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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Slick, well-constructed and mall-friendly.

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

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

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

The problem is, it all feels a bit contrived.

A fairly average jaunt into familiar indie rock territory.

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

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.

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

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.

Not all Kinski fans will need, or even want, this disc, and the group seems to understand that.

By the time "Our Mutual Friend"'s symphonic percussion and hammering cellos reach their crashing apex, the album begins to feel a little like the fourth consecutive hour at a well-stocked party full of musical theater majors.

Taken as a group, Heroes to Zeros' slower songs are the musical equivalent of a month-long sinus infection: heavy on the repetition, sleepy detachment and sensory deprivation.

Their songs routinely beg for a spoken message, to the point where their originals sound like dub versions.

A band more fixated with guitar solos and drunken fist-pumping than in the more nuanced, desperate territory of their former incarnation [Lifter Puller].

There's not quite enough to justify the addition of another album to the Blondie catalogue.

The group creates an ornately atmospheric resonance throughout Ambulance Ltd., but their light-weight compositions place the album at serious risk of floating away.

Finely crafted, if modestly affecting, froth-pop that bubbles over with dreary sexual overtones and loads of youthful paranoia.

Although the Cooper Temple Clause pack plenty of celestial firepower and darkwave ambiance into their six-minute movements, by the time they unveil the epic "Written Apology", the sheer compositional weight is too much for a mortal listener to handle.

With an approach that seems so clinical, the album sounds cold and soulless -- and, well, boring.

Mercifully, Frusciante has toned down the screechy howl that made his earlier work almost unbearable, and while his songs aren't quite diamond-sharp, they have evolved into soft-focus pop tunes that display a keen melodic intuition and gift for beautiful torment.

As a political album, Liberation may only be half-successful, but I'd still take angry Trans Am over the schlocky Trans Am of TA any day.