There's nothing of substance lacking in the least compelling moments of Queen Mary, and the mix of rousing wildness and reckless wisdom in its brightest points is at once inspiring, promising, and terrifically entertaining.

Almost classically psychedelic at times, with the overdriven saturation of too much light, motion and volume applied to every aspect of the music, this ensemble... represents the best of gritty, pre-funk groove music, Day-Glo popcorn cooking in gasoline, rattling like a machine gun.

While it sounded on 2003’s Promise of Love that the American Analog Set were turning themselves into a shoegaze-revival band, Set Free sounds more in line with the gentle atmospheric rock on their finest album, 1999’s The Golden Band.

It's so satisfying when a band is able to subtly re-invent its sound, as Keenan and Cargill have done here so well.

Less folky and more eclectic than his past work, Crow offers ample evidence of growth in Banhart’s range as both a performer and a songwriter.

If you took away the melodica, the masks and the mystery of a band like Clinic, you’d be left with a Brakes; competent, middle-of-the-road, going nowhere fast.

Noah's Ark is not an end-to-end stunner. But there are bright spots throughout, and the sisters display a consistent penchant for deviating from standard folk and twee pop lyrical imagery.

If it was a foregone conclusion that the long-awaited Iron & Wine/Calexico team-up wouldn't result in anything revelatory (or incendiary, as it were), it was almost as inevitable that it would be rewarding all the same; safe, not sorry, sad and elegant as ever.

Formulaic but thoroughly satisfying.

Plat du Jour is no great aesthetic success (it is too spotty and inconsistent) and its discursive dogmatism can border on sledgehammer browbeating. Nevertheless, Herbert does ask questions no other artist is wont to pose; for this, he commands our respect.

Fortunately, the huge elemental diversity on G&G is more spread out than on previous efforts, leaving breathing room and allowing each well-crafted sound to sink in.

On the Moog axis of pop, they’re skewing less towards Six Finger Satellite and more towards an asymmetrical version of the Rentals.

Nothing here is as punchy or infectious as Make Out’s “Boys Who Love Girls,” or Unwind’s “You Better Get Ready,” but the bangers aren’t missed; Birds Make Good Neighbors finds a lovely, whisper-quiet continuity to supplant the unevenness of these previous efforts.

Where Beaches blended human touch and electricity to create heart-stopping climaxes and an air of constant expectancy, Broken Ear attempts a streamlined repetition of the formula with much more emphasis on the electricity, and the whole does not equal the sum of the parts.

The band sound more pleasingly unified than they ever have. By the same token, the album feels less adventurous, at least in terms of stylistic diversity, but the focus on Newman's exuberantly literate power-pop affords it more impact.

The songs are reliably mid-tempo and catchy, although they certainly lack the heedless rush that made the first Superchunk albums such models of indie rock.

Seems to be a misguided stab at radio-friendliness.

Far from snuffing out, Windsor For The Derby sounds like a band with a new lease on life.

If the DFA medium/message commands one groove rattling under a nation, Less Than Human is evidence enough that bot-genius Maclean is just the half-man needed to bang up the plumbing so that all faucets drip lightning bolts.

A love of/obsession with antiquity can, at some point, become unbearable. To my ears, The Repulsion Box is one such ridiculous period piece.

[Mould's trademark] coupling of aggression and tuneful economy is one of the chief attributes sometimes compromised on Body of Song.

Kinski’s boldest statement to date.

La Forêt isn't nearly as overtly poppy as Fabulous Muscles was, but it's just as well written.

Now, we’re certainly all pro-happiness and exuberance, but the same doggedly optimistic message reiterated during several songs begins to sound more than a little shallow, even if such statements have a way of lending themselves more grandeur than they deserve.

Someday the Smithsonian will file this sprawling musical celebration into their collection between Van Dyke Parks’ Discover America and Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers -- joyous, generous Americana filtered through a singular sensibility.

The band falls apart attempting to sound like the whole of the late ’60s and the start of the early ’70s all at once, like listening to The Notorious Byrd Brothers, American Beauty, Moby Grape’s self-titled, the Hollies’ Stop! Stop! Stop! , and a Sloan record played simultaneously; a tepid mash of classic styles all fine on their own that cancel each other out when played together.

A silky, bright, singing-in-the-shower masterstroke of joy and elation.

Pajo employs quiet space beautifully here, amplifying his hushed couplets and fret noises by surrounding them with nothing but a vague tape hiss.

