The Spell cannot break free of the band’s successful formula without something a lot more challenging than this.

The eleven tracks here are the most concise, effortless, and melodically conspicuous songs to come out of the band’s camp.

So to those bored to tears by Sumday, take notice: though it fails to break any new ground, Just Like the Fambly Cat is as good a parting shot from these guys as we could have expected.

Holland seems confident placing herself inside a mythology much older than her years. It’s this fact, along with her penchant for lyrics about crazy dreams and old-fashioned moonshine, that make many of her songs, though originals, sound borrowed from another era.

Even though it strictly operates in one gear, Last Secrets navigates all the richness the high road has to offer.

Matmos have created something dense, complex, puzzling and potentially meaningless to anyone but themselves and those who listen to music with their head instead of their gut, their hips or their feet.

For anyone who legitimately enjoyed Blood Sugar, and think that they might actually want to purchase this thing, Stadium is unquestionably Red Hot Chili Peppers’ finest release since.

So, yes: this is cuddly, warm and intimate, just like all your favorite blogs have said.

Serena Maneesh injects the Warhols' toothy, cocksure swagger [into] the lush, narcotic insularity of My Bloody Valentine and Ride.

Those already on the Charlatans bandwagon will likely enjoy enough of Simpatico to warrant its purchase, but there's no questioning that's its one of their weaker efforts.

And while it most certainly does fill this grunge kid with nostalgia for a simpler time, it’s the first latter day Pearl Jam album that is plenty good enough to stand on its own.

Neither funny nor thought-provoking, the band strains for touchstones beyond the technicality of prog-metal and rarely achieves them.

The sobering after-party to Wolf Parade’s debut.

File The Rakes under "serviceable art pop."

The Secret Machines are still super tight, Josh Garza’s still got restrained guitar awe on his side, every song’s arrangement is still an ebb and re-ebb of soaking synth and organ drone, and the lyrics still battle with neo-adult ennui. Is it any wonder, then, that there comes a time when this can just get dull?

It’s a shame to see the character of Mike Skinner become so stale and hackneyed, especially when the beats are stronger than they’ve ever been before.

It’s wild music, and it’s wildly musical, and, yeah, it’s probably the most wonderfully raw production Springsteen’s talent has ever been channeled through.

In making these songs more personal and more intimate, they’ve managed to make them more poignant, and even if the quality of the overall album doesn’t match the brilliance of the four or five phenomenal songs here, nothing is so cantankerous as to really offend.

Chosen Lords is... a nostalgic, fun listen for longtime fans and suitable point for new listeners to become acquainted with Aphex Twin’s twisted catalogue.

Taken for what it is, a straight up and down rock album, ABAAC is quite good.

Bitter Tea has a bevy or unexplained items - crazy cranes, bloodthirsty in-laws, traitors lying in grass, osmanthus blossoms, card cheats and the only pewter pocket watch that belong to Joseph Smith's Great-Great Uncle's brother in law. It's outlandish stuff, and requires suitably outlandish music, from its weird melodies to jarring segues to an ocean of sounds marking a transition from one verse to the next.

We, The Vehicles is a fine collection of songs by a band running on all cylinders.

The record is a gem. Twelve tracks with a sense of cohesiveness that side-steps homogeneity in favor of straight-up old-fashioned album workmanship.

A record that progresses as a sequence of dislocated sounds, an expressionist's puzzlebox that comes alive when distanced from one's preconceived notion of what a Built to Spill record should sound like.

This time, the album’s a one-trick pony.

He establishes grand lyrical arches, overworked symbols, and Deep Meaning. Problem is, he forgets any of the emotion, realism, or originality that would make anyone care.

Simply put, in 2006, My Life is a timeless evaluation of Assimilation, sometimes harmless, sometimes bleak, but consistently absorbing.

This is the new definitive rock opera.