It's exhilarating, the best rock & roll record yet released in 2007.

The sound quality is ultra-clean, it makes the listening experience relatively risk-free and also brings attention to the fact that there's not a lot of ground being broken here.

If musical adventurousness and short attention spans are viewed as positive attributes, then these 13 short songs offer ample rewards.

Someone to Drive You Home is one of those albums that's honest to goodness fun, and pulling it off with as much pastiche as the Long Blondes makes it one of the year's nicest arrivals.

On the surface, it's bright and accessible, as easy to enjoy as the best of Paul's solo albums, but it lingers in the heart and mind in a way uncommon to the rest of his work, and to many other latter-day albums from his peers as well.

Three consecutive Timbaland productions, including one suited for a black college marching band and another that effectively pulls the romantically co-dependent heartstrings, enhance the album rather than make it more scattered.

A little exposure to his constantly morphing flat baritone goes a long way.

Another beautiful record that stands right alongside the group's best work.

A stellar accomplishment from a truly singular band.

As focused as it is ambitious, Boxeris riveting.

Mirrored is unlike any recording out there at the moment. It's loud, funny, and astonishingly sophisticated, and doesn't feel pretentious in the least.

Those whose favorite form of Wheat is the aforementioned major-label effort, or even the elegant chamber pop of Hope and Adams, might consider this willful album an exercise in self-indulgent noise, but in the context of the duo's career as a whole, it sounds much more like a deliberate stylistic retrenchment.

The Bravery are an easy target -- after all, they were often seen as also-rans even when their kind of music was the hot new thing -- but, unfortunately, The Sun and the Moon's hesitant, unfocused feel doesn't do much to dissuade that notion.

If some of the ballads aren't as distinguished as the livelier tracks, they nevertheless are as sharply crafted as the rest, and the end result is that It Won't Be Soon Before Long is that rare self-stylized blockbuster album that sounds as big and satisfying as was intended.

Even if Lies for the Liars has the appearance of a crossover album, a la The Black Parade, it doesn't have the substance.

Where Wolf Parade dips into more than their fair share of upbeat, even disco beat-driven, music, Handsome Furs instead pull back and strip down their songs.

While Erasure certainly didn't need the "return to form" album at this point in their career, they nailed it and brought better songwriting along for the ride.

As lyrically eclectic and clever as it is musically, this is one fascinating album.

It isn't everyday one comes across an honest, and honestly surprising, set of love songs such as this.

While these songs are lushly produced, often with full orchestration, and while Wainwright has a knack for pretty, lilting melodies and concrete imagery there is nonetheless a distinct lack of pop hooks here.

Sky Blue Sky may find Wilco dipping their toes into roots rock again, but this doesn't feel like a step back so much as another fresh path for one of America's most consistently interesting bands.

Tio Bitar is Dungen's most realized album yet and should resonate with anyone who likes rock music at all.

This is as good as it gets right now; it'll be the country album to beat in 2007.

Funeral for a Friend not only displays an increased sense of ambition on this sweeping great leap forward, they also display a greater sense of accomplishment, as writers and musicians.

It finds the perfect balance between the vibrancy of her poppier work in the '90s and her experiments in the 2000s.

God Save the Clientele is another stroke of magic from a band that has few peers in delivering music that can make or break your heart with a vocal inflection, swath of strings, or gentle arpeggio, music that can devastate you in one breath and lift you to the heavens with the next.

No Shouts, No Calls might be some of Electrelane's most accessible work, but it's far from safe; in fact, its sweet vulnerability is exactly what makes it so special.

Another gorgeous album.