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.