From Here We Go Sublime is fantastic all around, and it’s all the more effective for its restraint.

Pole’s technique still relies heavily on the minimal, but Steingarten is garnished with a sonic density lacking on his first three full-lengths.

If an album could have hormone surges and acne, if it could sit home on prom night listening to Joy Division and smoking pot, if it could be as fully convinced of its inner worthlessness as of its ultimate triumph...in short if an album could be fourteen, this would be the one.

Listen to the tracks that are not being released as singles and you'll see that the band truly does have something to offer outside of their super-fun-party-time aesthetic.

Clocking in at an hour, there's ample opportunity for missteps and toss-offs, but also first rate, two-chord grinds that stand up to the best material the Fall has ever recorded.

Saltbreakers is a wonderful album – a little glossy on the surface maybe, but saved from preciousness by its intelligence, restraint and soaring images.

Make no mistake – the beats are still rigid, dabbling in taut funk and squelching electro as much as snotty punk moves and glorious polyrhtyhms. These nine songs, however, ring with a clarity of purpose and a true intent that was previously altogether lacking, presenting a far more cohesive image of Murphy and his many strengths.

It's dark, lovely and slow to blossom, but leaves an impression once it does.

Living with the Living is Leo's most diverse album yet, a sort of musical "This is your life," where the artist revisits styles and forms that he's loved in the past.

Bird’s intelligence – and obvious delight in the associations that words seem to make on their own – often places his lyrics in the precocious high-school poet camp.

As their music has grown more detailed, the details have become ever more foreboding.

It is in the spaces between words and drums, and in the general structures of the songs... that El-P most clearly exhibits growth. And it is these points on the album that make I’ll Sleep an intriguing release.

In a year that will feature not just a new long-player from Lennox's Animal Collective but also a box set's worth of rare material, it may be hard to surpass the haunting, blissful pageantry of Person Pitch.

Situated between his production for Common’s Electric Circus and Champion Sound with Madlib, the record scripts Dilla’s now triumphant escape from the majors and represents the more mercurial facet of his vision.

The problem is that the 11-song album is exactly 10/11ths forgettable.

There’s not a lot behind the well-polished surfaces.

As always, the playing is impeccable, although the cool professionalism evident on each song makes many of the album's tracks indistinguishable.

Neon Bible is so successful because it showcases big ambition without ignoring the small things.

Benchetrit and Spearin’s production work gives You, You’re a History in Rust a pleasantly unpredictable nature.

Instead of creating a sense of intimidation through overpowering samples and sheer brute force, they realize it through a cinematic eeriness and minimalist disquiet.

For a band whose promise has often outdone their execution, All of a Sudden is their most complex, accomplished and well thought out record.

What makes Strength In Numbers interesting is the way it departs from the usual.

Sex Change is uneven from song to song, but name a Trans Am record that isn't. What's something here is the smoothness with which the record evens out as a whole.

A series of songs that are seriously well-constructed and complicated - yet deeply, deeply odd.

The album’s 13 insubstantial tracks make no concessions to contemporary ideas of ‘substance’ in pop music: they are exercises in style so formal they’re almost French.

Extremely unoriginal, but well-crafted rock shot through with tantalizingly brief moments of interest.

On this album, Schneider seems a bit torn between his task as a hook-writing pop musician and a seeming urge to rock a bit harder, with the added burden of being unable to put his toys down when he should.

A totally hit and miss affair, with only two of the five songs clicking.