They've got a rough, nervy, lo-fi take on power rock that has the weird immediacy of the Microphones' Mount Eerie.

With Happy Songs for Happy People, Mogwai gets to have it both ways -- it's ironic and sincere, concise and expansive, challenging and accessible, and it's one of the band's best albums, no two ways about it.

No hooks, no lyrical drama, no surprises, nothing at all inside the pretty package.

The total effect is less a spin through 3 Feet High and Rising than it is an hour of Yogi Bear cartoons -- fine when you hear any one track, but much too much over the course of a full album.

Those are the two things that Twice has in spades: soul and passion. Add to that a bunch of great songs, and you've got yourself a real keeper.

Few bands can get away with being in a holding pattern like Tindersticks.

Clem Snide has crafted another gem.

Somber and smart, Decoration Day also manages to kick like a mule, and if isn't quite a masterpiece along the lines of Southern Rock Opera, it's strong enough to suggest the Drive By Truckers have another masterpiece in them.

This sophomore effort finds Brand New maturing, reaching for textures and song structures instead of clichés.

There's nothing that betrays their high standards of craft, but, on a whole, the songs are neither as hooky nor as resonant as the ones unveiled on its predecessor.

This time, the one flaw may simply be that the group doesn't know when to say when.

Thought-provoking and a bit of a downer in ways Grandaddy probably didn't intend, Sumday isn't a totally empty experience, but its ambitions and results don't add up as well as might have been expected.

The truth of its fineness and devastating beauty is in the hearing.

Despite the fact that it seems more like a bunch of songs on a disc than a singular body, its impact is substantial.

St. Anger looks inward with a hard eye, and while it finds some grinning demons in that pit, it also unearths some of the sickest grooves of Metallica's 20+ year lifespan.

One long angelic hymn for an insane world with the intimacy of a friend playing guitar in your living room and the grandeur of Sigur Rós.

While the Rapture and to a lesser extent Radio 4 made off with all the headlines, !!! was making the best music of all the retro-punk-disco dancers.

Polished and tight in all the right places.

Whatever spaces the arrangements leave enable the imagination to play as much of a role as the instrumentation.

A simple, straight-ahead match of excellent MC with great producers.

Aside from a handful of real solid honest-to-gosh gems, the whole album feels a little too casual and off-the-cuff to stand on equal footing with her other recordings.

Another winning record.

Paper Monsters is a competent solo debut, and although it doesn't stray too far from the Depeche mold, Gahan does manage to put his own stamp on the songs.

It's the first album of hers that's a sheer pleasure to hear.

Like the best in commercial dance, Audio Bullys are excellent, distinctive producers, though their songwriting isn't in the same category.

It's not as poppy as some of his other albums, but it is more focused and appealing, and one of the stronger testaments to his ornery talents.

Creatively, My Private Nation, Train's third album, is the moment this band has worked for since it started making records.

Although listeners who found the first Broken Social Scene release a nice ambient pop treat may be put off by this one's all-over-the-map approach, it's certainly a much more accessible release overall and there's bound to be something in here that you'll enjoy.

The ladies of Northern State deliver funky breaks and tight grooves on Dying in Stereo, and keep the hip-hop flavor without being vulgar and crass.

What gives it some distinction is that there's a freshness to the music, largely dervied from its quick recording, a quality that has been lacking in his records for many years now, arguably since Big Daddy.

This is a lot closer to the type of compilation you'd get with an issue of CMJ than something special.

Unlike the Streets, Lafata spits everything with a straight face, making his slow-mo Baroque on "Break Or Be Broken" and hardcore pop finale "Let's Get It On" (which features a Peaches-like guest appearance by Sue Cie) into a kitschy farce worthy of his vanguard reputation.

The album is potentially valuable as a source for samples, but it fails as a listening experience.

Joan of Arc have once more surpassed themselves as artists.

Songs that have grown overly familiar through years of play seem fresh and new because of these vigorous, muscular performances.

Fans who have stayed with the band this long will probably find the album a breath of fresh air.

