Bitter Tea has a bevy or unexplained items - crazy cranes, bloodthirsty in-laws, traitors lying in grass, osmanthus blossoms, card cheats and the only pewter pocket watch that belong to Joseph Smith's Great-Great Uncle's brother in law. It's outlandish stuff, and requires suitably outlandish music, from its weird melodies to jarring segues to an ocean of sounds marking a transition from one verse to the next.

We, The Vehicles is a fine collection of songs by a band running on all cylinders.

The record is a gem. Twelve tracks with a sense of cohesiveness that side-steps homogeneity in favor of straight-up old-fashioned album workmanship.

A record that progresses as a sequence of dislocated sounds, an expressionist's puzzlebox that comes alive when distanced from one's preconceived notion of what a Built to Spill record should sound like.

This time, the album’s a one-trick pony.

He establishes grand lyrical arches, overworked symbols, and Deep Meaning. Problem is, he forgets any of the emotion, realism, or originality that would make anyone care.

Simply put, in 2006, My Life is a timeless evaluation of Assimilation, sometimes harmless, sometimes bleak, but consistently absorbing.

This is the new definitive rock opera.

Each moment is devoted to the continuing shifts in dynamics and song, and Aloha sounds sharper than ever before.

The blame for this tedium, as far as I’m concerned, sits squarely with Johnson, whose vocals are an acquired taste to begin with, but here assert themselves even more obnoxiously than before.

Whatever thematic consistency existed on Yoshimi or Soft Bulletin is completely absent here. Or just so vague and bloated that the sentiment’s useless.

Morrissey has managed to assemble a record that feels like a genuine Morrissey record while not being insufferably self-important and brooding.

If Soul Position intended to craft a wholly direct, musically and lyrically and conceptually simplistic piece of positive rap, like a modern day Arrested Development album, then I think they did that well enough, and I guess I don’t fully appreciate because I’m too caught up in my own gangly mental schematic of what it is that makes good hip-hop good.

South have an ear for melody, uniformly excellent production values, and a good sense of dynamics; all of which manifests itself in some very satisfying melodic Brit-pop.

Those who felt like maybe they were starting to get Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? only to be left out by Unicorns’ sudden dissolution should be reassured that Return to the Sea is a more rooted and confident effort.

As bland and timid a record as likely to come out in the strikingly boring year of 2006.

The Loon is nothing short of an incredibly focused song suite, minus all the extraneous frivolities that you’ve gotten too used to hearing from an "incredibly focused song suite."

With Show Your Bones, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have proven themselves worthy of the hype, and, more importantly, the excitement caused by an undeniably fantastic record.

It isn’t the street rap of Ironman, it isn’t an exercise in abstract lyricism akin to Supreme Clientele, or the partially-focused and repeatedly disappointing Bulletproof Wallets. Regardless of that, the album captures exactly that Ghostface Killah is and has been over his past four records.

When T.I. is on, he’s really, really on, and, at several points, King lives up to its own hyperbole. It’s just that those points correspond precisely to the places where T.I. is actually talking about how great he is.

The Back Room is an agreeable, sturdy, and surprisingly re-playable debut, one which should probably keep any brooding college kid who’s worn out his copy of Antics happy for the coming autumn.

Perhaps it took a grueling creative journey and a battle with self-doubt to get there, but the end result is a band that has retained its brash experimental flare while discovering its heart.

Weighty and authoritative, the gospel backings help convert Gelb’s often world-weary musings into straight-talking wisdom, the kind of stuff you want to listen to on a bad day.

The album is imminently listenable, providing a brisk background as easily as it rewards a close listen.

The disc tends to coast now and then, though it’s hard to say if that’s due to chinks in the songwriting armor or the band’s straightforwardness. Still, rock for rock’s sake is not without meaning.

Rather than the simple three-part-appeal that marked earlier albums (vocals, drums, and keys), the production here makes them sound like they are fronting a bona fide rock and roll band. This is a bad thing: this new complexity undermines their giddy, naïve appeal, and it drowns the vocals.

Instead of wrenching free of every single confinement that’s ever been placed around his tiny waist, like he’s pretty much always done, Prince is settling into 3121, accepting the decades of his career as what he should be content in emulating.

A damned great indie rock record.

When they’re trying, as they do especially on the first half of the album, Cannibal Sea can be quite enjoyable.

