But the real appeal remains Zedek’s humbled insights, a worldview informed by an affirmation of our common suspicion that “there are some things you can’t see / with a roof over your head,” and, having lived as such, her solitary cold comfort: “if you don’t like the answer / maybe you shouldn’t ask.”

Worldwide‘s participatory highs are intense, if fleeting, and that cover would look amazing on a t-shirt.

Ultimately, Vantage Point will not shock or surprise you with the same exhibitionistic ferocity as their debut but it will engage you with its emotional range and scope.

Even the fun disco of 'I’m That Chick' is too little, too late for E=MC²--an album that proves just how easy it is for a well-funded virtuoso and the world’s best hitmakers to create a steaming pile of shit.

Of course it’s cheeseball, as we all were at that age. But that’s ultimately what makes this accessible, highly-listenable album a reinvigoration of both catalogue and genre.

So, while Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! is a pretty good album and as characteristically lip-smacking as Cave is capable, it’s only engaging in the details which, unfortunately, are hard to hear because Cave’s screaming something about vulvas over top.

It is true that many may balk at the lack of outright pop or that some of the songs are too sparse or that Steve Albini’s production is bottom-heavy, muddy, and lo-fi but there’s just too much to love on this album for any of that to get in the way.

Foals are a tight band with hook-laden grooves. Not worth the hype, but definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Do It! is about as radical as Clinic seem capable of, which is to say that they finally seem smothered by the borders they’ve set for themselves.

If straightforward pop songs are what they seek, tightening up the rhythm section is absolutely essential, though here they’ve overstepped the line between “tightening” and “dumbing down completely.”

Sings Live! is clearly an offering from Colin Meloy to his devoted fans who have either especially enjoyed his shows or have never had the opportunity to attend them. In that respect, this live collection achieves its (hardly lofty) goals, and for that Meloy should be applauded, perhaps not as raucously as at his shows, but, y’know, a golf clap would be appropriate.

It is Noir’s skills for arrangement and sequencing that allow the narrative to successfully play out.

The way In Ghost Colours exploits my affection for synth pop and empty, detached vocals, I should be knocking down Dan Whitford’s door trying to get a strand of hair, but the album unfortunately loses its resonance on subsequent listens, its sheen lessening to a duller shade with each closer inspection.

In a nutshell, Neptune is a bit like Grace Slick fronting the Bad Seeds but not as good as it sounds.

It’s not [her] strongest performance so far, and that comes basically down to song choice and production.

The title Attack & Release implies the best aspects of the Black Keys’ music, all sweat and hurt and sweat and ecstasy, but the album neither gives nor takes, neither emotional nor sweaty but still clammy-handed.

It’s simply R.E.M. finally making a concerted effort to sound like themselves, and realizing that’s not such a horrible idea.

There’s not much to be said about an album that exists exactly as it should, satisfied by its own completion and purpose and really looking to nothing else for motivation or worth or whatever.

What keeps Consolers of the Lonely from being an outright shit affair is, predictably, the assembled chops of its musicians, a group never so much fussy as amicable, wide-eyed about the righteous licks and insensitive tempo shifts they solder together so tightly.

Parc Avenue often strays too far into excess and departure for departure’s sake to enjoy the brand of a songwriter’s tour-de-force.... But as a fully realized and lovingly sculpted aesthetic, there may be few stronger full-length debuts waiting in this year’s wings.

The destination is certain in the screamer’s mind: he asks his band to draw up the new maps, and they do. On this level, 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons may be the most satisfying record the Silver Mt. Zion project has yet done.

This means that even though Get Awkward starts at a frenetic pace and pretty much keeps slapping you about the face for the next half hour--there’s hardly a song that goes above 2-minutes-30--it doesn’t feel like an assault.

They are a talented, enthusiastic and timely band; I feared that it’s ageist of me to suggest that their debut album isn’t great because they’re too young.

It’s the instant gratification--the sheer consistency of fun--that makes Midnight Boom so irresistible to begin with. It is what it is, basically.

I’ll be as straightforward in my assessment of his Trouble in Dreams as I can: this is his tenth solo album of the same old shit.

It’s just the fucking jam, like some pulsing late-night bliss-out in front of a detuned television set whereupon everyone just sits on the couch exhausted but loving it.

Together they make the fat sound lean, make the mean brighten up and the past (i.e. Fatlip) feel a bit more relevant than it should.

The Odd Couple from its superior predecessor (just: the writing is a bit weaker, the arrangements sleepier, the production effects a bit thicker) and so its most glaring flaw is that it simply lacks St. Elsewhere‘s invigorated tone, following the same blueprint with cheaper components, producing off-putting retreads whose only appeal lies in their similarity to more effective tracks on Gnarls’s former effort

Like singer Zooey Deschanel, Volume One is endearing and unpretentious.

