Problem is, In Space isn’t a Big Star album. Or particularly good, for that matter.

Mostly, what made Blackalicious’s last two proper albums so engaging was how Gab chose to reel in the tentacles of his glossolalia, and what makes The Craft such a disappointment is how he forgets that restraint, instead opting to crowd the tracks with ceaseless, pretentious sound.

Each song is either a seismic death rattle or aftershock.

This album is as fake as Kim’s physique, as vapid as the fashion she flaunts, as undeservedly praised as her entire career.

With a Cape and a Cane sounds almost nothing like its predecessor; the songs ring a million times clearer and the hooks bite far harder.

Set Free’s singularity is also its greatest flaw, and a band that adheres to a formula as strictly as the AmAnSet does to its will never make a masterpiece, despite the fact that every track on this album is good.

Tender Buttons feels more urgent and alive than anything Broadcast has ever recorded.

What keeps Siberia from being more of a snoozer is the fact that there’s more Will Sargeant guitar to be found here than on any other recent Echo outings, and Heaven Up Here producer Hugh Jones returns to give the band what’s arguably their fullest production values since 1984’s Ocean Rain.

It’s not often that music truly sounds effortless.

At the end of the day, this still isn’t a great album. It lacks continuity, much of a sense of rhythm, and the character that Banhart’s 2004 releases took on.

It’s hard to tell if this disc will have much in the way of staying power... but it’s a hell of a fun listen.

CocoRosie are clearly talented when they keep things focused; fact is, though, that Noah’s Ark is so steeped in its own random, garbled universe that it makes for a frustrating, unrewarding listen.

Odditorium has at least a handful of solid tracks.

While it may not match his most impressive work, he continues to challenge himself.

In the Reins is a clear success.

A sturdy if frustrating effort that exceeds and disappoints expectations all at once.

Well-constructed, thoughtful, emotionally provocative and cathartic.

Even by SFA’s lofty standards, the production on Love Kraft is little short of incredible.

With the gentle, delicate soundscapes of Let Go mostly replaced by energetic guitar riffing, Nada Surf can only transcend the limitations of the '90s sound for so long.

Here, they succeed just by doing what they do best, taking few chances, but sounding more comfortable in their own skin than they have in a very long time.

Plans is a shameless and famished record, the sound of pop slurping itself empty.

Late Registration really wants to be an album album, which makes all the more frustrating and undermining the fact that it mirrors the flaws of its predecessor: the glut and the stilted sequencing.

Is it their best album? Maybe not. Is it still the best pop album of the year? Of course.

There’s just something about it --- I like Pixel Revolt, and I like it a lot.

Infiniheart is too bright, too beautiful, and almost too good to be believed.

Björk’s biggest drawback, then, is that while “Holographic Entrypoint” is an enlightening rarity, most of Björk’s fans will find it boring. Very, very boring.

Even when the songs work (rarely), the band doesn’t; even when the lyrics work (read: never), the music doesn’t; even when guitars aren’t processed to sound like a cat in a dishwasher, the riffs suck.

The album’s arrangements are as thematically monotone as the raw lyrics, building rock beds for Elvrum’s unpredictable, but dangerously uniform, vocal melodies.

Quit +/Or Fight is in a select catalog of records able to build songs out of studio arrangements that never seem contrived or overdone.

It suffers less from a lack of competence than a general lack of inspiring tracks and the consistency of swiss cheese.

The record can get a bit dull or just plain hokey.

Pick out the antihero tracks and one or two missteps and you have every Beck album (no typo) crammed into one disc with more wit and charm and weird science and heartache than that dude’s cumulative catalogue.

[It has] a woozy Beulah-plays-Beach Boys vibe.

Although they have some serviceable indie disco hits, Clor are merely the latest production line band to explore a niche in the market, though their attempt at nerdy, computerised post punk rubs one off as a flawed blend of, of all things, The Downward Spiral and Zwan.

It suffers both in comparison to Black’s other solo material and on its own decidedly alt-country terms.

Alpine Static unquestionably contains enough rock fireworks to warrant repeated listens.

Certain artists’ albums sound like they’re effortless because they’re actually lacking in effort, but Röyksopp’s albums sound effortless because these guys are just that good at turning out great downtempo tunes.