As inconsistent as it is, Every Kind of Light, the first full-band Posies record of the century, curbs the pair’s excesses enough to reward repeat plays.

In theory, there may be nothing wrong with a desire for mainstream acceptance, but Cantrell’s music suffers for it.

While there’s no disputing the attractiveness of its well-polished recording... it’s patchy and... in places, disturbingly adult-contemporary.

Nosdam is most similar to the New Jersey trio Dälek, although Nosdam's beats tend to be a bit bulkier and he seems to approach his music with a psychedelic sense of wonder rather than with Dälek's anger.

Five years is a long time to make fans wait, but the quality of the material and willingness to tinker with their fairly rigid pop formula has resulted in another memorable, extremely listenable collection of songs.

The music here feels not so much modern as refurbished.

Five years on, We Are Monster finds Raijko Muller so confident and articulate that Rest comes off in comparison like a set of hastily scrawled clutch notes.

You’re going to want to hear this one.

Even if it is hard at certain points to cut through the thick fog of psych drum riffs, Everything Ecstatic leaves ears ringing like a loud summer afternoon in the city – sun-drenched cacophony that doesn’t quite know where it’s going just yet.

A musical tour-de-force, and probably Sleater-Kinney’s best album to date.... If it lacks the immediate appeal and accessibility of One Beat or All Hands on the Bad One, it feels more mature and meaningful than either.

Malkmus has the same fractured pop sensibility, but his music is more expansive than it’s been before.

Ultimately, nobody's likely to claim The Secret Migration as a great album, I'm afraid. But it possesses energy and inspiration that its predecessor greatly lacked, and even the weaker songs here have something to recommend.

For the most part, it sounds like giddy, faux-innocent psychedelia filtered through a kaleidoscope, moody but never mopey.

Axes works as an hour-long piece of tension, dread, and release, with little room for interpretation, demanding to be listened to as a whole.

It’s easily Niblett’s most challenging album to date, and also her most accomplished.

Two compact chunks that could have made a gooier whole, one can certainly consider the potential excellence of “Seadrum”’s sprawling galaxy-march against some “House of Sun” morphed licks.

This is an awkward pairing -- there are a number of nice moments, but many haven't been fully developed, and seams divide them.

Snaith rips the rarefied sounds of modern pop from their established context and forms nonlinear compositions constantly in flux.

Oceans Apart is the album that fans have been waiting for, the one that brings back the flawless production of their early releases and the cynical/idealistic tradeoff in Forster and McLennan’s songwriting.

Oneida have never sounded more ambitious, yet they’ve kept their proggy impulses on a short leash; the flourishes serve the music, not vice versa.

They’ve attempted to tighten up where their debut hung slack – shorter, less songs, less room to drag. Yet dragging is all that Celebration Castle does, falling deeper into the garage-meets-new wave dichotomy that looks good on paper but would require considerably more talent to execute.

The most astounding thing about Lord Quas is not Madlib going against the grain, but that it’s basically The Unseen 2005, completely devoid of hits, and still ultimately compelling.

Clearly, John Darnielle has a life story that’s inspiring as more than just the tale of an unconventional indie rock hero. Now that he’s making his best music, I think we can all be glad that he’s finally telling it.

Smith’s tracks are both banging and self-effacing, yet the two opposite impulses never seem fully at odds with each other.

Untilted’s sound is warmer and rounder, but at the expense of sonic and rhythmic scope, initially a disappointment. It’s nice to report, though, that repeated auditions expose a new tightness in composition.

It’s particularly satisfying to hear confident music like this, played with the fiery purpose of those who pioneered it over the last two decades.

Architecture in Helsinki delivers complex, dynamic composition and arrangement in a package that, while not universally digestible, is entertaining for all.

Occasionally masterful, frequently evocative, and consistently lovely.

Alligator's biggest missteps are the moments when the music joins in the apprehension, rendering the coyness in Berninger's lyrics unreadable.

Adult. doesn't make their music easy to swallow, and some of the tracks here don't feel fully developed. But this is a band in transition, exchanging the spacious rhythms of their electro for a suffocating spin on rock revivalism.

A few promising moments aside, most of it hardly resounds at all.

Not entirely dissimilar to their previous efforts, but it features the duo tweaking their sound in subtle ways that make for an affecting, if not drastic, tangent.

Jurado’s ambition seems to have outpaced his execution this time out.

So is Patton a charlatan or a genius? While Suspended Animation doesn’t exactly settle the question, it’s shitloads of fun trying to find out.

