The Crane Wife is an album that nicely fits into the Decemberists' universe and has roots in earlier works, but sounds -- and hangs together -- better than any of them.

The best Hitchcock album of the new millennium: Less insistently jagged and catchy, but with a bit of sting wrapped in its more tasteful arrangements.

With all due respect to Mr. Albini, perhaps it’s time Nastasia broadened her collaborative horizons.

The Outsider is a mix tape. The artful flow that defined Endtroducing and The Private Press has been eschewed in favor of individual tracks, and the album succeeds or fails along these lines.

Despite running out of gas down the stretch, Ben Kweller is still a validation of its creator’s burgeoning gifts.

This promising notion of marrying the overly pensive, doomed-romantic Billy persona with orchestral-sized studio ambitions is a wash, the cumulative effect being undeniably gorgeous, in a rainy-day internalized apocalypse kind of way.

Return to Cookie Mountain validates the promise of TV on the Radio, an outfit that heretofore had displayed more potential than actual returns.

Amputechture, with its obsessive exploration of religious fanaticism and the physical expression of devotional desire, is not an album wanting to be loved so much as feared and listened to with a sense of awe and taxed exasperation.

The Boys are still presenting themselves as an emotionally sensitive duo, but the smoothness pulls the urgency out of some of their problems.

I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass is a delirious jumble, the rare album that holds together because of the sheer audacity of its diversity, rather than being torn asunder by it.

It's hard not to like music this well-ordered and composed, but in the end it sounds as if The Album Leaf has taken a break on innovation and is settling for being derivative -- of itself.

Intense, invigorating and beguiling.

This is a subtle, whispered scream of a work, one that demands nothing of a consumer’s time but pays decent dividends for those willing to make the investment.

If Time Out of Mind is the weathered, death-obsessed uncle who drinks too much and broods over things unchangeable and distant, and Love and Theft is the rakish cad gleefully dancing on the edge of the apocalypse, then Times is Theft’s clean-shaven, less-interesting brother, with a bit of schooling under his belt and a professional spit-and-polish finish.

A few throwaways... keep Theory from attaining the rarified heights of earlier efforts. But in the final count, it’s just nice to hear this criminally underappreciated outfit sounding so sharp and revitalized.

The most frustrating aspect of Idlewild is its lack of energy.

Damaged is quintessential Wagner: a ponderous, carved-wood gut-punch of a record that finds hope in the mundane details of everyday life, even as the big worldly picture comes crashing down with alarming force.

Get Lonely reveals an artist in full command of his craft.

They've slowed down the tempo a little and cleaned up the sound a lot.

The material doesn’t resonate, however, and pales next to Ward’s prior effort, Transistor Radio.

While The Trials of Van Occupanther may never be more than a cult favorite, those seeking to till peculiarly American musical soil will undoubtedly reap a rewarding and plentiful harvest.

In terms of sheer Freddie Mercury bravado and guitar-shredding, genre-jumping prog-rock pomposity, this stirring record is indeed (forgive me) something of a revelation.

The biggest upside to the release, however, is that now the intrepid Illinois enthusiast can cobble together one super playlist.

The results are competent, if unsurprising.

At its best... the band more than justifies the hype.

No one expects an album full of songs about death to be fun, but overall this set feels more ponderous than it should.

Victory For The Comic Muse seems destined to be one of those odd works beloved by cultish fans of Hannon’s work, but an unfocused misfire from the casual listener’s standpoint.

Promising but safe.