LP3 is a rewarding listen, and you’ll have a taste for it if you enjoyed the less powerful moments of "Classics" or Evan Mast’s previous textural work as E*Vax. Just don’t expect to find yourself headbanging and air-guitaring alone in your room.

Beyond all else, perhaps, think of this zero as the massive bedazzled orifice out of which our heroine has spawned a new era of popular culture.

I guess whether or not Elevator is worth picking up for you depends on just what you want from Hot Hot Heat. If you liked Make Up the Breakdown, still like it, and want more of the Hot Hot Heat you've come to know and love, then knock that rating up another .5 or so and walk briskly to the nearest record store to buy it.

EDD are probably too traditional a band to ever record a straight-up punk record. But it would have been nice to hear an entire album powering through with the intensity of the more rocking half of Riot Now!.

For now, The Redeemer’s many tangles make even some of the most personal music this year sound tedious.

Even ignoring the tectonic shifts in music over the past decade, this is by no means a novel or inventive album.

Dimensional People wants to be a major rap album, complete with cameos stacked way high, all epic and prodigal. But it’s just not all there.

There's nothing supremely bad about this record, but there are no surprises either. It's just--well, there.

In cynical marketing terms, an 'indispensible' sticker has been slapped on this effort through these moves, so that no wallflower's music library would be complete without a shy Fading Parade.

Kweli still has an ear for beats, and despite some particular low points here, his lyrics were always overshadowed by his flow, which is as sharp as ever.

Remember Your Black Day has some great moments--the eight-minute title track, with its hyper-pulse percussion and somber synth strains, is a solid incarnation of what made Vatican Shadow so compelling in the first place--but it’s surrounded by a mixed bag of tunes that either attempts some agoraphobic tightrope walk before falling flat or wrestles with contrasting ideas that weaken the project’s potency as opposed to crystallizing it.

Musically, End Times approaches Everett’s best work yet, but due to its narrow focus and exhausting reliance on theme, it falls just short of it.

Royal City don't have the arresting lyrics or delivery of the best Palace songs, nor is Little Heart's Ease the equal of genre-champ Magnolia Electric Company, but, as Riches might put it, there's some sparkles in the rough.

If you've enjoyed Gomez's musical direction in the last six years, you're sure to take pleasure in listening to Split The Difference.

An amazing accomplishment and a pleasure to listen to.

Tracer glimmers with the CD-ROM gleam of early-90s intelligent techno.

While enduring a few accidents, the group’s fresh folk approach shows promise.

Total Nite still feels to me like lateral growth, neither distinctly worse but certainly not better than what preceded it.

Secret House Against The World is a fun-filled affair that only reinforces Buck 65's stature as one of "hip-hop's" more versatile "emcees."

The duo has never abandoned the cool reserve of music nerds, but their sound on this tribute has a different sort of ease and confidence; they've learned something from studying their pop music history books.

After awhile, the monotony becomes wearing. Television Man is a disappointment in the sense that it’s a lot of the same, save for the two instrumental tracks, based on keyboards, that sound like attempts at making warped VHS soundtrack music.

Why Bother? may not have quite the same sonic guitar depth as Gimme Trouble, but the mechanical, industrial-punk synth work, inching closer to perfection with each release, does an admirable job of filling in the aural gaps.

An architecture of mediated sound is being built here, flecked with the indelible traces of the locations, communities, and forms of feeling contained in the music. And, importantly, the process of this construction is suffused with joy, with the afterglow of countless nights remembered and forgotten.

With Love’s desire to obscure any traces of the artistic hand that made it is both its most compelling trait and what ultimately prevents it from ascending to the aesthetic nirvana it imagines.

For every song that I replay, there’s another that I skip.

The sound design of the album is conventionally breathtaking.

Content (pronounced like the noun, not the adjective) is, in many ways, a return to form for the group.

Internal Logic is a well-constructed album, more punk than post-, stronger in its ideas, and a welcome departure from so-called "love" songs prevalent in modern bands inspired by the early 60s. It's a strong statement from the band and a treat for those who revel in such influences.