A heart-meltingly wonderful return to form.

No doubt, the music that falls between the Beatles and Bacharach extremes suffers slightly from adherence to formula, but few can boast such immediately memorable melodies. What surprises, though, is the care that they take with the lighter side of their music.

This is truly an album that will stay with you once you’ve let it work its way in.

Phillips and Wareham manage to toe just the right line between diverse arrancements and album-wide cohesion - it's a little like listening to Luna in an alternate universe where they only play weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Catchy yet intense guitarwork, intricate rhythms, soft and hard moments, and layers of Shehan's amazing voice - it all combines to create one amazing album.

Soul Journey takes off in more than one new direction.

Like no other pop album you've ever heard.

Zoo Psychology is gritty, and crazy, and at times, almost maddening.

Ultimately, Precollection probably isn’t the kind of release to greatly expand its influence over the throngs of the unconverted, but it should be more than a welcome advance for those already convinced of Heasley’s obviously remarkable gifts.

Built On Squares is a refreshing slice of musical Valhalla.

Alter is intense, brooding, and taut, perfectly utilizing piano, chaotic dissident guitar, and complex percussion.

Musically, it’s far and away ahead of most hip-hop artists, and lyrically, it’s a clever approach that goes beyond the heart-on-your-sleeve indie-rock lyricsheet.

As half of the fun of an album is trying to figure out what the artist is trying to do creatively, having the artist essentially tell you what they're going to do and then watching them do it, is somewhat less interesting.

Rounds is a perfect mix of subdued chill-out music and up-tempo beats.

More religious text and tapestry than commercial pop folk, The Smell of Our Own charts its own territory through the heart and head and holes of celebratory love. Truly unique.

At times on Song in the Air, I'm reminded of what it might sound like if Sigur Ros, Radiohead, and Jimmy Eat World were all merged together.

They've got enough going for them that they're likely to remain steadfast favorites of true music fans even after the hype has died down and the scenesters have moved on to something else.

Dando conjures up a combination of The Lemonheads' It's a Shame About Ray, Buffalo Tom's Smitten and Wilco's Summerteeth - fashioning this year's most essential post-rehab record in the process.

Despite the band’s annoying lyrics, their beats can be catchy and they have a kick-ass bass player.

Summer Sun stretches Yo La Tengo's musical boundaries even further than before, as well as reaching back to tie-up loose ends from past master works.

The songs on Thickfreakness are all near masterpieces.

Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid has enough substantive quirks amongst the tiresome new-wave signposts to make this album a reasonable yet flawed artefact that is more than just the sum of its quaint parts.

A follow-up album that not only meets expectations, it blows them away.

In the end, this is better left to die-hard Yo La fans and jealous bassists everywhere.

There are a few moments of weakness on Keep on Your Mean Side - most notably where V.V. and Hotel get a little too repetitive or too simplistic for their own good – but it's easy to move past these minor instances without it detracting from the album too much.

Chesnutt has finally made an album that utilizes the full range offered by lush, fully adorned production to his advantage, accenting the strengths of his songwriting but never jockeying for position with his most distinctive traits.

While it doesn't have as many flat-out terrific songs as its predecessor, I'd venture to say that The Remote Part is the record that Idlewild has wanted to write all along.

Califone's most confident and realized album.

The focus may be tighter and the refinement may be a little more obvious, but such things don't hold the band back on Antenna; rather they further the progress that has been showing itself with every Cave In release.

Whether you end up liking this album or not, it is going to be one of the most intense things you've ever heard.

A strong early contender for Record of the Year.

Some of Log 22 feels like a step too far, with the band's ambitious arrangements falling foul to the limitations of their musical abilities.

Possibly the best Kristin Hersh solo album since 1994's classic Hips & Makers.

Magnolia Electric Company is a watershed album, an artistic breakthrough, and the first album to fully realize Molina's potential.

It's messy and it's fun. Sometimes pop music isn't meant to be cleaned up and polished to death, and here is proof of that.

This is an album that's tough to love but impossible to ignore.

This record is a composite of everything that is good about modern music.

It won't blow you away the first time, but it eventually will.

The most eclectic and endearing Dirty Three album in quite some time.

Give Up is an outstanding, creative effort from two of indie rock's most disparate voices.

This is one consistent record that will being a smile to your face; there is nothing breathtaking, but there doesn't have to be.

The best complete work the band has offered to date.

A brave, commanding, astonishing LP that shatters all notions of what modern rock music can, or for that matter, should be.

One of the best albums you'll hear in 2003.

Where the Aislers Set really create a distinction between themselves and their contemporaries is through the unpredictably imaginative arrangements, bolstered by Linton's truly enigmatic melodic sense.

The band merrily rips through song after song with skill and zeal, all the while cheekily brandishing a wit that's equal parts irony and earnestness.

Nocturama isn't the weakest album in Nick Cave's canon, but it's far from being a particularly good one either.

