Another left-field triumph for Gira.

An occasionally pretty but merely competent lite-alt-country, the kind you’d hear ordering a soy latte with a shot of hazelnut.

Despite being monstrously homogenous and boring, The Fallen Leaf Pages is too much of a melodic accomplishment to dismiss.

The album’s hyper awareness of its own mortar disrupts a bouncy pace that would otherwise fit Rhys’s suntanned pop to a tee.

Whether or not Human After All - which of course, has not a single purely human voice in its midst - is supposed to be some great stroke of pop irony or self-reflexive wink is irrelevant. Boring, empty music that thinks it’s making a point is condescending and pedantic.

This is an not an album designed for navel gazing introspection, but rather one to be played at neighbor-annoying volumes before you hit the town on a Friday night.

I doubt that anybody who found enjoyment in Behind The Music will be able to outright hate Origin Volume 1 because it’s about as similar to its predecessor as a follow-up record can be.

The coherence of Wolf’s ethic assures the consistency and believability of his cryptic, erotic, and eerie world.

Pros: Farina is an excellent drummer and singer, and MacKaye hasn’t lost any of his righteous anger. Cons: with only two people you just can’t be viciously loud.

Let it be said here first: Kasabian is indisputably one of the most important albums of 1997. Unfortunately, it’s 2005, and we’re left wondering just what the hell they're trying to pull.

While not any real cause for concern amongst Boom Bip fans, Blue Eyed in the Red Room is not the masterpiece that they might be hoping for.

While No Wow certainly has its missteps, they largely come as a result of the band’s most basic concept: simplicity and repetition.

It takes more getting used to than their previous work, but it rewards even more for it.

Sometimes this gets boring, when tracks lull and hunch into the next and Sam’s voice doesn’t do much to challenge the monotony. Sometimes it’s confusing to hear such graciously restrained music eventually show itself as meticulous, experimental, and deep, deep, deep. Well, not confusing. Refreshing.

[50's] rhymes are as stupid as ever.

Some Cities is easily their best since Lost Souls, and while repeated listens won't likely reveal it better than their debut, it's often equally as hypnotizing.

There are hardly any virtues to this record at all.

It’s conceivable that she can be marketed as a hipper Michelle Branch (the string arrangements get a little schmaltzy), but at her most accessible she’s still too resolutely quirky.

Where Live From Rome really falls off, though, is the production.

With shorter, tighter songs far more reminiscent of 80’s post-punk than Southern AOR, Aha Shake Heartbreak can only be considered a pleasant surprise.

Unfocused, haphazard, and a bit homogenous.

Lost Marbles is no more inconsistent than most respectable bands’ A-side albums, and attains greater brilliance on a number of occasions than they could ever hope for.

Woman King is the sound of Iron & Wine becoming a band; the sound of a singer-songwriter taking that all-important step forward; the sound of a group refusing to slip into the trap of staleness and homogeneity.

His delivery is exhilarating, but it made me nervous, jittery. It’s kind of like Miles Davis scatting, but instead of a trumpet he’s playing the entire writing staff of The Simpsons.

Let’s get two things about Government Commissions out of the way. The first is that the set is utterly inessential.... The second thing is that the first thing doesn’t matter.

It practically goes without saying that fans of guitar heavy psychedelia and mind-altering substances will find plenty to enjoy here.

Fluff-heavy, Fast Cars snitches on the upcoming full-length: Blockhead better be back on beats, because Bavitz is moving in a sparse, faux-spacey direction that sounds bored compared to his busy work on Bazooka Tooth, Labor Days, and Daylight. But since there’s always going to be two or three songs on any Aesop release that deserve your Jukie-Board sig file, and especially since the The Living Human Curiosity Sideshow finally allows the listener to figure out what the lyrics to those great songs are, this one is just barely worth your lunch money as well.

LCD Soundsystem is mostly too afraid to be balls-out fun, but too unambitious to make for a really rewarding artistic experience. Essentially, it sits awkwardly in a no-man’s land between artistry and actual dancing fun, like guess-what-demographic.