Relistening, the porousness and vapidity of the material makes it pretty obvious that rapper Jeezy’s personality is one note, gruff and brash, forever and ever. But in the album’s waning moments, 'My President' erases any genuine qualms, sporting the record’s best Toomp impression.

This is music that, thanks to the global marketplace, its own ingenuity, and Youtube, moves beyond boundaries of nation and language, sound and image, rationalization and emotion.

Forth is a decent reminder of what makes the Verve great.

Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams is as silly, day-glo, eccentric, and all over the place as its title.

Tussle have sharpened their edges, sawed excess fats and driftwood from their bloated frame, and end up sluicing waters--at least some of the time. It’s the most cohesive decision they’ve made yet, but one wonders what Cream Cuts would have sounded like had it been unbound rather than streamlined.

this is nothing amazing but after the understandably sombre "Margerine Eclipse" (2004), the studious "Fab Four Suture" (2006), and Laetitia’s cerebral study into duality of the self on "Monstre Cosmic" (2008), it is refreshing to feel the joy.

A few duds aside, the album succeeds as an ecstasy pop update on the Blood Brothers’ delirious chaos and nobody who purports to miss that band should ignore it.

This variation in the songcraft amid absolute adherence to a predetermined aesthetic attests to the band’s ability to craft a well-paced, engaging arc, an album as much attuned to its coherency as it is to being a springboard for a few spectacular singles.

It’d be nice to hear something a little more rousing (album closer “Musee D’Nougat” drags on a sleeping synth-string progression for 14 unnecessary minutes), but like its vastly underrated predecessor, Earth is worth getting to know.

What you do get is indie prog impeccably performed by musicians at least as talented as Mars Volta but with better taste.

This album is a textbook grower, not just because it demands repeated listens, but also because the pieces all start similarly and take their sweet time to reveal the individually entrancing things they are.

The best songs on Music Tapes For Clouds And Tornados feature just Julian and banjo.

His flow is, as always, commanding, effortless, and unrelenting, making it hard to grab individual lines when each is intricately related to the next.

From admittedly unsympathetic ears, it’s a fruitless mess caked with vanity and smothered by its own insular delusions of prosperity.

Newman’s work here demands high praise, especially with his resume.

Yes, I love Clipse and the Re-Up Gang, but tough love invariably accompanies true love, so there you have it. The relationship is just on the rocks for now; here’s hoping November is like the honeymoon all over again.

This is nothing even remotely new, but very rarely does it come off so obnoxiously, indelibly built to not be taken seriously when that’s the very action that could save these assholes from their own doom.

Mothertongue oscillates between the comfort/terror of singularities and excitement/terror of potentialities, but the possibilities this duality affords for Muhly’s future work are frankly exhilarating.

Azeda Booth achieve with their style one of the best and most exciting grafts yet of pop with electronica.

Maybe that’s the real spiritual value of the album: rather than impress their personal convictions, the band acts as a conduit for all these forces to combine and radiate like a prism.

Yttling and Epworth have succeeded in making the Scream enjoyable and vital again, hardly a sure thing after the embarrassment of "Riot City Blues."

The problem with Stay Positive is that all the great songs subtly exhibit a kind of fin-de-siècle exhaustion, while the obvious attempts to break out of the old ways fall flat.

Object 47 does an excellent job of making a leap toward the avant-pop side of the pop/punk wire walked by…uh…Wire on "Chairs Missing" and "154."

Like a professor spewing a semi-clever lecture on civil rights and contemporary left politics where he’s pretty good at rhyming his facts but acts like rhyming is all the sinew that his presentation needs to connect the bones of his argument.

The concept of a modern type of guilt is probably supposed to imply the effortlessly achievable comfort and depressed humility with which much of the album is sung. Perhaps ironically, the best way to enjoy Modern Guilt is with blinders on to this sort of temporal perspective.

Thankfully, these are just two misfires, album-cripplingly sandwiched around a triple whammy of floor fillers.

The Baseball Project is one of those “why the hell hasn’t anybody thought of this before?” ideas that is carried out exceedingly well.

It’s rather difficult to describe the feelings and aural excitements wrought by Blood, Looms and Blooms, but suffice to say it’s the work of a powerfully brilliant and individual artist.