Boomkatalog.One is a clever marriage of technology, creativity, and straight-up sass that gets away with being much more enjoyable than it might deserve.

Even when their brazen demeanor shifts tempo for the stainless melodies of "That's What They Do" and "Wake Up," Sahara Hotnights offers a musically cultivated sophistication that's missing in bands like the Donnas and the Vines.

Elefant frontman Diego Garcia must have memorized nearly every song by the Cure while he was growing up, because his band's debut album, Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid, is a shameless, abstract pop mix, a solid indie pop record heavy in new wave aesthetics.

While Source Tags & Codes might be a more cohesive listen and feature slightly stronger songwriting, Secret of Elena's Tomb suggests some promising directions for the band's next album.

Elephant overflows with quality -- it's full of tight songwriting, sharp, witty lyrics, and judiciously used basses and tumbling keyboard melodies that enhance the band's powerful simplicity.

The ability to make a genuine album -- and not just a collage of songs -- from a wide interest in musical styles is truly what makes this album such a delightful and great surprise.

Though the album could use a bit more grit and grime, it's still remarkably solid.

New fans will find Sleeping With Ghosts to be a good record. Old fans, though, might think the band wimped out while growing up.

Backed by stale songs, formulaic arrangements, and mediocre songwriting, Williams is forced to rely on his volcanic personality to bring this album across -- and despite a few strong performances, he sinks into lame self-parody time and time again.

A.R.E. Weapons comes across as partially put-together and all the way dumb -- not dumb meaning fun but dumb meaning dumb.

Unfortunately, Fear Yourself's intricate, careful sound results in a rather bland album.

While Silver Lake sounds like a Vic Chesnutt album through and through, it's also a better than average introduction to the man's work.

More than once everything connects perfectly.

Though her voice is hardly the most impressive instrument in country music, Cash knows how to compensate by using an understated approach to more quietly highlight the essence of a song.

Not a hint of pretense makes even the most formulaic tunes and lyrics ("Little Baby," "Party," "Come On!") seem inspired if not quite inspirational.

What seems less successful are the English language efforts.

The similarity of Meteroa to Hybrid Theory does not only raise the question of where do they go from here, but whether there is a place for them to go at all.

The Remote Part captures a divinely aged five-piece.

The overall mood is casual, laidback, and relaxed.

Echoes of classic U2, Echo & the Bunnymen, and Swervedriver resonate throughout.

A small triumph, but a triumph nonetheless.

Apart from the wonderfully elastic, surprising “Us," it doesn't offer anything striking or resonant.

Grand Mal isn't going for anything bombastic with Bad Timing, but it's a good dose, a healthy spoonful of new millennium indie rock.

At times, the production is so even, the music simply flows out of the speaker without distinction between tracks, but the result is a record that holds together as a nice mood piece while holding up as individual songs.

Hard to imagine Green Day or Rancid having anything this interesting up their sleeve 27 years down the line from their first recording.

Is less a bold statement of principle as it is a blossoming into maturity.

MacIntyre's wise abandonment of the kitchen-sink approach would've benefited this album even more if he had kept the running time below 45 minutes or so; at an hour, some of its nuances are bound to be lost in the shuffle.

Like both Radiohead and Foo Fighters, Cave In is a stylistic chameleon that rarely uses its freewheeling taste as a crutch to present self-indulgent material.