While I enjoy Erase Errata’s new album, At Crystal Palace, in the larger, more convoluted scheme of things, I am not sure if I am truly impressed.

Perhaps the best thing about The Lemon of Pink is that it possesses a cohesion that its predecessor, even at its frequent best, still somehow lacked.

It's unlikely that you'll want to hear any of these remixes, even the better ones, more than once or twice.

Rachel’s can effortlessly create beauty, but what saves the record from saccharine blandness are the arrangements that almost distrust the group’s strengths, refusing to leave beautiful passages uncomplicated by dissonance or some kind of sonic distraction.

Its function is not that of a follow-up to Summer but rather as a companion piece that documents a productive period for the band. As such, the record is eminently satisfying, with loose playing and a relaxed air.

While not exactly self-evident or easy to spot, the song structures are more prevalent than before.

Its melodic songs lack the fiery drive and urgency of rock and roll, consciously recalling an era of music of interest only to people looking for something truly vintage.

And this is pop music, right? Why is it all so damned unmemorable?

8,000,000 Stories provides ample room for the duo to connect and shine, and showcase Blueprint in his brilliant role as narrator.

If Some Of My Best Friends Are DJs doesn’t do anything that wasn’t done on his enthralling 2000 LP Carpal Tunnel Syndrome -- and if, at a scant 35 minutes, it’s almost over before you notice it’s on -- it’s still worth hearing.

A stunning collection of unpredictability that has to stand among the best pop albums of 2003.

The harmonies and surging melodies feel natural and completely spontaneous, pop as a relaxed outpouring of sound.

RZA still sounds determined, but his rhymes are self-obsessed, repetitive, and dulled by constant calls for drugs and women.

It is a challenging and humorous album that works like a society brave and wise enough to allow dissent.

I suppose that this isn’t the album a lot of people were probably hoping for. But it’s never the album people were hoping for.

Costello stays away from pop hooks here, concentrating instead on a tentative but engaging marriage of words and melody.

Everything here is marked with a hint of familiarity, but it's surprisingly hard to mind.

An album that blooms slowly over time and repeated listening.

When they're on, Mates of State recall the better moments of fellow smilers Quasi or The Anniversary, and the rest of the time their friendly pop buzz is more harmless than irritating.

5 is Town and Country's most beautiful, flawless actualization of the goals they’ve been working towards since 1998, and paradoxically, a near-complete rethinking of them, as well.

It’s an old trick: happy music, sad words. But Quasi has elevated the strategy to an art form, and it’s nearly impossible to resist the sugar rush of the band’s sound in collision with Coomes’ black musings.

Appealing and slyly catchy.

Beulah have somehow blended the sounds their last three albums, each a significant achievement on its own, into one career-spanning epic, completely worthy of their reputation; any small ways in which their past work has seemed lacking, superficial, or scatterbrained is gone, and only the best points remain.

The guitar throughout the album has an unusual approach which certainly helps PGMG stand out from the crowd.

To the extent that it falls prey to unnecessary pseudo-sophistication, Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers comes off weak; to the extent that it maintains its own musical niche within the shattered-lover trope, Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers makes the shopworn surprisingly compelling.

Has all the hallmarks of classic Kraftwerk.

This is what makes Earthquake Glue such a startling arrival. You don’t simply listen to it out of obligation, but instead because you are compelled to return to it, again and again.

It seems that with HaHa Sound, Broadcast is subtly developing a personal aesthetic, assimilating all that comes across their path but rarely allowing the elements to overwhelm their on ideas.