The compatibility between the browbeating belligerence of hardcore and the glitzkrieg of techno’s bare repetition is undeniable – and much more enjoyable than it reads on paper.

Psapp's music is so beautifully complex that upon first listen it might seem a bit haphazard or amateurish -- with all its bells, whistles, whizzes and whirrs -- but after repeated listens, the oddities take on a precise purpose and fit perfectly within the melodic structure.

The Bad Seeds have not made a record this ambitious, well, ever, and the results are rewarding, thoughtful and challenging.

It’s undeniably pleasurable, but dangerously close to being superficial and meaningless.

Von is, in a sense, an ultrasound view of the unborn Sigur Rós - it’s almost fetal, an abstracted and vague representation of what would come later.

On the whole Basement is noisy and rough, and often sounds more like the best record Heatmiser never made than the next Elliott Smith album.

If Dents and Shells stands apart from Buckner's oeuvre in any way, it's in the prominence and evenhandedness of its instrumental arrangements.

This isn’t so much the first AMC record in awhile as the sturdiest, most bottom-heavy Eitzel record in awhile.

A messy, disappointing record that would be a miss from any artist, but from an artist of Mos Def’s talents, it’s a minor disaster.

While not really better or worse than their previous albums, Summer in Abaddon is at least pretty good -- more of exactly what fans wanted.

Unfortunately, the observational heart of the disc's best rhymes are obscured by manicured eccentricity and musical dilettantism.

The disappointments of Walking Cloud are really quite perplexing, given Mono's limited but impressive history and the promise of their collaboration with Albini. Still, if it fails to live up to the heights of One Step More and their debut Under the Pipal Tree, it has its share of moments.

Spooked sidesteps the icy classicism that could’ve prevailed, considering who’s on hand.

Much of Real Gone has been stripped so bare instrumentally that its heavy accumulation of rhythmic noise -- manipulated groans and grunts (“Metropolitan Glide”) what sounds like a cracking horsewhip (“Don’t Go Into The Barn”) -- establishes a sustained, bristling mood that electrifies particular songs but bogs down the album as a whole.

We can see Power as a breakthrough provided that we do not think about the DFA, !!! or Out Hud, or Les Savy Fav. Unfortunately, Q and Not U do not have much to add to what those bands have already done.

The entire panoply of sounds from past recordings is brought to the forefront and depleted prejudicially. Sonic serpent rattle, centrifugal drones, cottony flashes and fizzes, dog-whistle squelch, electronic hives freed of their bees – the whole lot's here, and it's incrementally larger and more agitated than prior show-'n'-tell sessions.

The initial pleasure of past Animal Collective albums is missing, but that may be the point. Panda Bear's grasp of the sublime makes this disc more than worth checking out.

Against all expectations, Brian Wilson has achieved what should have been impossible, and has produced what may be the year's most thrilling album.

Last Exit is a truly excellent album, one of the best of 2004 so far. But what is truly exciting is the promise Last Exit holds for the future – for that of the Junior Boys themselves and the countless others it is sure to inspire.

It’s been ages since he’s sounded this self-assured, or this much at home.

If Oh Me Oh My is Banhart’s most fantastic record and Rejoicing In The Hands his most focused, Nino Rojo is the singer at his most inclusive.

Much has been made of Gelb’s ability at cobbling together musical forms, but overlooked is his skill at entwining contradictory moods.

Even more densely angular and awkward than usual, It’ll Be Cool finds a band so deeply immersed in its own idiom that it’s hard to imagine an ear making any sense of this music, and yet, in spite of itself, the record works.

The concept and the execution are both spectacular.

Showtime’s length dilutes the bursts of exotic spice and flavor laced throughout.

Marred by indie-rock clichés and occasional over-effort, it remains frustrating.

It takes some bands several albums to appreciate the strength in subtlety. On their debut full-length, Midnight Movies may rely on it too much already.

Frozen Orange might as well have simplicity, directness, and melody stamped like a mantra throughout the liner notes.

Even if Radical Connector beckons with a shelf-screaming sheen of freshness, much of its contents are merely the microwaved scraps from Basement Jaxx’s block party.

Though it may be tempting to describe Radian merely as an instrumental post-rock group in the Chicago tradition – they are instrumental, and they’re signed to Thrill Jockey, after all – there aren’t any post-rock bands that are engaging with ideas from electronic and improvised music to the degree that Radian does.

