Liars is all about that Liars blueprint, and in that sense the album can get redundant.

Aesop Rock’s terrifically brooding new record.

Panic Prevention is no classic, but a wonderful testament to intuition, which boisterously, and rightfully, posits Jamie T in that rare class of pioneering artist, one who has created a piece of work to stand with any of the other notable records released so far this year.

Although there are a couple of failed tracks--like the tediously slow 'The Turn'--most of this stuff is groundbreaking.

Yes, the beats are big and the sound is mainstream and commercial; however, the band sound restrained and uncomfortable.

As a Caribou album, this is mediocre. Not bad, but it's not much of a Caribou album anyway.

Newcomers to Earlimart will surely be lured in by Mentor Tormentor's seductive and, yes, absolutely frickin' beautiful sound, while longtime fans, depending on their expectations, will either passively embrace the familiarity or pine for some new ideas.

Hey Hey is sharper than "D-Don’t," filled out and throbbing like soul should be, not burdened with the entropy of a smattered ramshackle collection all heart and no brains.

Ditherer is a far-flying leap above and beyond anything that Fog’s done before, but not a shocking leap because it’s still very clear that this is Fog.

The nearly impossible thematic scope attempted and deftly handled here is a tribute to Will Sheff's dexterity and range as a songwriter (if not a vocalist), and the band's chops for being able to keep pace.

This is undoubtedly the way the songs should be heard, and the set certainly doesn't feel cheap or rushed.

A Place to Bury Strangers is a record with excitement hardwired to its musical structure: the elements of these songs are so individually pleasing that, when the band shifts them against each other, the effect is a sense of constant cataclysmic upheaval. Each new variation is giddying.

The type of pretension that rears its fluffy manicured head on Finding Forever is one flatly insidious, lying in plush vibing harpsichord wait ("Intro"), in pattered bongo spoken word nobility ("Black Maybe"), and finally erupting in a 7½ minute crossharp-cooing, Crash-namedropping, butterfuck of pretension, exploding the boundaries of how fucking wack we ever, ever, ever thought Common could get.

Most of Cookies proceeds in similar fashion, with crunchy, showy riffs supporting clever hooks in the name of two-and-a-half minute pop nuggets that the late John Peel would have likely appreciated.

Every track on this record grows into some such perfectly orchestrated climax, surging as a function of the production alone and with nary a hook or clever turn of phrase or structural complication in sight.

What actually lies inside Prince’s twenty-somethingth album is more than disappointing; it’s thinly if grandly produced, tapped with a veneer so dumbly decades behind any sense of interesting or intriguing taste that one can’t help but sit back and swallow the benign whole, thinking all along, Who the fuck even makes music like this anymore?

The real credit, however, goes to the songwriting of the eponymous duo. This album was not "saved in the production," as it were. The Con is a document written in the half-frenzy of a clusterfuck.

As a stand alone work this is one of the most convincing collections that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have produced thus far.

The Broken String is a collection of mostly likeable songs, one dud, and one song-of-the-year-quality track.

The problem is that Vanderslice’s lyrical scope remains too broad to enable a cohesive or definitive conceptual statement, and his music too tightly defined and predictable to be considered a departure.

It’s hard to fault the album for a little flab when the band’s trying new things and mostly doing them well; hopefully they’ll realize that underproduction simply isn’t their style next time around.

Zeitgeist isn't a good record, but it is good work.

Even the best songs of Our Love To Admire can’t reach the boggling complexity and honesty of most anything from "Turn On The Bright Lights" (2002).

I think Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is the album of this year and maybe of the next.

It's all very controlled, as any functional dance club record should be, and its quality extends past its single, as any decent-to-good dance club record should be.

The Else is good, surprisingly and simply so. It’s also frustratingly focused.

Goodbye's shoegaze fascination, organic glow, and subtle shifts belie its apparent initial simplicity.

Sirens is no "Heartbreaker" - though the stylistic grab-bag is reminiscent of Adams’s debut - but it is a damn good start.