It's impossible to decide whether Black is tourist or guide in the land of dusty genres he evokes. [#21, p.102]

True Love is at times haunting and ecstatic, memorializing Erickson's long history while swaggering into a shaggy kind of hope.

A remarkable work overall, Swanlights proves-yet again--that this odd duck has always known true beauty.

The baroque lyrics on "Light to Follow" prove to be one of the album's defiantly interesting moments, but these are too scattered to offer much new to the casual listener.

Grossi’s signature touches are all here—the angelic soprano, arpeggiating synths and grooving percussion all bundle the EP together nicely--while the guest appearances provide distinctiveness to an effort that may have otherwise been too cohesive.

The 1990s just may replace Franz as the dancefloor fillers of choice in Glasgow.

Despite a pronounced lean towards the gritty in all its finer trappings, Deerhunter’s fifth longplayer is riddled with some of Cox’s most structurally sound songwriting.

While normally "killer flute" and "far-out sitar" playing would feel incredibly counterfeit coming from a white guy based in California, it's his classic roots that keep it all grounded. And this album has both in spades. [Summer 2009, p.93]

It's hard to believe that a guy so apparently bombed out of his head... can concoct such well-crafted pop songs. [#11, p.98]

Flying solo, she's surprisingly mournful. [#21, p.102]

In addition to Hadreas’s wavering vocals, Le Bon also received instrumental contributions from Nick Murray (White Fence), Sweet Baboo and H. Hawkline to help create her most experimental and impressive album to date.

Head in The Dirt, the SF native’s sophomore offering, shows a delightfully vast range of influences.

A pretty excellent, ramblin' effort. [#16, p.99]

She transforms a Sufi song into a lullaby, and like her simultaneously near-and-distant voice, turns a faraway place into home. [Fall 2009, p.100]

Old age should be so much fun.

Ambitious. [#16, p.88]

Through the past and present, Stage Whisper is a sound step onwards.

The ever-loquacious monster of folk has a lot to say on his latest record (this one finds him particularly obsessed with time), but it’s his growing mastery of orchestration that muzos might appreciate the most.

It comes on slow, seeping into your memory through dusty riffs as expansive as Texas plains.

Solid, workmanlike rhymes abound, but a shortage of mind-blowing moments is tempered by the absence of mediocrity.

Natural History is an invigorating listen, which may say as much about today as it does about the band.

Califone's first EP in 1998 may have been ahead of its time, and now, 11 years later, just might be the time when the band has truly grown into its own. [Fall 2009, p.94]

Full of enough gorgeous orchestration and swooping crescendos to make John Berry proud, the songs are as much ambitiously cinematic as they are heartfelt pop tunes. [Spring 2008, p.92]

Underneath the Pine is anchored by Bundick's reverbed, strangely ethereal voice-it's just as malleable and expressive as the rest of the electronics in his impressive repertoire.

Matangi can feel a little trippy-dippy--we miss the “give war a chance” Maya. Still, this is musically monumentally freako.

[2009’s What Will We Be's] malady of stylistic disparity has been curbed to the point of what feels like a cohesive body of work.

Falling Down a Mountain may be the band’s most tuneful effort, or at least their peppiest.

Producer Daniel Smith ropes in hand-wrung guitars and padded pianos, balancing the boom of Ben's baritone against the golden peal of Vesper's alto. And while they manage to wile-out and get psychedelic, they're at their best when they're most vulnerable.

Murs' spitball rhymes and thick beats have always showcased a proclivity for stardom, and they bear fruit on the soulful piano galumph of 'Time Is Know.' [Fall 2008, p.102]

Lilacs & Champagne are quite successful in setting the mood on their second post-Grails record.

While these graduates are busy looking for a nail on which to hang their new diplomas, make sure you've got a needle to play their new record.

It's a cleaner, catchier Tapes 'n Tapes that, despite often flaunting rather than infusing its influences, may actually leave you humming its tunes.

It may be a bit heavy-handed, but it will no doubt thrill fans that probably assumed this day would never come.

It's an incandescent release that places a heavy emphasis on subterranean bass.

