As with most things this conceptual, certain aesthetic sacrifices must be made. But Matthew Herbert is the remarkable musician, with his keen senses of rhythm and melody, who can pull off such an audacious ruse.

Rejoicing in the Hands finds Banhart developing past his early lo-fi recordings in favor of a crisper, more succinct sound that highlights his intricate guitar picking.

No Earthly Man demonstrates that all the glitz and studio production techniques used in making many records aren't really necessary to craft a compelling document.

My only problem with the album is that it begins to devour its own tail about halfway through, at times sounding tedious, or worse, precious.

Absolutely brutal.

Not Them, You is one of those rare records that rewards on both repeated listens and initial forays.

Throughout, Doe strikes just the right balance. He's confident but not arrogant; laid back, yet full of vitality.

Fans will eat up this new record, as the songwriting rivals, and often exceeds, the best of Crooked Fingers' prior curious work.

More hypnotically dark gems.

The album is harsher, darker, and just plain louder than Low have ever been in their 10-year career.

Furthers the high concept lyrical talents of the group with an added twist: a more atmospheric, slightly new wave sensibility.

It's a crackling, concise collection.

While it feels like they're still finding their way and discovering what they're capable of, it's clear there's potential for greatness and longevity.

If you like your indie rock sweet and sophisticated with undertones of despair, you'll want to cuddle up with Universal Audio.

An essential addendum to the Galaxie 500 story.

Songs walk a delicate tightrope between the brain and the hips, and the libidinal release of the beat is denied, suggested, suppressed, and finally let loose to sweat it out.

Perhaps the best overall representation of Belle and Sebastian’s distinctive brand of indie pop.

Bright Ideas has an air of excitement and energy about it, and contains some of McCaughan's strongest songwriting to date.

Amber Headlights has clear thematic and structural parallels to the Afghan Whigs' excellent 1996 rock opera Black Love.

On a purely musical level, Twoism is more essential to me than 1998's well-known Music Has The Right to Children.

Sewed Soles makes out decently for a greatest hits disc.

The compositions on Connector are firmer, more contained than they've been since 1997's Audoditacker.

!!! has put together an end-to-end burner here, full of songs that will move your ass and stick in your ear for weeks.

It might not be the underground hip-hop record of the year, but it is easily on the short list.

Fennesz does an excellent job of balancing the IDM portions of his sound with more challenging layers of material, making music that is both individual in approach and eminently pleasing to hear.

Guthrie successfully matches his idiosyncratic lyrics with subtle, layered arrangements lush with strings, crisp guitars, and shifting song structures as likely to burst into anthem or lilt towards confession.

They are a lot more inspired-sounding than many of their more contemporary-sounding colleagues.

A shot of raw psych rock that's as adventurous as it is accessible.

What's most impressive is that he manages the delicate balance of being emotive without overwrought, something that many of the seventies pop icons never quite got right.

Newcomers may want to start investigating with something less daunting, but even the casual fan of Cave's work will find this collection indispensable.

The punk-informed material on Blitzkrieg Pop sounds like the missing link between Ministry's earlier, sensitive electro material and its later and more well-known incarnation as the nihilistic buzz-sawing and bile-spewing industrial unit.

Even the most hardened, poker-faced purists will crack a smile at AIH's ridiculously catchy, hook-riddled dance-pop.

While the sound here is undeniably on the lo-fi side of the spectrum, the arrangements and production on the album seem more carefully crafted. The result is Sprout's best album in years.

Suckfish is pure audio porn.

So the news is good. They didn't sell out, they didn't run out of ideas, and they were able to find still more places to yell "Whooo!" Go buy this now.

The compilation will not alter your opinions of Lali Puna. But between the new material and older cuts previously scattered across numerous singles and compilations,I Thought I Was Over That is something fans old and new will want to have around.

This is a great band's most fully realized and mature album in a career already dotted with highpoints.

A gorgeous, shimmering 40 minutes of music - a sonic road trip through parts unknown.

The Black Heart Procession is a truly original band, and Amore Del Tropico is a large stride forward for them, a reminder and a promise of their potential.

Possessing a richly elastic set of vocal chords, Bird is in league with such silver-throated singers as Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright, but he rarely if ever over-emotes, a common criticism leveled at Buckley and Wainwright.

Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells is a near perfect collection of four-minute songs that recall a more ragged XTC, the skewed pop/rock style of The Kinks, and The White Album-era Beatles.

Marrying a knack for hummable melodies to a much-needed dose of sincerity, The Hiss hammers their tunes home with a sense of urgency on par with their classic rock and Brit-pop idols.

Zedek somehow twists her troubled characters and haunting tunes into things of beauty.

In a time when consistency is rare, and integrity even rarer, the Sea and Cake have made an album that highlights where they've been.

Cave's songwriting chops and incisive lyrics have, if anything, grown stronger.

As long as they continue to compose such memorable material, there is more than enough room for Mono in the post-rock pantheon.

Where previous releases have been occasionally bogged down in somnambulistic reverie, the majority of The Earth Is Blue feels light as air.

Filled with zesty pop confections, sing along choruses, and plenty of attitude.

fulfilled/complete is thoroughly compelling, until it reaches its closer, "The Dream," and becomes urgent, essential listening.

Within this realism is an incredible sense of serenity, which flows throughout the album and creates an incredibly fascinating work showcasing an immense sense of maturity for this young group.

A bipolar rock opera for the ages.

Far less lucid than his past work, even by Animal Collective standards, all nine untitled compositions reflect a man whose soul is adrift.

The flaws in A Ghost is Born are almost as interesting as the album's considerable triumphs.

