The Gents waltz their way through these ten sturdy, mid-tempo numbers rarely striking a bum note.

It’s entertaining, sure, but also empty and a bit soulless.

It’s inoffensive, painfully so, with the smell of something run through focus groups from the get go, written and produced by committee to sell the greatest number of copies.

Another wildly uneven affair.

Ted Leo again falls a few hands short of the definitive statement we insist on expecting.

Andrew Bird has thrown down his gauntlet brimming with post-structural imagery, swirling entropy, a truly floral arrangement of genre pieces and genre mixing.

ADULT. are an awesome band that have yet to make an awesome album. This one, however, is still pretty damn good.

Where [Fantastic Damage] assured its legacy through sheer density, piling beats on top of one another haphazardly and layering hype tracks laced with punchlines, subtexts, and asides, Sleep finds El-P focusing his fury into individual crescendos, particularly during the record’s sterling second half.

Without making the new sound genuinely old or the old sound refreshingly new, Mason waffles in the flux between.

Odd, joyous, and wonderful.

Ruff Draft is subtle, full of muddy melodies, magical synths and crispy snares, all typical of Dilla beats that aren’t on major label releases.

They are a handful of shit, of wan, barely extant songs and feeble musings, of worn gimmickry and careful over-production, aping Sufjan and a dozen others, flung against a cultural brick wall.

Her efforts have crafted a soul album that is resistant to any claims of mere charlatanism, a record that brings a modern tongue to a classic style.

Myth Takes is a taut culmination that may just tear dance floors asunder with its locomotive inexorability.

Pocket Symphony is pleasant but not striking.

A considerably more gothic affair than Funeral, a set that sometimes screams “overcompensation!”

The terrible truth is that -- and maybe this is a matter of an album’s length, replayability, interesting tenure, obedience, whatever -- Gruff Rhys will always be as politely awesome as Gruff Rhys has always been, and that’s just not enough anymore.

The songs themselves aren’t so much unlistenable as just a little sad, highlighting the fact that Iggy Pop is less-than-scary nowadays, and his voice is shot to hell.

When it is instrumental, it’s “Get It,” which seems a timid remake of Since We Last Spoke’s title track, or it’s “Murs Beat,” which, tellingly, has no Murs. Some of the rest sounds like a softer, more overproduced, and generally shittier version of the Cars. The rest of the rest sounds like something duller than that.

Despite all the ingenuity on Foley Room, it’s hard for me not to miss the days when Tobin belonged as much to jazz as he did to any electronic genre.

All said, the album’s capably produced by Tony Doogan, Secret Machines aspirations and all, and it’s a debut wrapped in sophomore expansion, a third of a universe away from anything deservedly cosmic and anything appropriately full.

The band seems unsure of what instincts to follow to get more intimate, streamlined rock; their attempts produce a hodgepodge of style that in turns prevents the kind of gut reaction that normally attracts listeners to rock in the first place.

If this is EitS attempting to summarize and compact their three previous albums into one easily consumable package, the results merely drag the listener along through series of “catastrophic” cues that tell them what they should be feeling.

Sift through Are the Dark Horse and the sounds of the Beach Boys or Orbison can certainly be found, but the band has yet to learn the clean, economical songwriting of their influences.

She’s still plenty capable of bringing the funk when she plays to her strengths. Unfortunately, she only does so for half of City Beach, relegating her solo debut to little more than a curiosity for the Luscious Jackson hardcore.

Listening to this record is like hearing someone who has some moral fiber describe their first one-night stand. There is seriousness, jubilation, unease, and regret.

It sounds exactly like Eluvium, only with an organ and not a guitar, and with more overt classical aspirations than before.

With Broken Arm, Marnie Stern has delivered a frenetic and ridiculously entertaining debut.

A strong album with some growing pains.

Coming from an unknown artist, West would be disappointing if it was anything at all; coming from Williams, it’s entirely abysmal.

While Tones is tighter, smaller, and more to-the-point than its predecessor, I’m not fully convinced that it’s as good as Field Music.

New Magnetic Wonder’s high points are in its more quirky and musically ambitious moments.

Okereke now sings instead of barking, and, well, oops on him.

An incredibly pretty album with depth and scope.

