After Drag It Up, their dismal last offering, The Believer is another sign pointing to what may be the wreck of the Old 97s.

On Soft Money undeniable talent finds its nemesis in homogeneity of style and absence of individuality.

Turns out that OK Cowboy is a good deal like the better house sets you’ll hear at a take-your-pick hot-house European club: pretty exhilarating, though once you’re licking the dry salt off your partner’s cheek you realize that only parts of it are truly inspiring, though all of it was pretty hottt.

As fun and crafty a debut as you’re likely to hear this year.

The Last Romance, for all its disgusted veneer and inner conflict, both reads like a cogent statement and plays like a finely tuned instrument.

Destroyer’s Rubies evinces an awareness of a feeling that “I’ve heard something like this before, and really enjoyed it” while denying the listener enough material specifics to follow-up with “It was on this record, recorded by this band, which I listened to when I was this old.”

Six Demon Bag’s a romp, short but sprawling, careful but passionate.

What The Tale Tells employs stock language to present stock characters going through stock conflicts.

E... rearranges his work, often to brilliant results, by first embellishing his lesser known songs and then subverting his already sparse collection of pseudo-hits.

The Life Pursuit is unquestionably even more upbeat than its predecessor, but contains newfound degrees of confidence and swagger that elevate it over DCW in nearly every respect, resulting in the finest Belle and Sebastian record top to bottom since Sinister.

Comfort of Strangers isn’t only Orton’s best album to date, it’s her most daring.

What you should go to Destroy Rock and Roll for is highly enjoyable, competent, reasonably inventive, energetic techno.

If Surrounded by Silence was Prefuse 73 beside himself, or even ten steps behind himself, Security Screenings is a commendable return to the path blazed by One Word Extinguisher and its subsequent outtakes.

They capture and transform generic ideas about space and environment in ways beyond the grasp of most bands. Sadly, this approach limits their accessibility; even so, theirs is a world well worth, at least, a visit.

It’s entirely too richly tragic and fitting that the man’s last release is the apotheosis of his work, the finest and most representative example of what he contributed to music and, in turn, how music inspired him.

I’d suggest that it’s a grower, but that doesn’t seem apt, as there’s very little depth to let grow here. What it is, however, is a winner, an album that seems loathable at first but tenaciously refuses to quit grinning.

Last Night Becomes This Morning is the exhausted, beaten down sound of the nineties lo-fi movement years after the party ended.

Where the record works best are its bookends -- the places where it most sounds like Cat Power.

Rabbit Fur Coat is an album of easy strumming and likeable melodies, a PG distillation of vintage country influences and the Watson Twin’s spot-on gospel harmonies.

The Brave and the Bold is an awkward, lumbering affair, of passing interest to fans of the artists’ work and no one else.

FaCE manages to be new, fresh and experimental while still retaining the listenability of much of Pollard’s seemingly never-ending canon.

If there’s a weakness to Makers, it’s the occasional unmemorable tune in the album’s middle section.

The lack of variety here is as unsurprising as the rehashed chord progressions between songs.

They now play with a heads-down resolve that is thrilling.

The songs get by on college rock atmospherics that linger for far too long and for the most part, lack the dynamism and character of even the weakest Decemberists song.

Unfortunately, First Impressions of Earth takes a steep drop in quality after “Ask Me Anything” and never finds its way again.

Taken all together, 29 is a staggering piece.

This is essentially the recipe for Coming on Strong: booze, dance, white-boy rap, sleepiness, and a list of influences that spans your favorite records of the last three decades and your favorite hip-hop singles of the last three months.