Maybe if this album had been released in the mid-eighties I’d be falling all over myself to praise it, but these days there’s just too much stuff around that’s surpassed the music here in originality, drive and smarts.

Each song glows with infinitesimal joys, tiny pointillist production flourishes noticeable only under close scrutiny. But in rounding out their sound, they brought the viewer close enough to see the brushstrokes and the smudges.

Feels is a near-stunning album a notable amount of the time.

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

1997's "I Could See the Dude" was abrupt, intriguing, emotive, and obtuse - these have always been within Spoon’s grasp, but rarely have they felt as unified as they do now, a baby’s first word burped up five times.

I always felt as if those moments of triumph in the band’s music were the focal points, the “good stuff” you waited for and wanted to arrive and then stay forever. This time around though, they appear to have taken a backseat to the band’s darker impulses, and staggeringly, Takk sounds all the better for it.

Disappointing, but still a worthy purchase.

Review 1: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1468" TARGET="_blank">The Black Album&#146;s failings fall upon Jay-Z&#146;s shoulders as much as his producers.</A> [Score=64] Review 2: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1469" TARGET="_blank">The majority of the beats here are mediocre.</A> [Score=38]

There’s a lingering sense that the product at the center of all the hubbub remains something less than its lofty reputation.

Tempting as it may be to assume that beefing up their sound would have automatically made the Decemberists markedly better, the truth is that these strides may have at least partially come at the expense of the things that always made the band so singularly compelling.

A rudderless piece of work.

Somehow The Polyphonic Spree have managed to make a record that actually is simple, joyous, and spiritually uplifting.

With a snoozilicious country-rock sound that makes even the Eagles seem crisp by comparison, Kozelek appears to have temporarily mothballed his greater sonic ambitions and opted instead for a niche as a latter-day Mazzy Star for boys.

A set of saccharine sweet songs which occasionally dissolve spectacularly in a haze of whirring electronic mist.

Rarely has a band created a world-space so monolithic yet provided a listener with so many easy routes to the interior.

It&#146;s a strong and dynamic step forward for the group and deserves to bring them a level of recognition commonly accorded their more famous Montr&#233;al label-mates.

Ultimately, it's that broken, half-told beauty that gives Dog its mystery, but also perhaps its feel of a record you may always like but around which you may never really feel completely comfortable.

If anything, it feels like Gibbard has regressed to the point where he sits in the shadow of his bandmate and producer, Chris Walla.

Multiply sounds like he picked up some ancient reel-to-reel tape from lost Holland-Dozier-Holland sessions and gave them a 2005 production spit-and-polish.

If there are complaints to lobby against this remarkable debut, they lie mostly in its sound-quality. Namely, it sounds like what it was: self-recorded and self-released.

This album is an incredible disappointment- right when Wire was beginning to build up momentum; there&#146;s not even enough new material here to fill a third EP, and the recontextualizing of the Read & Burn songs hardly makes it more worthwhile.

Cast of Thousands is a great record, beautiful and emotionally powerful as well as musically inventive... a refinement and extension of their vision that will emerge as one of the best records of the year.

Nothing too dire mars Vega’s compositions, which remain as condensed and detailed as Victorian miniatures.

An immediate and combative disc that blurries up a litany of angers over surprisingly versatile layers of pop-punk guitar thrusting, The Body, The Blood, The Machine is a focused tantrum, irresolute in its actual stances, but pissed and rambunctious enough to overcome its vagaries.

Inches succeeds, and then some, because the record simply doesn&#146;t sound like it&#146;s been collated together over a nine year period.

Such are The Clientele&#146;s gifts that its hard to believe The Violet Hour is only their debut album; few bands with more impressive vintages and prolific back-catalogues have managed to make records as touching, cohesive and deeply seeped in their own character as The Clientele have here.

It’s been years since he sounded this responsive and attentive.

Secret Wars feels like a keeper, like an album I&#146;ll pull out and play and still love ten years from now.