They finally hit a hipster-heavy scene with what should have been a maverick heat-seeker of a debut and end up too tiring to interest most of the hipsters who long ago became bored of swapping their “Alice Practice” 7” on Soulseek.

Long and Kroeber deserve sizable praise for avoiding the pitfalls of such practices, even with some inevitable shortcomings that are to be expected from a relatively young band with big aspirations.

Alopecia exhibits impressive growth and an admirable attention to detail that places yet another unique stone along Yoni Wolf’s fascinating career arc.

The honesty of Bozulich and her band is striking, their creativity voracious.

To me this sounds like clear-headed music for lovers of straightforward disco pop--an unblemished set that asks haters and the insecure alike to wait behind the velvet rope where they’re most comfortable while the rest of us throw a cloth over the lampshade in the living room and put on a really great record.

The Jicks do an incredible job of coming into their own as a band, channeling Malkmus’s sarcasm and foolery in a less controlled setting brilliantly; they just can’t, because of the immediacy of the album, tease out the full quirkyness.

Musically the most important aspect of this collaborative effort is that their voices work so nicely with and against each other.

Quaristice--the band’s 9th full length, with about as many EPs--is probably the best album Autechre could have created at this point in their career.

Born Ruffians are as eloquent in their summation of today’s indie rock style as any other likeminded band; in that sense Red, Yellow & Blue is as literate and aware as its title’s reference to primary colors implies. But knowingly limiting one’s scope to temporary fun predictably keeps the band from turning out something with lasting power.

The record is a virtuosic display of talent (I don’t even know what sounds I’m hearing on the chorus of “Juliann Wilding”) but it comes across both too eager to impress and too self-satisfied to edit.

Jim White’s latest collection of songs has a humanity about it that is too multifaceted to categorize in broad terminology or flowery descriptors and is quite possibly beyond adequate summation; overthink or undersell as much as you please.

These seven songs (eight if you count the intro) sound great in the car, are loaded with Hammond organ and Fender Rhodes, and Miller’s throaty bellows are higher in the mix than on the first Howlin’ Rain album

Simple as that: this, their sophomore release and first for Sub Pop, is shamelessly gorgeous, totally in control of every threatening exigency and bombastic color.

Goldfrapp have shed the sex-Moroder-robot-Bolan-fuck-disco like a used condom and re-tooled themselves as a whimsical psychedelia and pastoral folk outfit for the disappointing Seventh Tree.

Nearly 1700 words and I still feel like this record's left me speechless. That's an epiphany to cherish.

Devotion is a delicate, often gorgeous listen that flows remarkably well, though I can’t help but attribute its coherence to the utter lack of variation among its eleven songs.

This is not just music that I believe, in the sense that it is credible, but this is music to believe in.

A sure-footed assertion of the artist's individual talents and landing it a spot among the best folk records of 2007 has to offer.

Let The Blind never pitches badly or throws up a truly terrible track to mack on and leaves me with the potentially duff argument that this record is really good at what it does, but what it does so exactingly reaches for breadthlessness that its under-ambition ends up under-cutting what made the songs pleasant and amenable in the first place.

Golden Delicious confronts, rejects, and reinterprets his own past, which simply leaves me longing for a return to it.

It is a slender, limber album, blissfully aware of itself and not daring to overstay its welcome.

Yan and Hamilton manage to capture old clichés in new ways and that, filtered through their weirdness and idiosyncrasies, the sentiments seems new (or at least more original).

There is nothing here but a band very awkwardly trying to have a good time, and that’s the kind of party you always leave early.

Nearly everything else on Old Growth consists of middling blues-rock with impressive soloing but negligible heft.

Fun and fresh enough on the first couple listens, it remains to be seen whether Vampire Weekend can find long-term favour with the listeners and critics so taken with them at present.

Women As Lovers is a beautiful masturbation, and a little death for us all.

Aesthetically the album is an equally awful collection of pabulum, completely derelict in its offerings of arrangements and tones, sanded smooth of its personality and as derivative in its every moment as the bands it’s most derivative of.

Protest the Hero suck off the idea of metal tropes and also think they have a sense of humor.

Hey Venus! is like a really good haircut: it's brisk, light around the ears, and after so many 'do permutations it's bound to get some compliments about how civilized it looks, how grown up.

In the Future is a great second act, a consolidation of strengths, better songwriting and more ideas.

Excessive length aside, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark constitutes a solid rebound from the overly scattered A Blessing and a Curse.

It is logically a bloated, uncomfortable, saturated throwback to no genre, time period, or movement in particular.

One could dwell on the poetics of Vermont’s lyrics if they were more understandable; despite a high-flying voice, she enunciates with a marble-mouth worthy of Michael Stipe. Even Bejar isn’t invulnerable here, tacking on guitar solos to cover holes in the songwriting walls.