Acher’s still a brilliant musician, and Bohm has the capacity to wreak some vicious vocal havoc. But now, fitting into a niche that they once helped epitomize, their record sounds stale.

The problem seems to be a not yet fully developed understanding of how to make their pop moments gel with the layered atmosphere they seem committed to.

The problem isn’t the music, which is lively and varied, but the disconnect between the artistic intent and the artistic output.

The result is that we have a transitory album, but also a typically beautiful and subtle one.

Neko Case has made tremendous progress here as a lyricist.

This is an album about getting shitfaced.

All in all, Push The Heart is an admirable, sometimes striking record from a band with a few of those now in their catalog.

If Ashworth’s lyrical razorblade was blunted by the quaintness of Casiotone consistency before, his new compositional confidence allows its sharpness to shine and cut as deep as you could handle without running a bath.

Forget the hype now; when they made this last summer, without hype, without de-habilitating expectation, they may just have created the finest indie-rock album of the year.

Give Mobile time, and it will fasten itself, embed its patterns, and stay with you longer than you could have imagined a solo percussion album ever could.

While it requires some patience, The Maginot Line is far from impenetrable.

After Drag It Up, their dismal last offering, The Believer is another sign pointing to what may be the wreck of the Old 97s.

On Soft Money undeniable talent finds its nemesis in homogeneity of style and absence of individuality.

Turns out that OK Cowboy is a good deal like the better house sets you’ll hear at a take-your-pick hot-house European club: pretty exhilarating, though once you’re licking the dry salt off your partner’s cheek you realize that only parts of it are truly inspiring, though all of it was pretty hottt.

As fun and crafty a debut as you’re likely to hear this year.

The Last Romance, for all its disgusted veneer and inner conflict, both reads like a cogent statement and plays like a finely tuned instrument.

Destroyer’s Rubies evinces an awareness of a feeling that “I’ve heard something like this before, and really enjoyed it” while denying the listener enough material specifics to follow-up with “It was on this record, recorded by this band, which I listened to when I was this old.”

Six Demon Bag’s a romp, short but sprawling, careful but passionate.

What The Tale Tells employs stock language to present stock characters going through stock conflicts.

E... rearranges his work, often to brilliant results, by first embellishing his lesser known songs and then subverting his already sparse collection of pseudo-hits.

The Life Pursuit is unquestionably even more upbeat than its predecessor, but contains newfound degrees of confidence and swagger that elevate it over DCW in nearly every respect, resulting in the finest Belle and Sebastian record top to bottom since Sinister.

Comfort of Strangers isn’t only Orton’s best album to date, it’s her most daring.

What you should go to Destroy Rock and Roll for is highly enjoyable, competent, reasonably inventive, energetic techno.

If Surrounded by Silence was Prefuse 73 beside himself, or even ten steps behind himself, Security Screenings is a commendable return to the path blazed by One Word Extinguisher and its subsequent outtakes.

They capture and transform generic ideas about space and environment in ways beyond the grasp of most bands. Sadly, this approach limits their accessibility; even so, theirs is a world well worth, at least, a visit.

It’s entirely too richly tragic and fitting that the man’s last release is the apotheosis of his work, the finest and most representative example of what he contributed to music and, in turn, how music inspired him.

I’d suggest that it’s a grower, but that doesn’t seem apt, as there’s very little depth to let grow here. What it is, however, is a winner, an album that seems loathable at first but tenaciously refuses to quit grinning.

Last Night Becomes This Morning is the exhausted, beaten down sound of the nineties lo-fi movement years after the party ended.

Where the record works best are its bookends -- the places where it most sounds like Cat Power.

Rabbit Fur Coat is an album of easy strumming and likeable melodies, a PG distillation of vintage country influences and the Watson Twin’s spot-on gospel harmonies.

The Brave and the Bold is an awkward, lumbering affair, of passing interest to fans of the artists’ work and no one else.

FaCE manages to be new, fresh and experimental while still retaining the listenability of much of Pollard’s seemingly never-ending canon.

If there’s a weakness to Makers, it’s the occasional unmemorable tune in the album’s middle section.

The lack of variety here is as unsurprising as the rehashed chord progressions between songs.

They now play with a heads-down resolve that is thrilling.

The songs get by on college rock atmospherics that linger for far too long and for the most part, lack the dynamism and character of even the weakest Decemberists song.

Unfortunately, First Impressions of Earth takes a steep drop in quality after “Ask Me Anything” and never finds its way again.