Phantom Punch is a good album, but not a great one, and certainly not the Career Record that Duper Sessions almost was.

There’s a lot to be impressed with here, but it’s the emotional intimacy that the songs establish even at their most grandiose that makes the album great.

Despite its more fractured stylistic elements -- shoegaze smashing headlong into folk pop -- Writer’s Block emerges as one of the most complete and satisfying records of this year.

Sheâ??s funky, confident and fun, and thatâ??s just on the first song.

Some Loud Thunder is a mixed bag of spectacular material and hodge-podge studio doodles.

Yes, there could be more new ground broken in this material, but this does not necessarily equate to artistic diffidence.

This Youth Group record is a diluted version of already watered-down music; not only is it not as good as their first album, I’m not sure it’s as good as Keane’s first album.

A fantastically pedicured amalgam of every side and thing Busdriver thinks he can effectively be.

If Chris Adams descended into his cozy lair to try his hand at glitch and rid his fingers of Hood’s snoozy bleating, he found a safe median, driving his ideas years behind the curve, distinguishing himself from his previous band by tinier and tinier increments as the tracklist exhausts.

Half of me thinks the group was aiming for a bit of something hypnotized and dreamy, that they worship Spacemen 3 and the patience that entails. But then the other half thinks Cryptograms is something gritty and furious, maybe something religious, but still something of a turtlehead waiting to poke through.

Visitations is cold.

This doesn’t seem so much a pop internalization of Deerhoof’s unique talent as it is a kind of album-costume where they adorn the talents of other bands.

If anything, that’s the trick here: each time the listener pegs it with one of Albarn’s past sounds, the track subverts and confounds the expectation.

For every elastic, tuneful, vacuum-packed “Phantom Limb” or “Australia” -- pop craftsmanship of the highest order, redolent of Chutes’ front-to-back triumph, crystalline, flawless and packed so thick with thoughts and words and hooks that they unravel marvelously indefinitely -- there’s an obvious b-side.

Hissing Fauna might be Barnes’ finest work yet, an opus built entirely of sugar.

The line between cheese and accessibility can be thin, and whistling or handclaps or a hidden track or an overt songwriting method can all reek, but Friend and Foe has, just as ostensibly, no wasted space. The hinge is in the balance the band manages with every inkling of sound or production seeming both spontaneous and stultifying, both labored-over and cast off.

It has its flaws, and it certainly isn’t some great reinvention of krautrock, but Transparent Things is an incredibly likeable album.

Through its overarching range, it ably balances silence with noise, restraint with reckless abandon.

While production values throughout the record consistently exceed those on Long Live, the real step forward is where it counts: with the songs themselves.

This is an album made for car trips by a band best suited for noisy bars; you’re going to want to play it loud.

Crow’s ego and identity have been largely removed from Living Well’s equation, and in its place are a number of undeviating, short, one-word-title indie rock songs that don’t require an explanation or setup.

This album maintains youth and vigor through dirty language and clean production, but eventually settles for something very middle-of-the-road.

Circles (2003) was heartier fare, just as starry-eyed and unabashedly romantic but more focused and elegant. It’s a better record, to be sure, but that doesn’t make The Autumn Defense a bad one.

Hip Hop Is Dead’s fruitless and one-dimensional rhetoric is sure to depress the Nas fan more than any of his didactics.

Thus is the template that makes More Fish so relevant, rewarding, and unpredictably necessary: uniformly fantastic production (except Doom) and Ghost coasting just enough that he doesn’t utterly eclipse the people he’s trying to let shine.

The hype was (gulp) correct. Hell Hath No Fury is hot. Dirtily, nastily, pipingly hot. Not Best Rap Album of the Year hot; Best Rap Album in a Few Years hot.

Pemberton’s crafted a uniquely engaging sonic statement that stands on its own legs.

Its problems are both wide-reaching and acute, an album full of tiny misfired rhymes and shiny-dildo drum hits that add up to what I’ll go ahead and label Jigga’s second worst record, after 2002’s abysmal The Blueprint 2.0.

Beast Moans works far better than anyone should have expected.

The collection is one of the best releases of 2006 because Tom Waits is one of America’s greatest living songwriters.