In expanding her breadth, Merritt relinquishes too much of the depth that made her debut so distinguished.

The 'Line now possess a maturity in their songwriting that most indie-rock stalwarts can only dream of.

There’s a remarkable continuity from track to track, and its obvious those contributing to Venomous Villain are long-time fans of Dumile’s work.

It may be an unexpectedly traditional and conservative album, but it’s also an unexpectedly beautiful one.

It’s incredibly inexplicable, and inexplicably incredible.

The wild humor and slash-and-burn methodology of Comets on Fire have outlived any pretense to trend; Blue Cathedral makes a strong case for the permanent re-emergence of undiluted psychedelic rock.

Rage, speed, and math are still here; but there’s a cinematic scope and a real attention to mood and texture that’s new.

It’s an ambitious album, but only in the sense that most of the songs are outrageously long and feature approximately eighteen gratuitous time signatures each.

Though Patterson is still largely peddling outdated sample-heavy narco-trance, the new disc is quite an improvement from 2001’s career-low Cydonia even if it may share that record’s flaws.

Out of the Shadow's blissful indie-pop tunes are as affecting as they are catchy.

It's the first record that, overall, feels serious.

What's perhaps most interesting about the album is that it steers clear of most indie rock tropes.

It more or less picks up where Beaches and Canyons left off, allowing for more subtle changes in tone while distilling the Black Dice sound down to a considerably purer essence.

Waves is an album filled with nice touches and sincere sentiment, not much more.

While it is undeniably a good record, reaching into the stratosphere of excellence at points, Ejstes' overall modus operandi seems more akin to outright homage at times than any sort of exploration of the means and methods of vintage '70s rock and its application in a modern context.

Positively stomps and bristles, with Smith and his band summoning up the type of chutzpah not normally found in middle age.

Sonic Nurse is the happy medium they've been craving. The songs, despite being mostly over five minutes long, are all to the point without feeling meandering.... The balance between noise and melody is right, with each emerging and vanishing at just the right point.

Riches' voice can still sound a bit flat on some tracks, but his vocal and lyrical abilities have grown by leaps and bounds.

It’s an impressive display of the sort of catchy and fun (natch) music that Newman can make, even without the substantial talents of his usual collaborators.

God Bless Your Black Heart is one of the best noise rock records in recent memory – and not in the sense that it’s bafflingly original, but in that the Paper Chase are amazingly good at what they do.

The only real downside to Louden Up Now is the surprising amount of filler surrounding the meaner cuts.

A pleasantly lush album that may be his finest work yet.

While some may scoff at the gentler side of the Animal Collective (especially when contrasted with the fully electric assault of last year's studio release), Sung Tongs easily stands alone as a crowning achievement in their eclectic discography, one that finds the group fully in control of their musical prowess and all the better for it.

To Rococo Rot's Hotel Morgen is seductive and suggestively sculpted; romance music for people with unforced, natural, and charmingly contrary style.

The End is Near employs much of fans found so pleasant about Bedhead, particularly the impressive build-up of two and three bar melodies.

With experimentation comes occasional failure, however, and at times Since Last We Spoke can feel a bit forced.

The overarching narrative structure and sequencing make this album a well-conceived exercise in storytelling.

In gaining power and speed, Secret Machines seem to have lost a sense of pace. Now Here is Nowhere rocks hard, but compared to the EP it contains half the ideas in twice the running time.

Despite the record’s minimal evolution, it’s still a joy to hear, an extension of the promise displayed on More Parts Per Million.

In brevity it betters the 1999 boxed set, in songwriting it plateaus.

As a live recording, it’s severely impressive, and sounds far more like an obsessively premeditated studio creation than anything on Kinski’s last official album.

Her most self-assured release yet, instantly inviting and comfortable, brimming with a confidence that breeds fast familiarity.

Molina succeeds in creating a sound refreshingly unfamiliar and exotic.

Granted, there will be some that cling to the lo-fi eccentricities of that debut, but while Oh Me Oh My... may have won him heaps of critical praise, Rejoicing in the Hands is the album that backs it all up.

What’s surprising about ONoffON is how different it sounds from those previous two records, and yet how well it follows their lead.

While Múm's music has always posed a mysterious, melodic invitation to the listener, their latest offering feels flat at times, with very few signposts marking the way and even fewer landmarks inviting one back again.