Too many songs here move at a glacial pace and seem to take away from Xiu Xiu’s strength: an ear for melody, a love for dissonance, songs that go interesting places and engaging instrumentation.

The Most Serene Republic demonstrate plenty of talent in frustratingly short bursts on their debut.

The Cookbook leaves the exact same impression on its listener as every Missy album since Supa Dupa Fly. She may have changed the recipe, but the dish tastes the same.

If it’s funny and not unlistenable, we may have a kitsch classic on our hands, right? No. The third way to describe this album is: reprehensible.

What makes the album so gigantic is how intensely unique the state’s identity becomes filtered through one man.

Someone needs to tell them that just sounding important doesn’t mean they actually are important.

Outside the charismatic skill of Lidell's shapeshifting vocals and his forward-looking arrangements, the actual songs of Multiply aren't of as indelible an essence as the classics that they imitate.

CYHSY’s songs ring of The Bends-era songwriting, but loungier, more playful, more comfortable in their own skin.

The tinny, noisey/flangey/hurtful sound that's shellacked on in cheap 16 bit hinders some of the best material he's written to date.

At their best they write strong, clean, melodic rip-offs of classic British indie rock and at their worst they write weak, clean, melodic rip-offs of classic British indie rock.

The kid is hugely talented-his flow is tight and, in a pleasant change from the Dizzee model, about 90% intelligible-but in trying so many different things he never quite succeeds at any of them, and so he comes off as a bit hollow.

The tragedy here is not that this is a mid-nineties retread, though, as much as Corgan’s songwriting is Machina level unmemorable.

Engineers is a promising if frequently innocuous first time out, with its excellent production and musicianship bogged down by weak-kneed songwriting and idiotic sequencing.

Lurking somewhere in its spotty 80+ minutes lies an excellent 40 minute album, one of the best the Foos have ever done. As is, though, with its heaps of filler, dated production and needless segregation of rockers from ballads, it may actually be their weakest.

That’s a comparison that could be made between Burner and Bip’s Blue Eyed in the Red Room (2005): similar, but a little better.

An album that does the exact same thing as their previous records, only not as well.

What makes Anniemal such a strong pop effort is its refusal to drop its high standards for production, melody, and hooks.

At least 45 of X&Y’s 63 minutes finds Coldplay overdosing on pointless synthesizers in the name of “expanding their sound” while forgetting to write anything reflecting a decent hook.

Get Behind Me Satan marks the point where The White Stripes music has finally become as charismatic and mysterious as its creators.

Thrills is technical to a “T” and plenty competent, but its lack of stylistic push or spread marks its void of hunger or ambition, a space that the mechanized heart of Berlinette nearly pumped blood into.

If it's not a truly inspiring album, it's nevertheless undeniably impressive.

The cryptic, empty songs of Rain on Lens and wandering, upbeat folk-tunes of Supper have been usurped by a renewed focus and direction.

Don’t Believe the Truth... probably isn’t Oasis’ nadir (that distinction arguably being due to 2002’s atrocious Heathen Chemistry), but one could be fooled for thinking so.

It’s an intermittently interesting and somewhat forward looking work-in-process, but at the moment Hebden sounds like an underground hip-hop producer with a few ideas but no MC.

As formulaic and boring a rock album as you’re likely to hear in 2005.

What’s particularly interesting about Demon Days is not that they have half of a good record--there are plenty of albums that can’t even manage that--it’s that it’s so clearly the first half.

The Woods is an incredibly intense rock record even by S-K’s lofty standards; it's a call to arms that will hopefully force complacent indie kids to demand more from their rock music.

He’s back in the groove here: relaxed, confident, weird in his own special way, smart, and ready to make great albums again.

Sure, there’s no “Watermelon” or “Communism”, but Be’s wit presents on a grander scale than a dependence on sprinkled, chucklable oneliners would allow.

Push Barman truly captures the trajectory of the band’s seven-year career in about two hours, and it does so in a way that does the band justice.

This band simply isn’t the same without a little darkness to balance the overwhelming light, and rarely do the songs pick up the slack.

