It's not bad, it's just so goddamn mediocre.

If you thought Mooney Suzuki's Estrus debut, People Get Ready, rocked, Electric Sweat will blow you away.

It's simultaneously refreshing and amusing. And it rocks hard.

The band is never so consumed by brainy showmanship that they forget to rock -- this album kicks harder in places than Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath ever did, or The Strokes ever will.

Coming up in the discothèque all disco/not-disco, Jackson's perspicacious hindsight gazes back to what was winning back in the day, now dragging it into the drag-and-drop to create pro-tooled playlist pop, its parts glued together into a seamless, shiny, mirroring whole.

The Super Furries have indulgently embraced a collision of musical elements; what we hear is a jarring, yet surprisingly seamless, mix of sounds and exceptional songwriting.... Their best work to date.

More than just a sick joke, Souljacker is a rocking, thought-provoking journey.

Whatever the lyrical content, though, the pleasures of N*E*R*D ultimately come down to their exhilarating production, flush with the breathless energy of rock and starry-eyed with the psychedelic potential of the studio.

An album that is both emotionally powerful and truly beautiful.

While the pair probably had a lot of fun making the record, unfortunately, it isn't the most enjoyable listen.

A work of thematic and dramatic constancy.

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

Lyrically, I suspect that part of the problem is rust, while part of the problem is age — a song about bumping into an ex-girlfriend, then coming home to tell the wife about it ("Jane Allen") just doesn't stick to the ribs, while the more overtly political numbers feel heavy-handed and preachy.

Their finest record to date and the most blistering, blissful album to be released by anyone in years.

His sound, gender-neutral swooning folk dressed in quirky analog jazz keyboards, would fit nicely on a mix tape alongside The Smiths and Nick Drake.

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.

Lounge-rock for world-weary sophisticates.

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.

In stark contrast to most Nashville and alt.country products, even when the words let it down, Barricades & Brickwalls is carried by its classic sound.

One of the best, if not the best, of the Brooklyn-based, Gang of Four-worshipping lot.

An eclectic, highly promising debut.

Just like an album of guitar solos, an album of battling fancy-fingered trick-pony turntablism is an utterly artless endeavor.

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.

The album is surprisingly consistent despite its unbalanced components.

It's always pretty, but overall, the allure is almost meretricious, considering four or five songs provoke nothing beyond a pleasant ambivalence.

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

Doss on his own delivers a more controlled sound that recognizes quality over quantity without falling off the deep end of electro-dabbling, a fault that plagued some of OTC's later recordings. The result is clear, concise and powerful.

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.