Hawley is a compelling mix of the pastoral beauty of English folk rockers like Nick Drake and the urban cool of balladeers like Scott Walker with a dash of the otherworldliness of Julee Cruise.

Yours, Mine & Ours is a truly grand record, another in the string of classic releases by Joe Pernice.... The kind of record fans of intelligent pop music played with real emotion should purchase. Immediately.

Those who connect with Staind will likely find this more consistently satisfying than Break the Cycle.

Electric Six's m.o. of inflating rock clichés to grotesque proportions, adding a dash of tongue-in-cheek pomposity, and then laughing at the results can generate more than just a great single. Granted, that single is still the reason to own Fire, but fans of that song probably won't feel burned by the rest of the album.

The most successful songs are those that either embrace their influences so fully that they become glorious reproductions or those that dispense with the idol worship altogether.

Though it's not quite as immediate as their excellent debut album, You've Seen Us...You Must've Seen Us, KaitO U.K.'s band red delivers more tightly coiled post-punk-pop with shouty vocals and elastic guitars, and also delves deeper into the group's experimental side.

The album's quirky appeal is reflective of Rooney's self-assuredness as musicians.

The Starlight Mints weren't excessively ambitious in the studio and the coolness of Built on Squares makes for a pleasant listen while capturing a band in the making.

40 minutes of soul-searching and bittersweet recollection that nevertheless rocks with major-league efficiency.

Deftones sticks a little too close to familiar territory this time around.

Harcourt experiments in more ways than one on this album, never overindulgent in the process.

The biggest problem with the record is that the eye is on the big picture - from how the songs fit together, to how the overall sound fits a song - that the individual moments aren't all that memorable, clearly lacking singles as forceful as those that fueled Throwing Copper and not quite as compelling as a whole as its predecessor, V.

It feels as if Manson now feels liberated from not being consistently in the spotlight, and his music has opened up as well.

If they can keep this sound and get back the hooks, they'd have something as good as their first two records, but, as it stands, this is their first stumble.

It's an album that kills with catchiness.

Decadent, theatrical, and magnetic, Alter falters only when the band's ambitions get the better of them, but the album's slight unevenness doesn't prevent it from being tremendously exciting.

As a whole, Politics of the Business never quite jells into the cohesive statement it wants to be.

The weightless drones and light filigrees are as mesmerizing and familiar as ever when folded into each other.

Other records from 2003 have been more innovative and certainly heavier, but Easy Listening is so golden, so upbeat and so perfectly right out of the Midwest's sleeper hotbed of rock that it simply sounds bigger than life.

While it's not quite the revelation that That's Not What I Heard was, Movement is still a dramatic album that shows that the Gossip is a powerful group continuing to define and redefine their music.

It's honest and raw in the sense that McCulloch is cool with where he's from and unconcerned with where he's headed.

The record offers something to nearly every audience that could approach it, with a bit of a groove for electronic fans, an obtuse sense of music-making for experimentalists, and a dreamy melodicism sure to endear it to indie-pop fans.

The Old Kit Bag is Richard Thompson's simplest and most unadorned album since Shoot Out the Lights, and while it isn't an immediate masterpiece like that album, it confirms that this man's work is best presented at its simplest, and the result is a modest triumph.

A record that practically demands a set of headphones to fully appreciate it; concentrated listening is the only way to reconcile the long passages of ambience with the bracing pop songs that often interrupt.

Electric Version is an enjoyable and easy listen, chock-full of hungry hooks and brimming with indie rock's classic humility.

If there were any doubters about Lamb being the brightest, most talented singer/producer combo in electronica, What Sound is all the argument needed to the contrary.

A set of electronica that's nearly as challenging as Autechre's relentlessly academic beat manipulation but just as funky and instantly gratifying as a Fatboy Slim flag-waver.

The Long Winters get happy on this one, and Roderick's vibrant, newfound confidence as a showman and songwriter allows the Long Winters' sound to finally gel.

While their artistic risk-taking is commendable, unfortunately the same can't always be said for the results: Black Cherry sounds unbalanced, swinging between delicate, deceptively icy ballads and heavier, dance-inspired numbers without finding much of a happy medium between them.

