro-country-folk-pop oeuvre -- above and beyond the fact that most people are conditioned not to listen to it -- is that it's difficult to rise above the level of pastiche.

Devoid of Tanaka's usual unpredictability, Beautiful is bland, linear and frequently downright dull, with entirely too many six, seven and eight-minute songs running out of ideas long before the halfway mark.

It's blink-and-you’ll-miss-it running time and rather hefty price tag are the album’s only real drawbacks, proving that even after five years away, these kids can still write tunes that get stuck in your head for days.

Not content to rely on the same old drum machine patterns and tired beats, TRR and I-Sound have concocted a vast sonic brew that blends elements of hip-hop, jazz and techno into a seriously stinging cocktail.

The downside here will be fairly obvious to anyone familiar with Thirlwell's previous output. While Flow's integration of big band jazz and other "external" musical styles is some of Thirlwell's most accomplished work to date -- creditable not only to better technology, but to the growth of his already respectable skills as a conventional composer -- its thematic elements remain the same.

After you've listened to Rock Action for the first time, you may be hard pressed to believe that Mogwai merely wrote these songs; you'll feel as if they created these symphonies out of thin air, pulling gorgeous sounds from within the deepest recesses of the human soul. Eventually you'll come back down to earth and realize that Rock Action is by no means divine...but it is very, very good.

According to the liner notes, Dilate took more than two years to record, beating the twenty-month-plus gestation period for 1999's Set and Setting. Fortunately, it works in our favor; they've used the time to experiment a bit, perhaps in an effort to garner fans beyond the nascent (but artistically stagnant) stoner rock genre.

Aside from being tracked incorrectly (on my copy anyway) and not always being of the choicest sound quality, Sad Sappy Sucker shows that Modest Mouse’s rise to the pinnacle of indiedom started at the bottom, just like everybody else.

It's also pleasing to see that Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner want to expand their sound beyond the clicks, pops, squelches, hisses and squiggles that have become their trademark.

With a musical attack this meticulous and charged, I know I'd enjoy The Ex even if I was their target...

A powerful masterpiece of an album.

Full of solid songwriting and catchy melodies that do not pander to the cliches so often found in mainstream pop/rock albums.

Even though Lemonjelly.ky's cover looks like something straight out of Wavy Gravy’s closet, its sound owes much more to the work of '60s luminaries like John Barry, Esquivel and Jean-Jacques Perrey.

But as wonderful as parts of Old Ramon are, the spaces between the high points are at times, less than impressive.

No More Shall We Part is a beautiful, elegant record, capably fulfilling the promise of The Boatman's Call, but it exacts a harrowing toll from the listener. This is not a record to which you can listen lightly; if used as background music it will gradually darken your mood, like poison seeping slowly into a well.

The group has created an album filled not only with the timeless pop hooks you have come to expect but with the anthemic swagger that is the hallmark of many of the great rock recordings of the last 30 years.

The low points are easier to spot than the highs, which tend to peak at a low elevation.

On The Facts of Life, [Luke] Haines and musical co-conspirator cum multi-instrumentalist John Moore construct a vast sonic wonderland in which [Sarah] Nixey’s starry-eyed vocals are given free reign.

Most [tracks] work quite well with the multifaceted rhythms and constantly evolving beats that make each of the tracks here a true expression of creativity.

Combining the acoustic and electronic worlds of pop, Faux Mouvement plays like a moody soundtrack for film noir.

The Posies' latest effort offers five power-pop gems that match the best efforts of this veteran Seattle band.

The aggressive stance taken on some of the songs brings an unwelcome "Is this Orgy?" feel to the affair.... If Gwenmars can produce more show-stoppers, and perhaps tone-down some of the aggresive stylings that creep in, they might become more than just a throwback.

The band sounds richer, fuller and more confident. Sometimes they also sound a little too slick for their own good -- a nagging concern with "Disappear", among others -- but the studio glitz is matched by artistic maturity.

Hefner are at their best when they stick to their primary theme, which is love that's been confused, bruised and downright disappointed.

Shifting from light and airy to a sort of mild bossa-nova groove on a few tracks, Kings of Convenience throw in just enough variation to keep things interesting, without snapping the listener out of the dreamy daze they've induced.

Yes, it has a certain something that makes you bob your head and/or shake your ass to songs that you'd probably be ticked off by if someone drove past your pad blasting them out his windows. But no, it's not the stuff that great CDs are made of.

There's a shimmering sense of otherworldly grandeur at work here that captures the spirit of exotica better than any of the other so-called "revivalists".

Yes, then, Arab Strap are a terrific band, with possibilities that seem infinite. Still, I am certain that the songs on The Red Thread could have been better if the group had bypassed its trademark vocal style and actually played along with the lyrics, singing as if something in the lives of its characters were at stake.

It’s quite a feat to create an album that is not only haunting, but uncompromisingly beautiful and utterly serene.

While everything here is generally good or great, Hello continues the trend of most other Half Japanese and solo Jad Fair releases, in that the slow, Jonathan Richman-like songs shine most strongly.