Despite its painfully obvious flaws, Distortion isn’t bad in the sense that it lacks gratifying melodies or does not possess a certain nostalgic charm.

'Superstar' boasts a sanguine hook and a sophisticated mess of rhymes about fame and backlash and fandom and such. Unfortunately much of the rest of the record lacks this clarity, and while the first part of that “sophisticated mess” description remains valid the second part becomes dominant.

White people shouldn’t try to be funky.

It's a broken diorama, exceedingly imperfect, and as moving for what it isn't as for what it is.

Really, the sad emptiness of these raps needs little explication from me.

Parades is an album of slow-growing rewards from a band with whom relationships are formed, not instantly identified.

It is an expertly crafted and detailed work which accomplishes total immersion in the listener. [Review of UK release]

This is the best music Jay-Z can make as a human--at least by my (his) definitions of what he (we) can do.

Heim is very nice and also very spare. Less ebulliently cheating with surprise and indulgence is Hvarf, worth the band’s typical awe just for the official addition of live staple 'Hafsól' to the band’s buyable repertoire.

There’s wit and meticulous posturing in the hills: we’ll be waiting right here for tomorrow. After all, there are enough immediately delectable grooves in his eleven tracks today.

It wants to be danceable, sexy, and a defiant response to the media shitstorm. It's not even that danceable.

All in all, Teenager stands as both a distillation of the band’s strengths and an impressive step forward, and perhaps more importantly, an irony-free, immensely relatable look at the heady emotional extremes of youth.

Load Blown is damaged as a whole, even despite its overwhelming internal coherence that makes for few surprises along the way.

La Cucaracha is still a bit of a disappointment, short on memorable tunes and a bit muddier and more piecemeal than it should be.

This record, though, feels complacent, like he’s a bit stuck and is trying to find a way forward.

Overpowered is both impressive and incredibly fun, but fun in a way that "Ruby Blue" wasn't: you don't have to think here.

It feels like vital parts are gone, missed somewhere in Radiohead’s search through their own oeuvre for something more and more facilely universal, something that draws lines within lines of song types and not the larger methodology, something that can be "important" without being challenging.

This is one of the best albums of the year, from a verifiable talent and one of the scene’s most exciting young songwriters.

The libretto/story/concept of the album is of absolutely no interest to me, and it won't be to you either.

It bears all the signs of an artistic statement, stretching for meaning even as it reconstitutes and tears at the corners of its component definitions. It is both complete and incomplete; logical and wayward; good and, yeah, bad.

While it’s very good at what the Band of Horses does best--providing a soundtrack to whistful moments or memories--unlike Everything all the Time there’s nothing here to grab onto, its songs merge together, and it’s so innocuous in the band’s trademark comfort that it can pass almost undetected.

Although there are a few individual moments where those qualities round-off and transcend any qualms anybody might have about Lekman's style, that style on its own, minus a map or even the faint corners of a box, can only elicit the slow smile of admiration, not genuine, passionate interest.

Moments on Hera Ma Nono sound a little AOR for a label as experimental as Thrill Jockey, and one suspects that a tasteful re-branding is all that's keeping Extra Golden and their fascinating dance music from the heights of legitimacy currently enjoyed by much less challenging, much less "World" bands.

So the record fails as a self-sufficient statement, but after eight years of existence Enon has at long last become an entity capable of releasing a great album rather than just a collection of great songs that have little to do with each other.

And while every song contains allusions to forgotten surf rockish guitar chords and Duke Ellington violins, the real fun is in the way the Pipettes play off each other in harmony.

Siouxsie has always seemed fearless and unstoppable; while this is refreshing, it is unnerving to see her shatter the persona she has so slavishly created for herself.

Magic manages to creep into a flat din, and tact is lost to nostalgia.

The latest Dashboard Confessional album is extremely front-loaded, it should have been an EP, etc.

I can think of nothing more liberating than to dive into its dark waters.

The remainder of Echoes is considerably more diffuse, engaging in levels of genre-hopping that might seem a little desperate were it not for the fact that most of the songs hold up.

I don’t think it’s too harsh to suggest that each Iron & Wine album is not a step forward so much as a more sophisticated look at the same paces.

Sure, Banhart executes the truncated verse spectacularly, but he doesn't give his listeners enough time to love him.

In Our Bedroom After the War is half of an above average album, which is unfortunate if only because the band's still clearly capable of gorgeous pop convulsions when they lay off the theatrics and let their rhythm section rev things up.

It is rewarding that the album should end showing his passion displayed as a performer and shining through as a song-writer. The only problem is, with the rest of the album being so slight, it’s may be too easy for most to stop listening before they get to it.

I can identify the album’s merits and appreciate the craftsmanship but, to employ my second cliché in too short a span of time, the magic is gone.