The end result is a sugar-high of electronic keyboard and guitars reaching glam-rock heights and booty shaking lows, all based around very simple, classical ideas of song-structure.

Inches functions in the best way a retrospective of its kind can: the more primitive songs don't seem like missteps so much as enlightening diagrams of how the band arrived at such convincing current ones.

In forgoing the lifeblood of dynamic and passion, the creative minds behind the project fall to maximize its potential, however agreeable their compositions may be.

Despite their courage for bending genres to the breaking point, this self-titled debut of live hip hop could use a little more reigning in and little less rocking out.

Walking With the Beggar Boys has so few bells and whistles that it might not make it through your earwax on the first listen, but these songs are the most rewarding the band has created.

One major problem is the Lone Pigeon’s tone of voice: earnest, slightly keening, with no core or crag, no edge or clamor. Combined with melodic and lyrical art that often borders on the perfunctory, Anderson is left flailing.

It’s plenty theatrical, and tries to be upsetting at some points and rustic at others. It’s hard to get too worked up either way, however, especially when the sound turns fuzzy at all the key moments.

While nothing on TNT or Standards was as influential as Tortoise's earlier work, those records succeeded largely because they marked new stylistic departures for a group that sounded genuinely excited by that prospect. Too many moments on It's All Around You lack that excitement.

It's the kind of recording many people can enjoy and want to have in their collection. You can throw it on in most any circumstance. It has the sensuality to seduce, the edge to agitate and the style to inspire.

What this self-titled debut is, though, is two different albums (EPs, really): one of wavering delicacy, the other of focused riffage.

Despite a few quality tracks, the album feels wholly uninventive and listless.

This is a more varied album than The Moon and Antarctica (which did seem to have only one speed), and with the return of original member Dan Gallucci, Brock appears to have revived the heavy lead guitar playing of their early work.

Blonde Redhead haven't run out of ideas, but Misery strips them of their eccentricities so thoroughly that the few that remain sound out of place.

It's not as interesting as it could and probably should be.

On Our Endless Numbered Days Beam feels some pressure to subtly expand his repertoire, but the swampy blues of tracks like “Teeth In The Grass” and particularly “Free Until They Cut Me Down” interrupt the aforementioned mood like unwelcome hiccups.

While every Ivy League dog kennel worker with a paycheck from Blender or Revolver may write dissertations about how Outkast re-invented pop music (and if we follow that logic) then Madvillain simply destroys the boundaries.

The most pressing problem is that Venice is rarely a challenging release.

It’s an arresting record that doesn’t pull strings or elide with gimmicks, nor does it preach or try to persuade. You needn’t believe in a higher order to realize that Seven Swans is an expression of something stirring, something beautiful.

For the most part, what hampers the recording is a reliance on a single type of musical form: the vamp. Over simple (and endlessly repetitive) chordal structures, the players just noodle.

Deerhoof have moved away from abstract rock noise and toward more familiar structure, without losing the spontaneity of their genre-clashing sound.

A difficult, flawed record that’s predictably too long, making the highs all the more rewarding.

While Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes could have become an exercise in studio-based formalistic noodling, Adebimpe and Malone’s vocals and lyrics give the songs structure and direction.

Your Blues is a bold step in a new direction, risking over-the-top theatricality, but with its feet planted firmly on solid ground.

However great the merits of their debut might be, one can’t help but feel that there’s something just a little too perfect about Franz Ferdinand, as though they had planned out hipster world-domination around a scientifically constructed chart of "what’s hot and what’s not."

Seems like an uninspired continuation of last year’s Tomorrow Right Now.

They walk a fine line between startlingly fresh songs and caricatured styles that don’t mix well.

For such menacing music, the overall effect is oddly inviting.

While I’ll miss how amusingly unpredictable TA could be, I can’t complain about their first long-player that works, front to back.

A lot of what's contained on this disc reaches for the transcendent and often attains that lofty goal. Even when it doesn't, though, it's still very much worth the listen.

The album is just disappointing: full of slick beats of undisguised artifice and lacking the one thing all good slow jams need – namely, great vocals.

It's not really very interesting, bold or exciting, but neither is it ever objectionable.

A lot of the material sounds incomplete, as Scher and Hey have a habit of backing off just when a song sounds like its coming together.