A highly enjoyable album... one that’s louder than the Liars, more fun than the (new) Strokes, and ten times more dynamic than the Arctic Monkeys.

This record is the first time the Fucking Champs have actually managed to capture the actual emotional colors of their own banality, rather than trying to piss a whole two-minute solo all over the place.

Song-for-song, they haven’t made an album this misstep-free since Vs.

If Cut Chemist can recreate the effortless fusion of the album's second half, perhaps someday he can make an album worth listening to from beginning to end.

There’s an attention to detail and storytelling nous built up by those previous concept albums that makes further listening and exploration of Happy Hollow that much more rewarding.

The question with Christ Illusion, as with any post-Seasons album, is simple: could these songs make it into Slayer's live set? The answer is yes, and more than the usual one or two.

It is simultaneously the most resplendent, accomplished record the band has made, with all kinds of songs... that retain the worst, most self-indulgent aspects of one of underground rock’s most consistently imperfect bands.

These are songs that veer to and fro, frequently sounding as if they’re nearly about to run off the rails.

Sometimes the after school special feel of it takes its toll... But they win you back, because that's what underdogs do: they eventually win.

A retreat from overt tale-telling makes these songs less immediate and localized but potentially more personal, both for Jim and his listeners, as he strips away the surreality and specificity and renders his murky ruminations more universally resonant.

I Created Disco is a fun and mostly very listenable pop record which satisfies the modest ambitions it sets for itself.

I don't have the conscience to recommend Sojourner to the uninitiated, but as a document of what Molina acolytes already suffer, it's essential.

I suspect those left cold by Satan will find Icky Thump a welcome reheating.

Cash takes time to recapture these relationships through simple, detailed moments; at times with grief, and other times with the joy of their memory.

An immensely pleasing and happy album.

I’m tired of being simply “satisfied” by the Sea and Cake.

The Maginot Line has a title almost as dreary and foreboding as The North Sea had, a sense of vast futility and inescapable fate, and like that first album, the title belies the often bright and sparkling parts of the music.

What Marry Me may lack in innovation, it makes up for in attitude and execution.

Fiasco is actually an absolutely dazzling emcee and a genuinely nuanced personality, and both of these things are incredibly rare in hip-hop in 2006.

It’s a highly idiosyncratic album that very few will appreciate every facet of. However, even with a very minimal knowledge of the source material, there’s much to love.

Except for Ghostface, he's probably rhyming as well as anyone around right now.

That’s not to say the album is a disappointment (it isn’t) or not great (it is, mostly), but after hitting their creative and commercial peak with Absolution and its subsequent breakthrough stateside, Black Holes and Revelations clearly reveals itself to be a transition record.

A quiet, thoughtful, but never uninteresting album.

The Books have toned down the weird, smoothed down the edges, and created their most homogenous record yet. Lucky for us, the homogenous version of The Books is still probably ten times more interesting than your favorite band at their most creative.

Those voices alone are enough to devastate, and they’re the reason this album deserves mention among the year’s best.

MoM, for their part, sound more and more comfortable with a vocalist in front of them.

Even if the album sounds more restrained, there is nothing holding back the quality of the material.

Proof of Youth is a satisfying sophomore effort.