Horses... is Silver Mount Zion’s most musically satisfying disc to date because, while the well-worn formulae are present, sonic variance and compositional modification has brought a welcome diversity to an increasingly wearisome aesthetic.

Darkness at Noon thrives on pushing and pulling the listener from emotional peak to valley.

Sheff’s delivery, however, is the Black Sheep Boy’s biggest flaw.

The album’s biggest weakness lies in its arrangements.

The record is more about preserving hip-hop culture that about creating something fresh.

What's more remarkable than her fascinating biography is her bold music. Like her life story, there's hardly anything like it.

Over rudimentary, skiffle-derived hooks, a kitchen-sink orchestra creates an aura of portent. Then in steps Meloy, doping up the whole affair with empty melancholy until it has to breathe through a tube, wailing big words in a forced accent that conveys despair but fails to signify its cause, fails to signify anything.

Out Hud’s new-found pop smarts leave you hoping that they’ll drop the instrumentals and devote a whole album to songs.

Silence easily matches, and likely exceeds, Mike Ladd’s recent Negrophilia in regard to hip hop’s lack of limits.

They have a knack for making things just wrong.

Aside from Church Gone Wild’s best moments, there’s not much material here that can compare with the intelligence and distinctiveness of the duo’s best work.

Roberts sounds alienated, but not arrogant, like some of his labelmates often can. His vocal melodies lack warmth and pain, but I find No Earthly Man's blank stare profoundly appropriate.

The Fallen Leaf Pages settles comfortably into the band's canon, delivering no surprises, no gimmicks, no gags, no quirks and no affectations.

Blue Eyed in the Red Room doesn’t fit any hip hop preconceptions. Moving deftly from influenced to influential, Boom Bip defines himself by leaving limitations behind.

It’s fairly impressive that Stars could make a record that comes this close to replicating its predecessor while still offering discrete pleasures of its own.

Despite what appears to be a decided attempt to branch out musically, Prekop returns with a slight variation on the same theme that has seemed to follow him around since birth. Luckily, for fans of Prekop's work, progress and self-redefinition has hardly been the point.

He’s smart enough to be aware of his dorkiness, and by the end of Live From Rome he has almost turned it into an asset.

A dramatic, often fascinating work, it inspires repeated and careful listening, and stands alongside the best of Bachmann’s work.

His lo-fi production values, traditional forms, and writerly sense of detail create songs that seem to recall moments from some collective past life, one that’s just barely disappeared from view.

Fans might enjoy the history lesson, while non-fans are probably better off waiting for the next full-length.

Some of the most likable “weird hip-hop” around.

Back-to-back tracks recorded years apart seem inseparable, and some of the recordings here are the strongest the band – or anyone else – has ever put to tape.

A gorgeously euphonic skull-crusher.

Here the whole sum is less than its individual parts: individual tracks display real quality, but the album fails to cohere.

Don’t be put off by the glossy patina; there’s a lot to hear on this record, as repeated listening makes plain.

A nasty, dense and confrontational mess.

You get the impression that the artist is truly a giving soul, even if his gift is in the form of an emotionally wrenching, uncomfortably confessional record.

“Everybody’s Song” features the melodic discipline, barely contained anguish and cryptic lyrical finger-wagging that marked the last few Posies records. “Just Stand Back” (“I’m gonna turn on you so fast”) is a hateful little bon-bon that could stand tall on a Sugar record. And yet, The Great Destroyer remains too rickety and pristine to be anyone’s baby but Low’s.

Have you ever fallen asleep during the X-Files’ opening credits, then awoken to a Volkswagen commercial? Have you ever wanted to?

Wilderness has a few disposable songs: the second half in particular drags on a little bit as different tracks become pretty much indistinguishable. However, the downtime and background amidst moments of appeal channels the spirit of ’70s AM radio pretty accurately.

Superwolf contains some of [Oldham's] most startling work yet.

JG manages to both make fun and have fun, their music more goofy than cynical.

It's hard to believe at first listen, but they've got nuance.

School of the Flower easily ranks as Ben Chasny's best work thus far.

The fact that the middle of the album is easier to swallow than the beginning is not an indication of any real improvement, but a sign that you become habituated, or at least desensitized, to its utter lack of creativity or soul.

Like many of their retro-rock peers, however, the band struggles to find a personal identity that transcends imitation and homage; the result is an album that, while excellent at moments, often falls victim to its own stylistic incertitude.