The jazz leanings and fascination with electronic music remain, and are sometimes imprudently indulged, but in general the band seems to have a renewed awareness of the needs of the people on the other side of the speakers.

What’s Next to the Moon is Kozelek achieving the impossible; he has actually managed to make AC/DC sound romantic.

The Sleepy Strange offers seven mid-tempo rock songs, most with the inevitable country leanings that a pedal steel creates. These pieces lack anything even remotely resembling a sense of direction or urgency; Japancakes' songs don't travel from Point A to Point B so much as wander up and down the street in front of Point A and dig odd little things out of the lawn. Some listeners will love it, while devotees of single-minded purpose will positively hate it.

Stephen Malkmus' solo debut is as mature, focused, and charming as it is rambunctious.

If Kurt Cobain had been popular in high school, Ronald Reagan had funneled billions of dollars into improving America's inner cities and the Chemical Brothers had found fulfilling positions in video rental management, all albums might sound like 604.

Wine drinkers' music, you might say -- likeable, pleasant, but lacking in consuming, driving passion.

There's still plenty of grating screaming and yelling on From the Desk of Mr. Lady, underscored by a strong punk ethos.

If the whole record could be as good as the first ten seconds of "Artificial Light", it would be great. But it isn't.

It is infectious in the best and most viral sense of the word -- the songs get under your skin and thrash around.

White Hot Peach displays a precise and inventive nature that has a lot in common with Guided By Voices' Do the Collapse.

Despite the obviously electronic origins of most of the sounds, there are clearly thinking, imagining humans behind the scenes; this is about as un-clinical as electronic music gets.

Like a comfortable old Pink Floyd album, this is the kind of thing to listen to while floating in space.

If you've ever enjoyed an Arling & Cameron record, reveled in overtaxing your speakers with Big Beats or enjoyed the more anthemic, production-intensive side of hip-hop, Super Sound is for you. Not every record in your collection needs to be a ground-breaking, classification-defining, intellectual agenda-toting classic.

Mass Romantic more than repays any musical debt owed by the good people of Canada. In fact, it’s going to take some pretty strong efforts by America's best and brightest to match The New Pornographers' achievements here.

If you think too hard about a record like this, you'll probably be ashamed to own it. Let's be honest: despite its Eastern rhythms, intricate melodies and exotic instrumentation, it's basically a yuppie sex record.

Musically rich throughout, Everything and Nothing is a spotlight for Sylvian's stylish, Brian Ferry-inspired baritone, his fascination with eastern culture and spirituality and the beautiful orchestrations of songs like "God's Monkey", "I Surrender" and "Some Kind of Fool".

Plays Music sounds like stuff you've heard before, but there's a special, vibrant joy between its notes.

Though the covers on American III will attract the majority of listener attention, Cash’s own material steals the show.

Essentially, you get one disc on which Godspeed You Black Emperor tinkers with their sound a little bit, and one on which they deliver exactly what you've been expecting. That's a good mix.

The sounds that pour forth from the teamwork of David Eugene Edwards, Jean-Yves Tola and co. echo another time so completely, that at times you might think these sounds were recovered, rather than newly created.

Like the Austin Powers films, there's a sense that authenticity has been betrayed in some vague and troubling way.

Picking up where Wasp’s Nest left off, Hyacinths and Thistles finds Merritt constructing a complex sonic playground in which a host of guest vocalists have come to frolic. While the songs might initially be Merritt’s, each vocalist manages to transform each piece into something uniquely personal.

Without a doubt the best Elvis Costello record that Costello never recorded.... wistfully irresistible pop confections filled with effervescent melodies and clever lyrical wordplay.

One of the best instrumental albums you are likely to hear this year.

All the best songs here seem to launch from the point at which Technique left off; they have the same bounce, the same speed and many of the same hooks (especially in "Bert's Theme", "Kashmere" and "I've Got a Feeling") as that Hook-dominated New Order record.

While I'm thoroughly satisfied with the maturity and elegance of Silence is Sexy, I can't help but wish they'd push the sonic envelope a bit more aggressively and try to add a bit more discomfort to the listening process.

Though not as darkly elegant as Permutation, Supermodified is still rife with sophisticated Brazilian lounge-jazz samples and unpredictable drum'n'bass skitterings, this time augmented with more overt nods to hip-hop and Aphex Twin-style sympho-electronica.

This is a record in which Warren has fused elements of dance, rock, trance and folk to create exquisite pieces of crystalline future-leaning pop.

This is an album about technology, albeit not in the typical sense. While it wears the trappings of loungecore retro-futurism and new wave simplicity, The Geometrid has more to do with the "warmth" of technology and the increasingly essential comforts it provides.

It's intelligent and novel and manages to avoid sounding clichéd -- a bona fide feat these in these postmodern days

Expansively orchestrated, Nixon ultimately comes off as beautiful but slightly disturbing...

This time out, Moby manages to establish himself not only as a talented multi-instrumentalist and genre-jumper, but as someone who can write interesting songs in a variety of genres -- a point he's missed in the past.