Albarn’s ability to slither arrogantly from genre to genre while maintaining his charm is truly remarkable.

Not exactly radio friendly, The Woods explores sonic deconstruction a la Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix instead of the preciously catchy indie pop hooks you’ve come to expect.

The tempos all too often meander into directionless drones, while the vocals portray a thin, bratty, post-punk posturing that tends to grate when not underpinned by a catchy chorus.

Gimme Fiction may not be your favorite Spoon record right now, but give it a few years.

For a guy that has so little to say with so few ways to say it, Trent Reznor has mastered the art of making what is old sound new again.

For the life of me I cannot fathom how people can claim this album is any sort of return to form.

Even though Guero sounds familiar sonically, it still pushes Beck further into a league that he all but owns.

Everything that was great about De-Loused in the Comatorium is blatantly absent, while all of the negatives now protrude like barnacled tumors.

The lyrical terrain is insultingly common (girls, life on the road, girls), yet the band has such an idiosyncratic method of expression that makes these everyday themes sound – at least over the course of each song – radically inspired.

On Take Fountain Gedge uses his sharpened songwriting chops to present his case and again proves himself a master of the pop song. It’s just that sometimes it feels like routine.

On Worlds Apart Trail of Dead sounds utterly reinvigorated yet dangerously reinvented.

Nowhere near as affecting as even latter day Sebadoh records like Harmacy, Emoh shows Barlow in a typically maudlin frame of mind, but the starkness of his voice is smoothed over with pointless overdubs

Low sounds fearless in its experimentation. Such personal intimacy juxtaposed with extremely haughty pretension could easily turn off listeners, but it’s all woven together so well that it’s hard to dismiss even the wrong turns.

Suffers from too much open-faced honesty and a serious lack of intensity.

It is pure fluff. And pretty awful fluff at that.

This collection is the antithesis of anything Kurt Cobain would have authorized, right down to the shiny metal packaging.

A sad stab at gimmicky duets with Justin Timberlake and obnoxious production by The Neptunes.

It’s trite rehash after trite rehash followed by pointless filler.

These songs will undoubtedly knock the wind out of you, but for every dynamic explosion or screeching wall of noise there’s a hook in tow.

Kathleen Hanna’s girlish yelp grates more than usual, practically bereft of charm, and her bandmates can barely write a functional song much less play one.

Astronaut doesnâ??t come close to ranking with the music that made the band world famous, but it has moments that make it easy to remember why the band rode such a wave to begin with.

Despite Hamilton's grittiest vocals to date, Size Matters is inarguably watered-down and bland.

Luckily, the band doesn’t cave into the dance-punk trend without expanding upon its current ubiquity with skillful songwriting and risky avoidance of testosterone.

It’s safe, unobtrusive, and ubiquitously “indie”, if well produced and memorably melodic, at times.

This is just an awful display of gratuitous self-indulgence.

Antics is a grower. It’s not as grandiose as its predecessor, but it still packs a lasting punch.

Last Exit is a monumental debut... on par with It’s My Life or Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.

The Delivery Man is a solid, albeit slightly over-learned and patronizing, collection of bluesy rock.