There's nothing distinctive about it.

It's a well-thought out and solidly executed effort by an artist who hasn't allowed himself to become set in his ways.

In the best possible way, the album is a painful listening experience, forcing the listener into immediate and excruciating catharsis: you look into the eyes of a cold stranger, and see nothing but ugliness and painful regret.

It's hard to imagine a band coming along this year with a better or more enjoyable debut.

An expansive album that ultimately recycles itself.

The band's greatest success is their ability to craft unassuming, enjoyable revival rock numbers with clever lyrics, recalling their musical forebears without ever descending to cliché.

United States of Atlanta is guilty of just about every modern hip-hop cliché in the book... but its glimmering, capped-toothed, post-millennial party platform is a rousing success in spite of itself.

A towering monument to Esthero's overpowering sense of self satisfaction, this mess overstays its welcome and abuses whatever attention you're willing to spend on it. In short, it's not a career highlight.

While the lack of further experimentation in the songwriting becomes tiresome after a while, overall the band seems comfortable and happy to be playing together again.

This is a wonderful album, full of heart, skill and intelligence, and sure to be recognized as a classic.

O'Connor's lack of subtlety eventually grows tiring.

In the process of refining their sound, Dressy Bessy appear to have sacrificed a little too much of their uniqueness.

So infectiously content are the Oranges that they can make even the most jaded listener bop his/her head or tap his/her foot to their power pop structures -- but this is also their downfall.

Annie has delivered a solid pop record that does a lot of things well, but -- and this is the important thing -- that's what we should expect from all of our pop records.... Anniemal isn't a high-water mark; it's a benchmark.

Man-Made is among the finest collections of pop songs any of us will hear all year.

Not just for followers, Minimum-Maximum is perfect for the old-school, drawing a new crowd of robot poppers and maybe convert a few disbelievers.

There's a lot to admire on Jackinabox, although it's ultimately less than spectacular and even occasionally embarrassing.

Gomez do nothing to rethink or reinvigorate their earlier recordings; in fact, when Out West's renditions are compared to the originals, the live versions sound dull and lifeless.

As much as it hurts to admit it, not everybody will get so much out of Smog's latest understated masterpiece.

Like Madlib or MF DOOM, Four Tet is at the crest of the electronica/hip-hop wave, forcing the genre's evolution into new realms and making everyone else look like amateurs in the process.

Though Maximo Park has enough electricity to light Manhattan, there's a faint but inescapable whiff of calculation about them.

It's not necessarily a welcome change, as drugged-up, dubbed-out majesty has always been Fearless's stock-in-trade, but there's something oddly captivating about these dusky grooves and forlorn moods that makes it difficult to view the project as a failure.

The least interesting, least engaging Sleater-Kinney album ever.

Middling music that shoots for epic and edgy, but takes far too few chances and falls short of its fans' expectations.

The impromptu feel is often charming and sometimes campy, but always sincere.

While Face The Truth rarely presents a side of its creator that has not already been seen, loved, and cried over, it's a passable, even better-than-average album.

It's a perfect summer record.

Rarely has such a painfully awkward adolescence led to such B-boy-ish eloquence, but as he always has, Wolf makes fronting his own band look effortless.