Nine albums in and the band is finally flirting with accessibility, but in true Fear Factory fashion, they're doing it on their own terms and at a very deliberate pace.

Apart from the relatively lively pulse of the aching "Another One," everything plays out at slow-jam tempo, and the vocals often slip into falsetto mode with lapses in enunciation. The duo is at their most effective on finale "The Line," a bare, subtly churchified pleader.

An ethereal, magnetic, and alluring piece of work, The Road, Pt. 1 is a robust album with ebb and flow. Here's looking forward to Pt. 2.

While they may have traded in some of their youthful punk rock spastic enthusiasm, they've replaced it with a world-wise wit and a smart approach to how a rock & roll record should be made in 2004.

Detrola is slightly more subdued than some of His Name Is Alive's previous albums, but it's still a reminder of how much their beautiful, strange, oddly moving music has been missed.

So Brace the Wave reveals that Lou Barlow hasn't changed all that much in the past quarter-century--he's just better at this stuff, and has finally grown more comfortable with it.

New Bums finds two decidedly specific songwriters' styles and voices mesh into something new and different. The combination results in a strange, haunted look into imagined desert scenes, cheap motels, and tales of depraved living, floating by on tunes so unassuming they disappear before the darkness ever truly sets in.

They're in a slump with their songwriting, and subject-wise, every song here has a companion piece on some earlier album, but that doesn't mean the party is spoiled.

The amped-up chiptunes and film score moments are interesting enough, but the band sound their best when expanding on the lush tones and tension-laden improvisations they've been working on since the beginning.

Though the closest Godin comes to the excitement of Contrepoint is the jazzy, suite-like finale "Cité Radieuse," Concrete and Glass is still a fine example of his distinctively smooth style.

More than any other of the New Pornographers' albums, this feels like a group effort, each element united to create uniquely cerebral power pop.

Whether the dip in quality is the result of a rush to create new material or whether these are simply the lesser leftovers from the same sessions that produced N 2, here's hoping JJ take some time (and maybe one of those epically blissful vacations their music conjures so evocatively) to make sure N 4 comes out fully baked.

The only downside to the album is that the songs begin to blend together a little by the end, but in a comfortably warm way instead of a boring, take-the-record-off-now kind of way.

The eight tracks here are more high definition than most of what he's done in his career, with all the various noisy elements easily distinguishable and with more depth than usual.

A painfully disappointing artistic failure.

An album that thrives on sparse, tickling productions that are more about atmosphere than anything else.

Ambitious in a different way than the producer's earlier releases, Song Feel is every bit as close to the heart.

Many of the EP's six songs began as ideas while the band was recording The Main Thing, but instead of the crisp production and defined hooks of that album, Half a Human harkens back to the hazy dreaminess of the band's earliest days.

More immediate earworms are scattered throughout to appease anyone looking for a radio-ready hit, but they cede the bulk of the album to more reflective fare that provides a different kind of spiritual nourishment.

Rain balances sophistication and edgy smarts with a winning mixture of grace and confidence.

Yet despite the gadgetry that went into the album’s production, Fight Softly is still a sunny piece of work, filled with gorgeous pop melodies that are complex but rarely challenging.

Upon repeated plays, these lyrics fade, as does the monochromatic production, and what's left is a coming of age album anchored by some strong Swift songs, most of which are bunched at the end of the record.

Arm's Way is the sound of a band forgetting what made them fun and highly listenable and instead grasping for a grand statement that is far beyond their reach.

It may not deliver a knockout punch but it's not intended to be powerful; it's a grower, sounding better with repeated exposure, repeated listens revealing the craft in the songs and the subtlety in Nail's execution.

The material tends toward routine, but Braxton's elegant distress cuts through everything with conviction.

Talkin To The Trees is another album of Neil Young doing what he felt like doing in the moment, and if it's flawed, after sixty years of record making, no one with any sense would want him any other way.

Mondo Amore may work best as a companion piece to Neptune City--the fast 'n' furious yang to that album's soft, pleasant yin--but it's got more than enough raw emotion to hold its own weight.

Li's defeat and grief are palpable, yet she delivers with such grace and control, which offers a glimmer of hope for the fellow romantically downtrodden. With production to match, so sad so sexy succeeds in providing a relatable therapy session for love's final gasps.