Mezmerize works as a synopsis of the most effective weapons in the band’s arsenal.

These songs are all coherently-arranged, positive, played in major keys, very easy to listen to and enjoyable on their surface.

Two thirds of a great album.

What sticks out most about Spoon, five albums in, is how singular they sound, like a jut of brilliant rock standing unfazed by crashing tides of trends and hopeful hype.

Make Believe finds Cuomo donkey-punching the formaldehyde-soaked corpse of his former glory.

Hal is basically just a pleasant, fun album.

Kidnapped by Neptune is overly long and ambitious, even if it is a determined step towards something far more interesting.

The majority of Carousel just plain sounds the same. It might as well be the same pace, might as well be in the same key, might as well be the same vocal melody over and over; it's a carousel if there’s ever been one.

While it's a coalition of fantastic talents, Themselves submit to the expectations of a pussy glitch-pop crowd, and the Notwist mistakenly assume that hip-hop fans don't want songs with dynamism or structure.

Somehow, it all works remarkably well together. There are a number of songs that feel like guilty pleasures, and the Gram Parsons/Bob Dylan/Neil Young influences are worn on Adam’s sleeve, but lets face it: we’d all rather hear Ryan doing this than trying to bite ‘70s FM rock or Brit-pop shoegazer nonsense.

The album ups the ante on everything that made Up in Flames so astounding, and adds more pop structure to the chaotic bliss-outs, resulting in what is probably his biggest achievement to date.

The strategy is the same: start with a basic, inoffensive and unambitious melody, repeat it over and over again, toss on a few scatting horns (between three and five notes only, please, and let’s keep dissonance to a minimum) and whatever other trinkets are in the studio, and voila! An instantly forgettable pop breeze.

Take Finn’s vocals out of the equation and you have a fun and even innovative garage band steeped in the brand of classic rock to which indie has never properly paid its due. With Finn, they’re monotonous, even annoying.

The best songs on The Forgotten Arm reveal the extremes of love and despair under their smiling masks, but the sorrows of the album are tempered by what can only be Mann’s own joy.

Perhaps its primary feat is that the music manages to sound fresher than anything industrial-tinged has a right to sound.

The band have always been the holding of hands between kinda-Kyuss stoner rock and spazzy synth pop, but The Wedding is unique in that it is something conclusively Oneida but also conclusively marked of indie’s recent resurgence on the mainstream pop-cultural landscape.

The Ponys' arms are so full of the good old stuffs, they can't offer much that's new or really interesting, yet they're talented enough to make it difficult to care about that sort of thing.

[The] drums generally sound weaker and lazier than anything [he's] done before, [the] songs lack strong structure and hooks, [and his] topical matter’s a bit one-tracked.

When I say “melancholy masterpiece” I mean “beautiful, melodic progressive pop bombast with realistically contemplative lyrics," not “Damien Rice."

Unsurprisingly, the formula still works just fine, and in more than a couple spots, it’s revitalized and intensified to great effect.

The songs on Paper Tigers are waifish, white-bread, cliché-based ditties that deserve to have every nonexistent nuance carelessly overlooked, the listener satisfied in knowing that those unexplored depths remain uncharted simply because they contain abysses of nothing.

The harrowing track list of Electro-Shock just wears too thin here.

Musically, Silverman is his best effort since Messner.

Like all of his records before it, Devils & Dust sounds at once like everything and nothing Bruce Springsteen has ever released.

That’s the first thing that’s striking about The Sunset Tree: the arrangements on this record are spectacular.

It’s a lot of slickness that adds up to little, though, as a culturally myopic Roots Manuva audibly struggles to feel out the changed face of hip-hop; he sounds unsure of what tone to take and what words to say.

Timony sounds fresh and honest again, instead of encased in the anachronistic amber of songs about dragons, fairies and dungeons.

Think what you want about its theatricality, its twee --- at base, it’s a technically accomplished album, and if you’re willing to give yourself over to it, or do lots of drugs, a charming ride.

Though not perfect, it's unlikely 2005 will see many records eclipsing The Sunlandic Twins.

Nothing on her self-titled debut full-length is "genius" or "brilliant," but the material is consistently well written and occasionally very good.