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

As entertainment, Tenacious D succeeds surprisingly well -- for the first few listens.... The only long-term replay value you'll get from this record will come from playing it for friends who haven't heard it.

I can respect the need to innovate in hip-hop, but variety here comes at a cost -- there's no coherent or consistent melodic through-line.

Less cohesively engaging than March on Electric Children, Burn, Piano Island, Burn is, by turns, spasmodically inviting and gratingly repulsive to all but the most patient of noisemongers.

The Milk Of Human Kindness grabs at elements of its predecessors, but they're often the wrong ones.

Unwieldy psychedelic dinosaurs like "First Wave Intact" and the title track hint that they're looking to become the new gods of bong-powered thunder -- but then they drop a bomb like the sleek, urbanely scoffing "Road Leads Where It's Led" and instantly re-cast themselves as black-clad top forty gatecrashers looking for a fast ticket to fortune and fame.

Optometry's highlights throw expectation to the wind. They're more than jazz, more than hip-hop, more than whatever the hell "illbient" actually is.

Lovers' vast scope quickly becomes a daunting proposition for its listener.

Murdoch, finally free to take charge of his band, has done so in spades, and the result is a confident, assured affair...that, to many listeners, will seem utterly out of character.

Anyone searching for a wholly absorbing listening experience should look (and listen) elsewhere.

By the time "Our Mutual Friend"'s symphonic percussion and hammering cellos reach their crashing apex, the album begins to feel a little like the fourth consecutive hour at a well-stocked party full of musical theater majors.

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.

A band more fixated with guitar solos and drunken fist-pumping than in the more nuanced, desperate territory of their former incarnation [Lifter Puller].

Sure, they meld muscular riffs with smoky organ meditations, folky landscapes, pompous orchestration and the occasional IDM skitter, but not without losing the transcendent detail that makes each of these genres worth savoring and holding on to.

If you're fifteen years old, female, and want to rebel, So Stylistic probably makes a lot more sense than a Bright Eyes record. If you're any older, it'll probably just make you feel dirty.

The group creates an ornately atmospheric resonance throughout Ambulance Ltd., but their light-weight compositions place the album at serious risk of floating away.

When the formula works, the results are quite impressive, but at other times the songs simply fall flat, victims of their own overly simplistic and repetitive arrangements

Yes, it has a certain something that makes you bob your head and/or shake your ass to songs that you'd probably be ticked off by if someone drove past your pad blasting them out his windows. But no, it's not the stuff that great CDs are made of.

A fairly average jaunt into familiar indie rock territory.

The Ponys have achieved a certain level of competence, and if you're willing to accept that in place of originality or innovation, Celebration Castle is worth checking out.

While there's undoubtedly a wealth of ideas to be found here, listenability is the real wildcard.

It's good stuff, to be sure -- but if Hot Shots II excites you at all, it's probably time to lay off the pot.

Like the Austin Powers films, there's a sense that authenticity has been betrayed in some vague and troubling way.

People who listened to Sahara Hotnights' albums in their proper sequence will appreciate their improvement, but those who heard Jennie Bomb first may well end up preferring it.

You say you don't give a shit about lyrics? That's good; most of Echoes' lyrics aren't worth giving a shit about.

With Frances the Mute, the Mars Volta have unfurled a big and bold artistic statement... Unfortunately, that bold artistic statement is rife with pomposity and glimpses of prog-rock at its most horrifically self-indulgent.

Six of the seven songs are understated, melodic mid-tempo pieces.... The song that breaks the mold is also the album's best moment[:]"Astronaut."

It's true that a lot of Musique Automatique can get old really fast.