If there is a problem with Some Loud Thunder it is the album’s lack of consistency.

His band's former work may be referenced, but Adams' personal stamp is unmistakable.

This is not a complete or coherent narrative of despair, as the two album halves don’t particularly work with one another—it really feels like two EPs sewn together. But the effort is more than evocative enough to scare the hell out of you, at least for a little while.

We’re left with a brilliant, often mesmerizing but all-too-sketchy defeatist manifesto on the surface, which, with further musical fleshing-out (Verve guitarist Simon Tong is woefully underused), might have been worth serious investigation.

Wincing The Night Away covers all the bases and proves what loyal followers have known all along, that The Shins are, for better or worse, rock stars.

If Of Montreal were previously a bit on the superficial side with their beatific pop, Hissing Fauna adds a welcome additional ingredient: a sense of gravity.

While they are not afraid to bang the drums and rock out, Menomena keep the majority of this album behind a beautiful mask of complimentary melodies.

These songs are gorgeous and the band knows how to milk the beauty for all it's worth.

With Living Well, Rob Crow has created some of his finest work.

More Fish has a fishy flavor and smell but has little else resembling the hard-hitting potency of its mind numbing predecessor, Fishscale.

Listening to Ys is like dreaming with eyes open, a detached lucidity in which clarity inevitably follows.

It appears they’ve decided to mimic the vague Abbey Road allusions Yo La Tengo made in Beat Your Ass by giving the White Album a sideways 'you-da-man' here in So Divided.

Skipping over a few songs, such as "When Butterflies Leave" and "Whispers From A Spiritual Garden" — because who wants to hear spiritual babbling when Islam can sing so diatonically correct — the album flourishes into a masterpiece of sincerity to its core.

An album to which listening compares to watching The Break-up or The Last Kiss.

When the sun comes out, you'll want to put Milkwhite Sheets away for a long time. It leaves you with an inexplicable chill and a sense that Campbell overplayed her hand.

There isn’t much that Lady Sovereign did prior to Public Warning to gain the amount of respect that she attempts to command and, to some extent, she still doesn’t make it all up here. But at least this is a good start to showcase her abilities.

With its mind-blowing dynamics and wounded memories, bandaged up in affecting, mature lyrics that dissect relationships with a therapist's perspective, the wisdom of hindsight and an artist's touch, Let's Build A Fire is almost flawless.

While Young Machetes is a slight slip in quality, it is the first the band has made so far.

Califone’s latest offering is not to be missed and certainly one of the best albums of 2006.

Genuinely soulful and unhindered by a slavish devotion to traditional Americana, The Opera Circuit is a tour de force for Hinson.

As gorgeous as Sleepy’s voice can be, lyrically the album is lacking.

Getting used to the lethargic pace of Beach House takes some doing, but it's well worth the effort.

If you’re looking for music to make heartfelt love or fall asleep to, this here’s your record.

The songs are emotive, and yet have catchy hooks; they are at times unrestrained and at others, calculated.

The band’s performance overall is agonizingly perfect and deserving of much praise.

Furnished with seductive melodies, dry beats, translucent tonality and a variety of bouncing electronic arpeggios, So This Is Goodbye is filled with pure synth-pop oxygen.

In the end Continuum feels like little-more than the self-indulgent effort of a possibly-peaked pop star.

The Rapture sound amazingly fresh right now.