If you give it a chance (or maybe even a dozen chances, if you can stand it), and don't immediately dismiss it because it's by Joanna, I’m sure you’ll find something to love.

This loosely associated collection of songs isn't even the logical extension of some of the more unwise artistic wanderings of Worlds Apart (2005).

Doctor’s Advocate is essentially a long album of just okay rhymes, just okay rapping, and (without the benefit of best-of-year sublimity like Cool & Dre’s “Hate It or Love It” production) a lot of just okay beats.

The record is absolutely at a pace with the band's great debut.

Every song seems like it all went through a grime factory conveyor belt, and at the expense of being cohesive, Public Warning grows a bit repetitive.

Saturday Night Wrist continues the Deftones’ sad trend, another album of scattered transcendent moments in a field of attention-getting parlour tricks, still eagerly tugging at the listener’s sleeve to say, "Listen to this sound we created!"

Underwhelming.

These songs contain all the accoutrements of anguish and despair: he sings the words, he screams the words. So why does it all sound so fake?

It shows little of Oberst’s usual dramatic flair.

Sure, they love the album and want more people to know about it: admirable. But c’mon, why not just get rip-roarin’ drunk, bring in a bunch of friends, and make a legendary album of their own.

+/- have abandoned their bipolarity, which I was willing to call “complexity” or “potential” until just now, for a straightforward record that yields none of the possible benefits of a straightforward record.

Granted, thanks to the kind of company Mr. Combs’ platinum chain reels in, almost half of these tracks have some modest amount of entertainment value to them, but all the Just Blazes and Rich Harrisons and Big Bois and Pharoahes and Kanyes and Nasirs in the world can’t cover the Proactiv-shiny mug up front, the shifty but proudly brand-name-not-person-name emblazoned on the border, the voice that bumbles through every song.

Califone are continuing the progressive refinement of their roots, giving an assured argument for the possibilities ignored by folk musicians enslaved to tradition and a smart recall to all the forward-thinking others who have moved too completely and arrogantly on.

Flavorless.

There’s no question that Oxford Collapse, like an awkward teenager, hasn’t figured out exactly what they are, and the added pressures of a larger label release have caught them slightly off guard.

What will always make The Be Good Tanyas stand out, in a roots/folk genre replete with superstar solo artists, is that they’re capable of juxtaposing their own songs next to the classics of the genre and tricking listeners into playing name-that-era throughout an entire album.

There’s something to be said for rewarding repeated listens, for golden nuggets in every song, never buried but never hollering.

The problem, then, is that “Blessing Force” sucks and most of the rest of the songs imitate with varying success the music of the band’s staggering 2005 output.

I’m convinced that Beck Hansen has a few more good albums in him. One thing’s for sure, though: The Information isn’t one of them.

A dozen listens through... and I can’t help but think the band has done better in past.

A much more mediocre, boring, phoned-in, lyrically tripe-y batch of tip-toeing Brit-pop snooze-o-rama-fests.

Meloy’s ever-multiplying prog-rock ambitions are well on their way to swallowing him whole, but for now he seems to be comfortable enough as a guy writing sweet folk pop songs alongside ever-shifting song suites and polite hard rock.

It’s a fine record -- one of his better in some time.

The melodies and production are top-notch, even if, lyrically, the album’s motifs barely move from sullen dismay to cheery dismay.

The record is no departure, but when the form is this strong one isn’t needed.

Dose’s clever, rich, image-gorged writing is at that forefront more than ever, and, mercy, does he ever slam down the goods.

Much of Love and other planets is too accessible to be denounced, and too melodically strong to be ignored.

Inevitably, most of the studio design on each song is greedy and belabored. Everything is in its right place, but everything is too obvious or too proportionally gaudy to warrant more than a signatory “lo-fi” moniker.

An album at once tighter and more terrifying than anything they’ve yet released.

Ludacris has created the most uneven album of his career, so frontloaded it might as well be an EP.

This is a fans-only document, but it’s one of roaring, immutable spirit.

Genuinely affecting, and fun, pop music.

It’s nowhere near as inviting as his previous works, even with the excellent production and introduction of strings. But give it a few weeks; it’ll grow.

There is not a bad verse on it.