A beguiling blend of astute social commentary and first-rate music that rocks, weeps and testifies.

An essential addendum to the Galaxie 500 story.

A timely twinkle of apple crisp bells, hearth-warming handclaps and belly-rubbing brass.

An invigorating mix of spacey dub, seventies funk, eighties big-beat electro, old school hip-hop and even early Prince, Father Divine is Ladd's most lyrically accessible and sonically enjoyable album to date.

In recasting these wilfully off-kilter tunes and investing them with his trademark warm and inviting melancholia, Mark Kozelek need not be modest: Tiny Cities is a big success.

A record brimming with potential.

More hypnotically dark gems.

Lookaftering sees her trading the overly twee vibe of her debut for a darker, more mysterious and mature sound.

Unlike Rogue Wave's timid debut, Vultures blazes forward with the kind of assured bravado not usually seen this side of U2.

It's on the sonic departures, though, that Feels strikes its most resonant chord.

Boards of Canada seems to be able to release albums pre-aged, so that all the things that might have bugged you a couple years ago now sounds like another part of why it's a classic.

Better than anything they've recorded to date, Hypermagic Mountain approximates the swelling energy of Lightning Bolt's live havoc.

Tanglewood Numbers, musically at least, is Berman's most fully realized album.

If you are not in the right mood, Strange Geometry sounds like pretty melodies, plenty of atmosphere, and not a whole let else.

It might not be the underground hip-hop record of the year, but it is easily on the short list.

All told, it's another triumph for a band whose creative peak seems to defy gravity with each passing year.

The album feels underwhelming.

With Shamelessly Exciting he's starting to get good. In other words, on this record, once you get the idea, you're still going to want to listen.

Does it replace the originals as the definitive Gang of Four collection? No way.

The punk dominates more than it ever did on its electro-tilted predecessors.

The record... is able to maintain a thrilling tension between bright, dream-like songs and an encroaching darkness.

The record may have a little less electronic slink than prior efforts, but it has a propulsive energy, even in the mid-tempo tracks, that makes the record easy to like.

Suckfish is pure audio porn.

Zilla delivers a cleverly orchestrated junket of joyful raucousness and synth whirls.

An album of both phenomenal concentrated bits, as well as some disappointing gaps.

Their sturdy, inventive debut, Apologies to the Queen Mary, draws further, fresh blood from the indie rock stone.

Dramatic and dark.

Hypnotic and dreamlike, the album presents a vision of pop music's future glimpsed through the lens of its past.