Allow me to offer some parting advice: just because a record expresses emotion doesn’t make it bad.

The net result is an amazing pileup of discount psychedelia and stoner rock grind, with ample doses of ecstatic amplifier brutality thrown in to explode any ham-fisted accusations of classic rock necrophilia.

It is simultaneously the most resplendent, accomplished record the band has made, with all kinds of songs... that retain the worst, most self-indulgent aspects of one of underground rock’s most consistently imperfect bands.

Aerial isn’t perfect, but it is magnificent.

It’s a passionate and at times painful aural experience as a whole, but it’s one that has to be taken from start to finish.

The finest album of the White Stripes’ career.

Cross is a big party record with a few exciting beats, as well as one of the few examples of desirable audio clipping.

“I am a writer, writer of fictions,” Meloy claims on “Engine Driver,” and that’s exactly what he does, but it’s what everyone else does too, the only real difference being Meloy hits the thesaurus and maritime literature a bit harder than most.

A complete album of epic scale, musical significance and a highly prescient lesson in listening, participating and challenging.

Avatar shows Comets capable of a level of sophistication and skill previously unconsidered.

Fur and Gold is admittedly not as strong and cohesive a record as "Wind in the Wires." At its finest, though, it does show off a rare talent for haunting and evocative songwriting.

Wilderness is Prewitt’s most accomplished solo effort to date. He has craftily corralled the large scale orchestral sweep of White Sky, but kept the intimacy of the guitar/voice confessionalism of Gerroa Songs.

Leaving Songs sounds a lot like a Tindersticks album, one that eschews their more baroque offerings for mature balladry.

Bright Like Neon Love may be too rock for the dance heads and too dance for the rockists, but for those without ideological hang-ups, it should be merely one of the most fun and exciting releases of the year.

Nick Franglen and Fred Deakin rarely miss with this album.

The experimental, lo-fi branding of his oeuvre is gone, but the originality of his sound continues to trump the nostalgic demons in his head.

It is intermittently thrilling, the first record since Perfect to show any of that record’s gleaming promise, but it is nonetheless brought aground by some of the same problems that dogged the last two LPs.

Separate, the songs all sound great, but together, they don’t make a real album.

The majority of these upbeat songs have howling vocals, scything guitar and, unusually for a current Brit group, a rhythm section that manages to be danceable without having to go out of its way to prove it--but it’s the slower tracks that end each side that turn the album into something cohesive.

When RJ sticks to the bounce aesthetic and Acey keeps his writing lucid and/or topical, the record becomes the most listenable of the emcee's recent output.

It’s not that the male-female duo vocals make it or even the moments where the group channels the Delgados in their sublime use of strings and horns; it’s more that Stars has gotten tighter since their last outing.

You could spend an age listing and describing the musical wealth of Damaged... Better just to listen to it, soak it all in, than fail with words.

The Obliterati succeeds in proving that Mission of Burma is not only capable of a comeback and a return to form, but also has exponential potential to evolve and thrive as a working band.

Unlike the playgrounds inhabited by those chillout bands--and other post-Air types, for that matter--the rhythms aren’t just here to keep time. Instead, they add texture and purpose, swinging from chunky bass lines to dub soundscapes.

It’ll take an adventurous set of ears and some headphones. Don’t worry, take a deep breath and relax. You see, Beans makes it easy for you by spitting with what is, perhaps, the most technically gifted flow in hip hop today.

It’s both business as usual and their most complex set of ideas to date.

The poetry is too good, the gloom too cached in symbolism and fine melodies to feel trite or melodramatic.

Rubber Factory is not as consistent an offering as Thickfreakness.... But make no mistake, the strengths here more than amend for the weaknesses.