Mesmerizing

The juxtaposition of an earnest attempt at a spook with what otherwise sounds like super-weird children's songs is at least genuinely interesting, falling short of fear-inspiring, if that's what they were after.

As if the Everly Brothers channeled Norma Desmond, Observator is the sweet sound of summertime sadness.

In all, a dreamy plunge.

Gently strumming crispy chords or plucking glassy notes from his guitar, Shlohmo (like England's Mount Kimbie) finds fleeting moments of intimacy amid the bustle of urban life.

Electric Balloon is top-heavy, however, and the back half of the record drifts out of focus due to some grooves that—rather than sparkle--simply repeat.

Barfod has taken a great debut and made it into a stellar sophomore record that delights the most.

Everything comes together, creating an album as deep and wide as the vistas it conjures up.

Unlike its second effort, LP3 offers a sense of adventure through some potent modes of de-familiarization. [Summer 2008, p.92]

The Happiness Waltz is a continuation: a graceful rotation of melodies and gentle reflection.

This is hardly some bog standard run-through of Dylan classics. [#25, p.102]

It's a bit all over the map, but you have to admit there's some good music there. [#8, p.102]

Odyssey doesn't suck. Imagine! [#15, p.94]

Layered, atmospheric and melodic, each song takes its time and builds effortlessly into the next, creating an ethereal experience that intensifies with each listen. [Fall 2009, p.106]

The aptly titled Brothers isn't just another Black Keys album; it's the musical product of a cohesive symbiotic partnership. [Spring/Summer 2010, p.103]

On their third effort, it's still the sexy that sells us.

Green revels in a stripped-down, bittersweet world where noting last forever, with both his baritone and lyrics adding freshness to his fatalist outlook. [Winter 2010, p.99]

Within the 11 tracks that make up her third full-length, Olsen’s strong and matchless voice pierces through fuzzed out guitars and massive organ riffs, allowing us to burrow into her mind.

Beauty & Ruin might be the most realized example of the Mouldian aesthetic, and combined with the heartfelt poignancy of the subject matter--the aging rocker acknowledging his years earned and the years left at the wheel--it soars to contention with the rest of Mould’s formidable oeuvre.

They've certainly found a solid niche with the Big Star/Byrds bubble and pop. [#16, p.91]

Time's All Gone takes you back in the day and pulls you into the moment all at once.

The Vision, the latest from bass music sensation Joker, strikes a wondrous balance of doom and poppiness.

It's an immediate, utterly engrossing collection of hook-laden, distinctly modern rock songs, as vibrant as anything being turned out by the hipster kids.

Tarot Sport's tunes don't really explode so much as they unfurl into synthetic washes of digital soundtracking that undulate with electricity before elvolving into narcotic beat castles. [Holiday 2009, p.99]

In just two very natural albums, the dudes from Ridgewood, New Jersey, have managed to ensconce the indie ethos better than anyone has in quite a while, and the time of their season is right now.

Here, every strain, key, and vocal is stirred up into a creaky, constanaut, clearly-defined symphony. [Summer 2009, p.98]

Beck-ish vocals kick through the facade of slow and steady rhythmic pacing to reveal an emotional potency hiding behind the often formulaic hum of Handsome Furs.

The most compelling moments (“I Am Dust” and the title track) are like mechanized, sci-fi mini-operas, awesomely grandiose and yet disturbingly proximate enough to breathe all that fear right down your neck through your spine.

The Montreal quartet has their fingers in many pies, and the combination of noise, space, art and good old rock come together in a mix that creates its own gravitational pull.

I Know What Love Isn't is a master class in, if not getting over it, then getting on with it.

It’s not that the signature strings are missing or the lyrics are less poignant, it’s just that Last Light finds them hidden behind a big ol’ indie rock rather than center stage amid swirling chamber pop.

Their funk-electro-industrial-art-pop-noise is so tight, you might forget that they began life as a Munich art school project. [#13, p.97]

The 19-year-old’s sound combines retro folk with elements of Britpop that’s as raw as it is original, which equals one of the more exciting debuts in some time.

