An intriguing and often lovely album.

The building of momentum from beautiful or ominous minimalism into cathartic, sweeping heaviness is remarkable.

You Are Free almost has two disparate styles, and that would be the criticism here. Yet that's the result of her particular mania: stand up, shout then quickly retreat to your seat and hide your face.

Its successes -- its pleasing idiosyncrasies, its moments of charm, and so on -- are there, but underneath a veneer of such blandness that finding them seems like more trouble than it's worth.

For most artists, this album would be a significant achievement--but we've come to expect more from Massive Attack.

Dispensable, and far from groundbreaking.

Without a doubt there are quite a few moments on Loose Fur to enthrall diehard fans of anyone involved. And yet, when all is said and done, I’m still wanting more, wondering what else they could have done.

It’s clear from the beginning that Bell can handle the vocal chores but what remains questionable is Clarke’s ability to rescue his beats from the predictable morass of synth pop’s stodgy past without, of course, overdoing it.

The spoken words mix wonderfully with excellent musical arrangements, but the original songs primarily suffer in comparison.

It is perhaps Oldham’s best work yet, and somewhat ironically, his most accessible as well.

Bottle of Humans was an amazing album, immediately hailed as a classic. Selling Live Water improves upon that album in every identifiable category.

Listening to Equilibrium is like attending a Matthew Shipp museum retrospective: one samples the various facets of Shipp’s recent career without delving too deeply into any one of them.

The band's grasp of dynamics, both musical and emotional, has deepened, resulting in Long Knives, their most nuanced album yet, with a much more understated approach than on past efforts.

The lyrics on Red Devil Dawn are some of his most poetic to date.

The token swell to storm that has come to characterize the post-rock set seems mailed in here; the build-ups are never ominous, the explosion of guitars never reach the near cacophonous bliss that their heroes so effortlessly visit.

Much of this record is quietly beautiful, and its laments gather weight with repeated listens.

Loud, large and unrelenting, Hate is stunning, orchestral pop.

One Bedroom is the LP on which The Sea And Cake jettisons most of its jazzbo pretensions long enough to finish the pure, catchy, consistent pop-funk record it's always been capable of.

It seems that every element previously employed by the Microphones is recycled here in masterpiece capacity.

It isn't as succint, and heart-wrenching, as Someday... and it may not have the slicing modernity of HNIA's earlier works, but the idea of the project propels it still.

An instant classic. Few records contemplate such grandeur and fewer still achieve it.

Although its influences are strong and well synthesized, and the results are listenable, it falls short of being anything other than used bin fodder.

A solid 64 minutes of cavernous drumming, propulsive, grating guitars and cotton-mouthed moans.

While most of Slow Riot and at least parts of Skinny Fists shine through from a distance, much of what makes this album great is its painstaking detail.

When the mood allows, and there's time to let it all sink in, an album like ( ) is indispensable nearly from beginning to end.

An accomplished release that attests to their enduringly unique sound and vision.

Almost overflows with a heretofore unheard urgency and shows exactly the kind of energy their songs could -- and theoretically still can -- possess.

Out Where suffers from heightened expectations and, strangely enough, predictable ingenuity.

It's cool to hear all this stuff put together in one package, but it's so smothered in nostalgia and cheekiness that the predictable analog incidents that keep the tracks from sounding repetitive seem clichéd.

Often more conceptually interesting than practically solid.

Breakdown is gleeful, digestible, and eminently enjoyable.

Mascis’ songs are still simple, clever, and catchy.

Instead of being an especially bold or dynamic record, however, it only recalls the best moments of Quality Control and EP, seldom reaching their highest peaks.

The Richest Man In Babylon is strictly background fare. If you run a coffeeshop, you’re cooking with gas.

An often fascinating, if frustratingly uneven record.

For the people who love this band, their sound, and Hitchcock's songwriting, this album will definitely not disappoint.

For the first time in his career he has made an album that is clearly not a product of “Beck”, the single-syllabled entertainer, but rather that of “Beck Hansen”, the person.

[A] seemingly out-of-nowhere collection of quiet masterpieces.

It's obvious that most of the songs have been meticulously worked over, and as a listener you're thankful for it, but as an album it feels like the paint has hit the canvas at random.

Unfortunately, after the initial rush of the opening tracks, the album slows down perhaps too much.

A balls-out, hateful, heavy, and catchy piece of work that rocks like it was 1994 all over again.

The problem with Since We’ve Become Translucent is that it doesn’t measure up to the standards Mudhoney set with the undeniable gripping music they produced in their heyday.

Blacklisted rings with lost voices and strange journeys, and does a better job of balancing hope, innocence, and darkness than just about anything I’ve heard in a while.

An intense fifty minute ride through the minds of one of the best new bands to emerge in recent memory.

It’s that rare record that’s equal parts innovation and familiarity, or what one might refer to as a perfectly designed and executed experiment in indie aesthetics.

When it works, like on “NYC” or “Roland” it’s a dizzying and beautiful thing that leaves you starving for more. And even when it doesn’t work, it doesn’t fail – it’s just that at times the band seems unable to live up to their own standards and expectations.

One Beat joins the likes of Fugazi's In On the Killtaker and Bikini Kill's Reject All American for its impassioned new-world resistance, and could very well be the greatest triumph of punk independence since Black Flag.

The whole affair feels a little slighter, a little less important.