The Air Force may signal that Xiu Xiu isn't as jarring and bewildering as they once were, but there's more than enough fortitude and craft present to ensure that Stewart will always be a good handful of steps ahead of everyone else making "experimental" pop.

Grizzly Bear are an Animal Collective that decided to go more intelligible and accessible instead of running naked through the woods on five hits of sunshine acid while screaming in tongues.

No one is reinventing the wheel here; humility rules, and what makes Gala Mill so impressive is how The Drones wear their emotions on their sleeves and how naturally everything spills out.

Perversion packed with allusions -- forgotten titles, purloined and paraphrased sources, pilfered public records and archives. This is what steeps the songs in American history instead of planting them in psycho wards, clinics, and retirement homes.

It is an excellent album that has taken them seven long years to finally get to, but those are seven years that have been evidently well spent: After years of mediocrity and being, to some degree, marginalized -- just when the world needed them -- The Roots are back like never before.

It's end-of-summer music.

It's a great introduction to the wide range that Broadcast works with, and it holds together as well as any of their albums.

Lazy Saturday mornings are meant to be had with this album.

Goat devotees should be most satisfied with this addition to the collection, and the uninitiated could find worse places to start.

The only drawback is Hutch Harris' vocals.

She's just as accomplished as a woodsy singer-songwriter as she is a synth-pop Star.

For all the technology they bring to the table, Ratatat are soulful and savvy, putting everything in its right place and locking the listener in.

If there's anything to lament about Avatar, it's that its moves towards accessibility, narrative, and more diverse pastures probably won't help to broaden Comets' fanbase.

No matter how you want to face it, the secret is out: pop isn't Friedberger's bag.

Nu-Mark's beats still refresh the old school in the J5 way we've become accustomed, but the other beats here represent a sad cross-section of mainstream styles, totally missing the point of their first three albums.

Even though Days To Bed is littered with the sort of tunes that indie pop fans obsessively search for, it suffers the same fate as the group’s previous releases. By the time you reach the final 25% of the album, you’re more than ready to go to bed — and not in a good way.

A painful disappointment.

CSS's music is almost immediately infectious and surprisingly poppy.

Black Holes and Revelations is probably the least restrained album of 2006, which for some is a blessing, for others a pretentious annoyance. It is, however, a focused album.

Oneida is traveling further down the path laid out in last year's The Wedding. It's equally pastoral, with luscious production and Bobby's surprisingly beautiful voice taking centerstage.

Nigel's production and arrangements leave very little room for the songs to breathe... However, the emphasis on Thom's lyrics illuminates The Eraser's strongest asset: its content.

Mistake may be a solid, somewhat complex electronic music release, but its nerdy precision has the tendency to render the melancholic, brooding melodies somewhat impotent.

Skip the first track and Greedy Baby is a welcome addition to the Plaid catalogue, though not nearly as essential as their earlier works.

It's a pleasure to be embraced by a record this pretty and soulful.

[A] wondrous debut record.

News and Tributes is relatively smooth sailing from note one; very consistent and effectively less immediate.

It's still better than most of the records that have come out this year; it's just that the Sparks family has set such a high precedent that even slight missteps are bound to disappoint.

If you were hoping for a predictable outing from Ben Chasny, you won't find it on The Sun Awakens.