Throwing Muses is an exhilarating ride that manages to marry the helter-skelter rhythmic pulse of the band's first few records with the poppier sensibilities of their nineties releases.

The record's disparate experiments are unified by an overriding darkness, the black light Albarn shines on the dancehall. It's this unusual tone that makes Demon Days intriguing long after it's ceased to be novel.

Mice Parade is an original, hovering over multiple traditions without disturbing any of them.

The record may have a little less electronic slink than prior efforts, but it has a propulsive energy, even in the mid-tempo tracks, that makes the record easy to like.

Some songs are sloppily stretched out and others simply half-finished, but the ample charms of Doherty and Barat are just enough to rescue any of these lows.

It's easily the artist's most cohesive, polished work.

This is a headphone record of the highest order, where every last detail should be isolated against your ears and pored over.

Snaith simply dictates the flow of emotions and events on this record, with the kind of command presence rarely seen.

Somewhere between Beth Orton and Iron and Wine, Molina's music feels like it's been pulled direct from the surrounding air; a spring breeze given shape.

The subtle mix of acoustic instruments with warm electric washes gives Holopaw's songs a surprising amount of depth.

The only thing that holds this collection down at all is the fact that you're listening to it at home, and, no matter how good your audio setup, it will never come close to the band's famously loud and beautiful live sets. And, at that, this comes close.

[Kasher's] ability to toss off seemingly effortless melodic hooks makes one wonder just what kind of water is in Saddle Creek.

It's one thing to treat your influences with reverence, eyes and goals fixed on a past that brought them to you. It's another to fold them into the present, into the elusive omnipresence of the moment. And how Dead Meadow pulls this off on Feathers is an amazing thing to hear.

The results are far more interesting than one might imagine, revealing an album that is imminently accessible yet refreshingly unpredictable.

If gripes were to be made, one could argue with Crow's length, which at 74 minutes may be a little more whimsy than one can handle.

The results are predictably wonderful.

Zilla delivers a cleverly orchestrated junket of joyful raucousness and synth whirls.

Tanglewood Numbers, musically at least, is Berman's most fully realized album.

[A] sonic sheen (and the punchy rhythm section) gives the songs an immediacy that the previous reunion records have lacked.

The album's last third slows to the glacial pace of 2001's Covers Record with underdeveloped song fragments rendered in a numbing, spare style. But the album's first half more than makes up for it with Marshall's inimitably concise songwriting painting roses on demons and frowning children alike.

This is an absolutely satisfying listen and a feat of songwriting that few acts could match.

The results are stunning.

Part of the reason this record succeeds is that they haven't tried to replace Coxon, but rather rely on their remaining strengths like inventiveness and songcraft.

Dents and Shells matches the intensity and concision of Impasse, while adding an organic, spontaneous feel to the proceedings.

If the fifties rocked this hard, we'd be dead now.

Hotel Morgen serves as a blend of some of the more appealing aspects of both the electronic avant-garde and its more mainstream dance music wing.

There is some irony in following up a record called We Fight Til Death with one titled (and as vital as) Giving Up The Ghost. However, Windsor For The Derby doesn't sound as if it has succumbed to anything save for its singular atmospheric pop tendencies.

On first listen [it's] profoundly unimpressive.... What each successive listen reveals, however, is a deftly understated and maturing pop craftsmanship.

Humming By The Flowered Vine takes the rootsy sounds of classic country music (incorporating Hank Williams, Lucinda Williams and everyone in between) and plops them smack dab in the middle of Manhattan.

Sure, with so much to hear and such a range of styles, the album can take a couple of listens before it starts to bloom. That said, after these requisite spins, one can't help but admire how smoothly Feast of Wire glides from track to track, style to style.

So Jealous has a broad appeal, nicely connecting the dots between Avril Lavigne and Joan Jett, but shouldn't be slighted by the latter's fans for it's immediacy.

Comets on Fire have also learned to harness their dynamic range, an important step for a band that pummels the listener with a seemingly unending freakout.

In a way CVB's New Roman Times is on par career-wise with Rush's 2112 - well, minus the klezmer anyway.

Has more to do with the Shangri Las' "Leader of the Pack", '60s sock hop and the Jesus Mary Chain than it does with Television, downtown Manhattan and pre-treated denim.

The concept does start to wear thin towards the end of the CD, and the recontextualized product is inherently one sided: it's the Beatles' soundtrack that is made to dance around Jay-Z's unedited verses.

At times, Rice definitely over-emotes, leaving behind any sense of subtlety in his delivery. But at his best, on songs like "Volcano" and "The Blower's Daughter", he hits upon a perfect blend of warmth and expansiveness.

Deerhoof's diversity is less a series of self-conscious genre references than a genuine proclamation of unimaginable artistic freedom.

It is Stevens' creepier qualities that make him a cut above the average singer-songwriter.

This is at once a record to rock out to, a record to contemplate, and a record to immediately buy if you think it impossible for a band this well-hyped to defy their own press.

It's a bit of a disappointment considering the rich subject matter, though Trans Am prove themselves once again masters of their own oblique domain.

More a sketchbook than a fully-formed statement of purpose, Jay Farrar's second solo release is nonetheless an excellent addition to his oeuvre.

On Obrigado Saudade, Pierce picks up where he left off on his last few Bubblecore releases, melding post-rock, world music and analog electronics into rich, earthy shapes.

Maintains the urgency of their debut, developing ideas that were only in their infancy on their debut.

To be sure, there is an ironic smirk clinging to much of Who Will Cut Our Hair..., but there is also the subtle beatings of unpretentious sympathy and maverick potential.

This is music that is both lovely to hear and challenging to ascertain at the same time.