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.

It doesn’t take long for the characters to come alive the way ...Is a Woman’s seemed too exhausted to. [combined review of both discs]

No You C'mon connects more quickly, but it’s the lightweight one. [combined review of both discs]

Perpetuum Mobile is an album of skeletal songs, many of them little more than percussion, bass, and vocals. What's remarkable is the band's ability to create an effective atmosphere with so little -- and much of the credit must go to Bargeld's ever-astonishing voice.