It’s markedly less garage-born than previous endeavors, too, sounding more akin to a dancier Echo & The Bunnymen or a version of The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs recorded at higher fidelity.

A somewhat random but enjoyable and welcome compilation.

Textured as it comes, the album drips with heady shoegaze, and meaty bass lines prevail in a melodic, rewarding sonic endeavor.

All of these bittersweet tracks are gloriously faint approximations of everyone's favorite seasonal affective disorder. [Holiday 2009, p. 93]

Avalanche enjoys an embarrassment of melodic riches and the luminous release blows up the fragile soul heard on the duo’s self-titled debut to heroic proportions.

What will catch one's attention are the patterns Axel Willner creates within each song that push the record forward.

If you're looking to be moved, inspired, to scream or cry, look elsewhere. But the kids need to have their fun...so, bring it on. [Winter 2009, p.96]

Ambitious, beautiful and sorrowful--it's everything a fan of the gloriously sad stuff could hope for on a rainy day. [#24, p.97]

While the album isn't perfect, it offers a more complete experience; it's a little bit strange, but it's also a little bit brilliant.

Alternating from quietly meditative numbers to aggressive drum ‘n’ bass backdrops, Between Darkness And Wonder treads carefully between insight and superficiality, but ultimately ends up... closer to the former.

With Myth Takes, [!!!] cleans up from trying to get people to trip balls and instead tries to make them just dance really fucking hard for like an hour or so... while tripping balls. [#24, p.96]

Often Patrick Wimberly's production renders their pop-cultural culling too literally.

The consistency from past to present is resolute and the drifting more uplifting than heard before, but the moments of poignancy heard on earlier records still ring truest.

Bird stays true to his whimsical and intricate style while embracing the limitations of recording an acoustic set circled around a single microphone.

Sweaty, funky and thump-inclined. [#6, p.82]

Although airing also-ran tracks, Belle and Sebastian have proven their idiosyncratic voices shout the loudest.

Divided between a Mongol warrior gallop and Zeppelin III stomp, Warp Riders is a bona fide modern-day mind-flayer. 

Celestial Electric can feel a little freewheeling and exploratory at times, but it also hints at great potential in future collaborations.

With lush instrumentation so rich that non-vocal versions of the songs are also included on the album, these pills aren’t exactly chewable, but they’re easy to swallow.

A glorious mess, just like our fucked-up world. [Winter 2010, p.100]

It's deeper than you think. [Spring 2009, p.103]

José González’s smooth, honeyed vocals and nylon-string plucking are more timbres than lead presences, and to great success.

There are wonderfully soft moments, too, the vocal counterpoints of “Little Ones Run” are delightful, but ultimately the collective exists for noise, which is demonstrated beautifully and impressively.

Jim Eno wound them up and let them go to conjure the showy (“One Girl/One Boy”), the chatty (“Fine Fine Fine”), the high hippie-ish (“Californiyeah”) and mostly the buoyantly oddball without losing track of the band’s tense rhythms, nervous songcraft and all around raw silken soul.

The Stills manage to sound quite a bit like Wire Train or House Of Love, all jangly, mournful guitars and sparkling melodies... oh, and lots of reverb. [#8, p.106]

Where Underworld was once a dark foil to what was generally a culture of peace, love and hedonism, in these grim times, Barking is a relatively upper's affair, and something of a techno's-greatest-bits.

The First Days of Spring falls in the gentle, folky space between Belle & Sebastian and It’s Jo and Danny, but manages to carve out a singular place for itself with thoughtful lyricism and artful songwriting.

While not as in-your-face or sinister as the last LPs, Latin packs a punch nevertheless. [Spring/Summer 2010, p.107]

Vows is a step ahead of your average candy-coated pop. [#48]

Regularly swelling with gorgeous string arrangements and Urata's slurring, operatic bellows, 100 Lovers feels like a reverse-engineered soundtrack to a beautiful foreign film in dire need of epic landscapes and intimate moments of romance.

Bruni manages to affectingly convey sweetness, melancholy and a prodigious amount of unselfconscious joy in both music and voice.