With this album, French Kicks have taken a sizeable leap forward, taking the right bits and pieces from half a century of rock 'n' roll to make something new and, yes, unique.

Her songbird's voice has never sounded more beautiful than it does here.

The combination of timeless songs, superb production and Banhart's often mesmerizing performance make for a very strong album.

Heroes to Zeros, in spite of a few uneven tracks, makes the cut.

Trampin' has her sounding revitalized, her contagious energy striking sparks off her longtime musical collaborators.

She sounds as distant as much of the Anthology of American Folk Music, and yet there is an intimacy to her songs. This is a singer/poet who really feels things. And this is the new, weird America, and Holland is singing its woes with a wisdom far beyond her age.

Like early arcade-game programmers, Ratatat are working with a greatly reduced palette, and the synth reductionism means they're never going to escape cute.

Rocks like Bad Company and Thin Lizzy and vintage Springsteen. Look out.

They don't always sound consistent on this debut, occasionally misfiring with underworked material, but overall the strengths overshadow any weaknesses, and when they truly hit their stride they're devastatingly effective.

Tortoise have, in the past, asked more from their listeners. This time they let us off a little too easy.

While the album is not as cohesive a vision, many of its songs are more focused.

Their newfound versatility detracts somewhat from their own identity.

The beauty and richness of our seemingly mundane lives can be found here, in the bossa-nova of minor catastrophes, the pseudo-jazz of strippers, and the easy lilt of coffee cups.

For the first time, Milk Man finds such a sound seeming not like the product of a collective caprice, but a formula that they're following, with the few songs where they get lost in total tonal abstraction seeming like didactic decisions to ditch the rock instruments and remind everyone they were once filed under difficult listening.

While Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes is far from a perfect offering, this album provides a plethora of outstanding moments reminiscent of the musical exploration the band's heroes The Pixies exhibited on their debut longplayer, Surfer Rosa.

Whilst Bejar's songs are blessed with mucho rhythm and melody, you should still be made aware that there's no real beat, no real bass, and little that sounds organic. Yet there's still something quite regal and symphonic about it all, the synthesized strings and horns and piano stirring up a romanticism that goes with Bejar's fancy-pants lyricism.

Superior to its predecessor in just about every respect.

For those who had grown used to Boredoms' percussion-orgy period -- from Super Ar through to Vision Creation Newsun, with OOIOO's Feather Float in the middle -- such intermittence will give the album a broken feel, making it feel like its indulgences in improvisation and its ad-hoc demeanor are acts lacking discipline.

Overall, the album lacks the cohesion that would make it a keeper.

Hypnotic Underworld is, paradoxically, actually the least hypnotic and least underground album Ghost have made thus far.

An odd, fascinating journey through the mind of a man who channels messages from horror movies, occult events, and other bewilderments, and turns them into songs.

Even with a couple of missteps, this is a solid album that will likely stay in heavy rotation on your stereo for months to come.

Me First is a Sunday record, a rainy-day record, a home-alone record, a lying-on-the-floor, staring-at-the-ceiling record.

Each of the 12 tracks on the Grey Album is finely tuned -- the precision cut-and-paste sampling DM exhibits is often mind-blowing.

On a musical level these new songs are clearly identifiable as the Poster Children's work, but the band covers a broad array of lyrical turf on No More Songs About Sleep and Fire.

Apropa't has a tendency at first to gently wash over you, striking no particular chord. But as you pay closer attention to the music, the melodic wash of it all becomes one of its addictive qualities.

Margerine Eclipse is a decided improvement upon their last three albums, discarding the dense and difficult song structures that plagued those albums.

The songs aren't always as good as one might hope, especially in comparison to The Mekons' peak period.