It’s a pleasant collection, comfortably consolidated and comfortably nice, despite the lack of anything earth-shattering.

His delivery's certainly interesting, but lacking the nuances of and empathy of, say, Mike Skinner, it's best deployed when not framed by anachronistic loops.

Although a respectable, yet fickle bid at club fodder, schmaltzy ballads, and trend riding one offs, something about it just doesn’t fit.

Brightblack Morning Light is a chambered catacomb of meticulous design, a long-player so calm and unassuming that genre modifiers flock to its veneer, are swallowed into its depths, and murdered.

News and Tributes does lack the visceral immediacy of its predecessor, and is a significant if subtle departure for the band, so it would be hard for anyone who fell in love with their debut to embrace it immediately. But, given time, the record gets under your skin in slow and somewhat surprising ways, eventually coming off sounding like a very good transitional album by a group with a whole lot more staying power than most would have credited them with two years ago.

In the end, Hot Chip leave us frustrated, which makes sense since this is an album about frustration.

El-P doesn’t ruin Mo’ Mega -- the title track’s beat is a colossus -- but those moments free of his fingerprints are also the album’s strongest.

Half of The Sun Awakens is vigorous and wonderful; half is abhorrent and stultifying.

A quietly brilliant album.

The album's substance is obscured by the distracting presence of its production.

Son strikes me as even more experimental than Tres Cosas, and as such it’s less interested than that record on really opening itself up to the listener. That may be a good thing, admirable even, but it doesn’t stop the whole thing from feeling a little cold at first listen.

Yes, the album drags. Yes, the tracks bleed into each other. It is, ultimately, a tiring listen from a band whose sole aim seems to be to innervate every neurone in your body.

This is more than a diary set to music; it’s an interactive map. It is a scrapbook of love gone wrong, including ripped photos, amateur pencil sketches, tear-stained poems, and ticket stubs.

An entirely pleasant, listenable little soundtrack.

It's a well-constructed and performed album that sounds great on the stereo.

Nearly everything about Citrus is so accomplished, refined, and downright transcendent that it could very well stand alongside Loveless as a modernized shoegaze staple.

A Vintage Burden’s embrace is still emotional, still heartbreaking, still sad, and at times still chilling, but somehow, it’s less of an exercise to wrap your arms around it.

Inch by inch -- concept, production, groove -- Scale will measure your desires and dole out exactly what you want: depth, politics, creativity, or club-ready curios.

Those who lovingly caress their copies of Tilt have probably already jumped in its trenches, liking what there is to like, and there is much to like about this album, even if it doesn’t maintain the consistency of that masterpiece; those who find his voice annoying have already set up sniper posts across the field; everybody else is standing in the middle wondering what the fuss is about. The Drift won’t change that.

They’ve managed to produce the best American rock record of the year so far.

This is the sort of record you’re gonna put on when the sun’s shining and you just need some good old pop-rock.

To Find Me Gone shows a band as adept at bucking trends as they are at invoking tradition.

Nothing is really very exciting here, or very interesting.

This record is the “hardest” thing the Twilight Singers have released, but is situated squarely within the realm of anthemic arena rock, not the more straightforward stuff of Whigs nostalgics. Most of the time this works beautifully.

II is a lovely little record, but many of its charms are scripted; even charming people get old when you are forced to spend too much time with them.

If Pink’s more evolution than revolution, it still stomps all over most of its close genre surroundings, leaving maybe Tiger Bear Wolf and The Woods as far as 2005 goes.

Sexsmith’s got a knack for melody, and Froom’s got a knack for bringing it out.

It all adds up to blatantly catchy, deceptively simple wannabe-clever, can’t-help-but-be-cheeky art-punk.