The musical stretches Spearhead makes go a long way toward making Everyone Deserves Music a memorable, even highly recommended affair, but the sanding down of Franti's rougher edges just prevents it from being an essential album. Spearhead fans deserve more consistently inspiring fare than they get here.

Face the Truth is paradoxically the most intriguing Malkmus album and the weakest of his post-Pavement career.

The Furnaces refuse to play it commonplace... which is both their greatest strength and most frustrating weakness.

Because of the Times... reveals a band growing musically and revealing the requisite growing pains.

The concentrated unity of form and content that elevated sterling sophomore effort Bows & Arrows has been replaced by a footloose approach to songwriting and style that fails to mesh.

Before, it sounded like Animal Collective sought only to please themselves. Sung Tongs sounds like a concession to the rest of us, and that's not a very exciting prospect from such a unique and potentially great band.

Gibb’s passionate vocals and direct, literate lyrics work best when he’s confronting issues that concern him (like organized religion, for instance), as opposed to wallowing in less confrontational topics (as when he frolics happily on the beach with “Boys Of Melody”).

This is just well-executed, fun rock 'n' roll.

It's his most consistently rewarding effort in recent memory.

Too much of... Out of the Vein struggles to scratch its way into your memory banks, hobbled by its own melodic shortcomings.

Like a deliriously evanescent pep rally from the Outer Limits.

Untilted lives up to its title, finding Booth and Brown unbowed in their belief that clinical repetition and street-smart hip-hop beats can coexist in the universe. But it’s a big universe, and there are times when locking onto the exact coordinates Autechre’s transmitting from can be a long, cold and lonely chore.

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

In the Reins will please fans of both Beam and Calexico, and perhaps bring crossover business to each.

The warmest, most life-affirming album of his still-budding career.

Sleep/Holiday finds Gorky's sticking to its idiosyncratic pop guns.

Ultimately, The Tipping Point is an ironic title, given the fact that the Roots sound like a group recharging its batteries rather than triggering a momentous shift in how it approaches its music and the world at large.

It's certainly not the most bracing thing he's ever done, but it's hardly disposable pop dreck.

It’s just that combination of sincerity and an ability to emulate the sound of its heroes (and, in most cases, do so with more proficiency than those heroes themselves) that makes Permission to Land a fun, diverting trip through the (admittedly guilty) pleasures of a wildly excessive decade.

As regrettable as it is to trot out the old “strong first half, weak back half” reviewers’ cliche, the Constantines’ third release, Tournament of Hearts, cruelly forces the issue.

Penn’s most unified sounding record.

Blink-182 is a challenging listen, although not for the reasons one usually associates with Blink-182.

Since We Last Spoke is more sonic retreat than bold reinvention, an intriguing, if not entirely triumphant, tip of the hat to the sound and spirit of the Year of the Dragon.

Heron King Blues may lack spark and consistency, but it's a decent (just not essential) addition to the Califone catalog.

It's a murky finish for such a bracing start, but when it works, Powder burns as brightly as the most affecting moments in Dulli's catalog.

Despite isolated moments of brilliance, Drum’s Not Dead fails to mesh.

I Com thus presents a new model for electroclash artists: it still exhibits some hallmarks of impersonal club music, but it also offers a (presumably genuine) glimpse inside the private diary of Miss Kittin.

Granted, there are still "classic" two-minute exercises in self-immolation (the bleak "Icarus Smicarus" and pulverizing "Lucky Jim" stand out), but nothing that exceeds -- or approaches -- Dallas' chaotic brew.