An excellent album, perhaps not eclipsing the band's previous work, but at least firmly holding its ground.

Six extended entanglements that capture the spirit of willful experimentation and magnetic pull of melody.

Mary Star of the Sea doesn't come close to SP's best work, but it absolutely obliterates everything Corgan has done since Mellon Collie.

The Raven is downright awful, perhaps Reed’s worst album since Metal Machine Music.

This is big rock, powerful, aggressive, and impeccably played and produced.

Red Devil Dawn is by far the most consistent Crooked Fingers album, and in many respects, probably the best in general.

For a debut album, this is extremely strong.

In effect, the group have carbon-copied the sound of The Great Eastern but neglected to paste-in an equal number of tunes.

Weaving together themes like mortality, the universality of mankind, and the cyclical eternality of life and not having it all come out as a pretentious mess of self-important prognosticating and vaguely simplistic truisms places Elvrum in the rarified air that few outside of Brian Wilson have ever attempted to reach.

An extremely beautiful and captivating slice of electro-pop.

Simply put, you need to own this record.

A New Day at Midnight is not White Ladder part 2, but it does bear certain similarities, namely emotional, beautiful music matched with equally beautiful lyrics, and, of course David Gray's unmistakable voice.

Lift Your Skinny Fists… told a story, included more extremes in volume and emotion, and added vocal samples. Yanqui, thus, is more subtle, more restrained. Yet it's also more moody, more cerebral, more intense.

While individual songs work on their own, the album seldom succeeds as a whole.

Takes us on a tour of how things got started and where they could be going.

While Amore del Tropico blazes some new paths for Black Heart Procession, it also hits all the right notes from the group's past.

Music that's at once beautiful, joyful, and pure aural pleasure.

Nothing about the five originals and two covers here makes them come across like B-sides or throwaways.

Even without a surplus of terrific songs to launch the affair into orbit, the band still knows perfectly well how to lock into each other and stay that way.

One of his finest efforts to date.

Though it is not overtly innovative in its instrumentation or approach, The Creek Drank the Cradle is composed and performed with such an inclusive, intimate voice that the album is extremely accessible, even personal.

You still get the beautiful vocal combination of Sparhawk and Parker and the traditional less-is-more approach Low perfected several albums ago. Yet now you get a band that doesn't want to get stuck in the realm of slow-core, trying new things, redefining themselves. And it works beautifully on what is, undoubtedly, a triumph of an album.

For everyone who thought the conceptual excesses of the previous releases went a bit too far or simply didn’t have the patience to tie together all the musical loose ends, this may be the Of Montreal album they’ve been waiting for.

The sad truth is that few of the songs top their studio counterparts.

The problem is the songs. Oh, the songs - they're pretty, all right, but there's no substance.

Adamson is certainly adept at replicating the sights and sounds of the Bond and Blaxploitation films that inspired him in his youth. But is he celebrating his passion or merely mocking it in a hamfisted fashion? Sadly if feels like too much of the latter, even if it is by accident.

All in all, this album has everything any hard rock fan would enjoy.

A consistently heady and visceral shot of classic Mudhoney: angry, fuzzy guitars, propulsive rhythms, and sarcastically-jaded lyrics.

Will be among many year-end best-of lists, and deservingly so.

It sounds like the Ramones covering OK Computer. It's also one of the best debuts of the year.

They put together nearly perfectly produced and arranged songs, tight and precise yet still urgent and fast.

In an era when few can truly be said to be following their own unique aesthetic, Sixteen Horsepower continue to pad their resume as one of America’s greatest reinterpretors of the American folk tradition.

It almost seems like the Flaming Lips has regressed a little, structurally and rhythmically speaking.

The problem is, Parton seems hesitant to just go ahead and continue to make the kinds of albums that will attract hardcore folk and roots enthusiasts, instead tempering her material with apparent attempts to hold appeal to a wider audience. So, at best, the final results are a bit mixed.

This short EP clearly isn't up to the muster of classic 70s Wire.

Overall, the set works as a study in contrasts, with the ornate sampled arrangements always being in danger of disappearing under the sparking electronic beats or Daedelus’ added textures, whether they be synthesized sounds or computer printers.

A lush post-rock masterpiece.

This album includes boasts a brilliant storyteller, amazing music, and, most important, beautifully delivered lyrics.

Much popier than the band’s previous efforts, this is a fun album with catchy beats, cool guitars and a lo-fi sound.

He has composed devastatingly clever lyrics to go with music that completely rocks out, tugs at your heartstrings, or both.

My only complaint about this brilliant album is that the first half is so strong, the second half is weak in comparison.

A dark, moody, hypnotic monumental masterpiece with songs that unfold subtlety from one elaborate texture to the next so that you almost don't notice the marvelous hooks until they have dug their way beneath your skin and buried themselves in your soul.

These two guys are good on the turntables and production, and they've got some stellar hip hop and rock guests. Check out this collaboration, one of the few hip-hop albums that I truly think is a must-have.