Walking With Thee isn't a rehashing of last year's Internal Wrangler; it's actually an inferior version of it.

In the future the restless, insecure South-men may perhaps harness their broad tastes into a more cogent sound, but From Here On In finds them a well-produced but overly expansive mess.

Fans of the group's previous recordings may have trouble accepting the fact that Lost in Revelry doesn't have the high melodic consistency of We're All in This Alone.

What's particularly exciting about this release is the second compact disc, which features an animation by Katsura Moshino, adding a bizarre visual narrative to Takemura's rich audio playground.

All you can really do is sit back and politely applaud.

Although much of the record re-verses and re-crafts melodies in the same vein, there are a few gems that can't be missed.

Rock Steady certainly isn't that good, and at times it's rather bad (usually when Ocasek gets a bit Cars). But it does have its moments, most of which come at the hands of [co-producer Nellee] Hooper...

As an EP, the premise of Lovage would flourish.

Luckily, the album has an easy-going air that lifts it out of the realm of smart-guy assemblage and into sexy, summery territories.

Alive to Every Smile finds TBS swanning through a set of soft-pop numbers giddy with the misty misery of melancholy and coated with the softest frostings of studio icing-sugar.

An improvement over his lo-fi solo debut and his over-produced second disc, but it misses as often as it hits.

A jangly collection of contagious pop tunes made melancholy by a dark songwriting style.

No one who bought Vegas will be disappointed by Tweekend, unless they're looking for some statement of artist growth. That's the only area where this album falters. It is otherwise a solid collection of thundering Big Beat grooves.

Ancient Melodies of the Future sounds more like "vaguely familiar melodies of the past," but so do some of the best albums in rock.

Where Maxinquaye was both engaging and coherent, working up to a kind of weird gestalt by way of good songs and dark sounds, Blowback is hit-and-miss.

The glassy-eyed micro-manic bass-'n'-breaks belligerence on show-offy tracks on this Squarepusher longplayer is either tellingly tired or terrifically tiring, with Jenx's wicked licks of brown-note boogie either spuriously slow in the foot or a swift kick to the collective ass of a collectively ass-kissing musical community.

As forward-thinking as this sounds, it just kind of makes Gorillaz an Archies/Josie & The Pussycats for the new millennium. It also makes them and their album fit in with everyone else in the progressive hip-hop canon, all of whom see fit to make slightly ludicrous concept records.

The spirit of Syd Barrett seems to loom over this record more than either of the previous Radiohead longplayers, and that's not a bad thing at all.

On their second proper longplayer, Air project that melancholy forward, depicting romantic recollections from a future world in which "technology" has attained sci-fi levels.

. Ditching some of the more Cali-like, pop-like and psych-like vestments of past longplayers, Argyle Heir finds the quartet-cum-sextet making the most medieval indie-rock this side of dungeon-dancing Helium honcho Mary Timony.

While the sound is often thick -- layers of dewy guitars, keyboards, old organs, bass, drums/beats -- it's always concerned with the "space" of the piece, such thickness often casting insular environments in which Eitzel's voice can wander lonely.

All for You is, for the most part, signature Janet.

Mind you, Kelly Jones' voice is an acquired taste. If you warm to it, however, you'll then enjoy a wealth of simple country-tinged pop songs.

They're merely using Psychocandy as a workaday aesthetic strategy and, despite loads of melodrama, they never sound pretentious about it either.

Amongst the bubble-and-squeak, there's much audio delight to savor...

The astonishing way in which the latest outing from San Franciscan deconstructionist darlings Matmos was put together is of such novel conceit it threatens to overshadow the final product.

Attention to detail particularly benefits the lush and endearing "Good Fruit," the rare track wherein lovelorn earnestness replaces self-conscious repartee.

Group Sounds may not be astonishingly great, but it mostly rocks with the raw, excellent sound RFTC has come to own.