Taken all together, 29 is a staggering piece.

This is essentially the recipe for Coming on Strong: booze, dance, white-boy rap, sleepiness, and a list of influences that spans your favorite records of the last three decades and your favorite hip-hop singles of the last three months.

Every song on this album is outstanding.

The problem lies in the fact that it’s extremely accomplished, but ultimately boring; there's just no emotional or musical development.

Price’s work behind the boards, while often commanding, is hardly ambitious; running the tracks together to try and give Madge the "album" sound is noteworthy, but he’s picked the wrong pop-star to prod.

Motion Sickness is an unnecessary document that is almost disquieting in its puppet-like manipulation of the facts. It’s a live album masquerading as a bunch of inferior studio cuts.

Gira's half is solid, but Akron/Family can't help but demand most of the credit for the record's artistic heft and overall cohesiveness.

It’s unquestionable that Shine contains more than a few of the most embarrassing recorded moments of Anastasio’s career... More often than not however, Shine serves as a fine reminder that Anastasio is a pro who’s been doing the rock thing far too long to release a crap product.

Many of the songs lose their indelible glow being snail baited and cleared up like this.

The album still holds together with a surprising cohesiveness, which is essential when crafting a debut that relies far more on the effect of its ambitious whole than any specific genre-bending tracks.

The problem this time out isn’t a lack of interesting material, it’s that these aren’t lyrics, these aren’t songs, these are for the most part spoken word stories backed by some of the most horrific and baroque music ever recorded.

The production swamps. Too many waves of superfluities covering weak melodies and spearheading disappointing "new directions," too often sounding like the work of a far less interesting band.

Feels takes the Collective in an exciting new direction, creating the kind of record that expands on the group's less esoteric strengths while also pushing their sound forward.

This record isn’t gonna kick you in the head the way that BoC’s last two outings have on occasion done. The break beats aren’t gonna blow you away and there’s nothing here that’ll really get your blood rushing. If you give it the time, though, Campfire reveals itself as an truly beautiful piece of work, better produced and with a tighter sense of melody than the Sandisons have shown in past.

Hypermagic Mountain absolutely trounces nearly every other act in its general stylistic area. Regrettably, however, the duo’s fourth album lacks the formal and emotional peaks and valleys that encourage listening and re-listening to albums in other less hectic and punishing genres.

One of his strongest and most focused albums to date.

Young Adults Against Suicide comes off as the less talented, R-rated Beastie Boys doing PSAs.

Another understated near-masterpiece from a band that doesn’t need to make a bang to make a deep impression.

Perhaps what’s most frustrating about these missteps is that their combination with the album’s brief length (at least 10 minutes shorter than their previous efforts) smacks of songwriting torpor.

It’s not a bad album, and Doom’s rapping is damn near unparalleled; but when you come right down to it, The Mouse & the Mask kinda feels like a throwaway.

This is a step forward, and the new studio approach is a constructive development.

Though, technically, the production is much “improved” here, meaning that the album is louder and clearer, it’s still not a very enjoyable listen when the listener can’t shake the idea that something’s amiss.

Where Dios felt structured, (relatively) focused, and clever, dios (malos) just is let to drift in a mess of under-developed songs, odes to drug abuse, and unfocused guitar strumming.

Think of it as a party invitation: it is as thrilling and original a debut as has come out this year, and one that leaves an ingenious sonic blueprint to build upon.

The Magic Numbers is one of the best pop albums of the year.

The disc is disjointed, lacks much in the way of cohesive musical character, and ultimately never really reaches to be anything more than a bunch of decent songs held together in the semblance of an album.

Franz Ferdinand have slightly tweaked the neo-Brit-pop genre – mixing in funk, dashes of punk, and a bit of disco – and come out with a sophomore album even more confident and hungry for glory than their debut.

Witching Hour could stand to be about two tracks shorter, but its quality comes as an unexpected, and highly welcome, surprise.

Yes, the album stretches itself a little thin towards the end and some of Smith’s slurred lyrics are truly unintelligible, but essentially this record is joyously, thankfully, inexplicably, after all these years, still the sound of the Fall.

A disappointingly safe album of reasonably enjoyable pop songs by interesting musicians masquerading as average ones.

But despite the hit-and-miss subject matter you can’t ever get mad. [Slug]consistently does a fantastic job with his (underrated) delivery, which has improved drastically over the last three records.