A sparkling sophomore effort, carefully designed to avoid any kind of critical slump.

The album almost sounds like an original cast recording of a musical -- the next best thing to being there, but not the same by a long shot.

Sure, it might be easier to accept if it was called a Damon Albarn solo album, but that's splitting hairs. A lousy album is a lousy album, no matter who gets credit.

Gore is almost too polite to these songs, but surely that can be forgiven when his love for them is so apparent.

While their beginning might have had many labeling Elliott as just another emo band, the growth and beauty in their albums continues to show their remarkable resiliency and evolution.

Ultimately, Fever to Tell might be slightly disappointing, but it delivers slightly more than an EP's worth of good to great songs, proving that even when they're uneven, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are still an exciting band.

Dynamic, taut, feisty and clever as ever, Send is this group's fourth-best album.

There's an innocence that's like slow dancing at twilight that sets Night On My Side apart from all the rest.

McKee's High Dive is simply an awe-inspiring album and easily her finest recorded moment.

Here, everything is balanced; the scope is small, close, and textured by pedal steel guitars, very organic percussion, and Lanois' voice way up front.

I'm Staying Out is cut from the same cloth as her first full-length, While You Weren't Looking, but it expands on the ambition of that fine record and shows Cary growing from strength to strength as a writer and a performer.

Beats and percussive effects are far more present and grounded in hip-hop as much as they are rooted in dub, which lend the tracks an organic touch never before present.

All the restless energy adds up to a few too many diversions.

Although its inspirations, musical and conceptual, trace as far back as Kraftwerk, The Complex serves as a reminder that modern devices and glistening production values can be applied to the most primal creative instincts, if utilized by the right -- blue -- hands.

Unfortunately, the Oranges Band can't sustain their head of steam during All Around's second half.

Even if it seems unassuming and underwhelming upon its first listen, Baby I'm Bored with each spin reveals the uniform strength of the songs and the sweet, understated charms of Dando as a performer.

For the most part the results are solid, limited only by some unimaginative arrangements and an unfortunate tendency toward repetitive refrains.

Overall, American Life is better for what it promises than what it delivers, and it's better in theory than practice.

Ultimately, Day I Forgot lacks the emotional poignancy and experimental sonic character present on every track of Musicforthemorningafter.

This album will have to remain the a mark of a band's crazy potential and perhaps a warning siren of what is to come.

One of Lisa Germano's most accessible works yet.

For all the sludge and fuzz on the album, Do Rabbits Wonder? never becomes muddy; the grit and gristle of Whirlwind Heat's abrasive repertoire of sounds remains clearly defined even at its most crazed.

There are too many songs, simply too much to make Say You Will work, even if there is enough to admire to make you wish it did.

This is a remarkable album; it sets a new water mark for Frisell's sense of adventure and taste, and displays his perception of beauty in a pronounced, uncompromising, yet wholly accessible way.

A sharp, versatile modern pop record, showcasing her voice, to be sure, but being much better than expectations, much better than the scores of flop diva records that cluttered the pop landscape in late 2002.

There's a great deal of variety to the record, something that sets them apart from the vast majority of the bands that pay homage to the '60s, but also something that keeps them from developing a distinct identity.

Most importantly, though, the duo has pulled away from the brink; no one ever doubted that Autechre was at the extreme of experimental techno for its own sake, but given a record like Draft 7.30, listeners might actually return for multiple listens.

A hilarious effort loaded with satirical song parodies and rock & roll spoofs.

The first six tracks are all vintage Louris gems -- trembling and honest, with warm melodies and hooks for days. Unfortunately, the album stumbles in the second half.

Not only does it hold the duo's most sleek and vicious material; it also proves that they can construct a bracing, compulsively digestible-in-whole album that presents the broad range of sounds and complementary sequencing that most great albums require.

Love & Distortion still finds the Stratford 4 operating as a band with more taste in music than original ideas.

When an album is as effortlessly warm and pretty as this one is, it's hard to begrudge the band a return to more familiar sonic pastures, and even more so when Mouthfuls suggests that the Fruit Bats' next album will be even more winning.