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.