Love and Hate sounds fantastic, alternately steeped in warm, old school funk and terse, bubbly electroclash.

While it delivers the triumphant rock 'n' roll thrills and oddball incantations promised by the GBV "brand", the most surprising thing about Earthquake Glue is that, at a point in his career when his inventiveness really should be waning (along with his libido and his prostate), Robert Pollard's creative spark seems brighter than ever.

It's rare that a band can recreate such a broad measure of emotions with such a soft palette.

A gorgeous work of art.

Whether the band is shakin' its collective art-rock ass to syncopated beats or barreling through treble-infused dueling guitar throwdowns, there's never a dull moment here.

It's powerful, clever, and you can dance to it.

The relentless sweetness may be off-putting to some... but it'll be difficult for all but the most jaded listeners to avoid being charmed by Of Montreal's appealing melodies and whimsical innocence-recaptured lyrics.

The group has created an album filled not only with the timeless pop hooks you have come to expect but with the anthemic swagger that is the hallmark of many of the great rock recordings of the last 30 years.

Waiting For The Moon is a welcome and singularly strong addition to one of the most impressive catalogues in modern music.

It's as important to women in hip-hop as Joni Mitchell, Madonna and Sleater-Kinney were to their respective genres.

The complexity and depth of the songs has increased; the band sounds less like they're trying to channel The Pixies, and more like they're reaching toward the sublime.

One of the few discs I've encountered that not only attempts to be something more than a simple album, but succeeds.

Perhaps there's nothing here as immediately catchy as "Tally Ho!" or "Getting Older", but the latter-day Clean are still amazingly good.

This is great stuff, and a significant advance over both of Comets on Fire's previous albums.

A Healthy Distrust is impressively fluid; Francis fuses his experimental leanings and newer mainstream hip-hop allowances with ease.

The question is not whether Medúlla is brilliant; insofar as this can be objectively asserted, it most certainly is. The question is really, Do you like Björk? Do you like her a lot? Obviously, a Björk a capella album is going to be lost on you if you never really liked her vocal style in the first place.

No more fancy studios, no more high priced producers; this is truly GBV as nature intended -- reckless, hook-laden and drunk as hell.

While the music behind the lyrics doesn't exactly bristle with innovation, it's the best blend of acoustic and electronic instruments I've heard.

Everyone Deserves Music excels beyond simple good intentions because Franti and Spearhead are also at peace with their musical influences.

Intentionally or not, it creates a sort of natural, autumnal closure -- like a gorgeous, lazy, completely uncommitted fall afternoon delivered in three- to five-minute slices.

As you've come to expect, a small amount of the material sounds utterly fantastic and there's a solid chunk that's barely audible, but whether it's delivered with a coating of fuzz or a liberal gloss of studio sheen, Pollard's gumdrop melodies and fantastical lyrical phrasing keep us coming back for more.

The Real New Fall LP is as solid and interesting as anything the group has released in the last ten years.

While everything here is generally good or great, Hello continues the trend of most other Half Japanese and solo Jad Fair releases, in that the slow, Jonathan Richman-like songs shine most strongly.

Nothing's Lost is slick and rich, packed with melody and rhythm.

Vocalists Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan connect with their audience with the breathy ease of scenester storytellers, sketching out their tales in economical but well-chosen strokes, and the tunes behind them, invariably elegant, are often deceptively cheeerful.

With Teeth's biggest surprise is how immediately gratifying the majority of its songs are.

Despite the obviously electronic origins of most of the sounds, there are clearly thinking, imagining humans behind the scenes; this is about as un-clinical as electronic music gets.

Father Divine is that rare album that's conscious of its diversity without being pretentious about it