Jarvis is a solid, thought-provoking album.

Along with Sounds of Silver, Myths of the Near Future is thus far the best dance (rock) album of 2007 that you can rock (dance)-out to.

Mixtapes can be sloppy and scattered, but every Alchemist beat on Return of the Mac works - so well, in fact, that with a little more effort, this could have been an actual album worthy of heavy promotion and radio edits.

Thoroughly theatric, Pale Young Gentlemen's measured approach is channeled by the bricolage upshot of their composition.

Cleaned up, stripped down, and melding dance music seamlessly with post-punk, Sound Of Silver is as solid as a dance album can get.

A disproportionate amount of the album's tracks sound like a commercialized knockoff of previous songs, past highlights revisited after a process of radio ready distillation.

However early in the voting period we may be, Drums and Guns will undoubtedly go down as one of 2007's strongest albums.

Leo and company go over a lot of territory on this release, but it is not bothersome or a stretch; the band pulls off all of these styles very well.

Armchair Apocrypha is a wonderful record.

I'll Sleep When You're Dead is too smart, too relevant, and too dangerous.

Some may blow off Tongues as too jammy or underdeveloped, but neither is truly the case and, in fact, it's unpolished characteristic is core to it's sound.

The strength of Person Pitch is that it really doesn't matter what label might be affixed to it; quite simply, it is a gorgeous album from beginning to end.

An incredible pop record whose lyrics take a backset to the music.

This is a band that has a sterile aesthetic but is somehow able to create plenty of emotion and energy.

To put it succinctly, Amy Winehouse has made a really good record.

Memory Man will be one of the strongest efforts released in 2007.

With a marked improvement in lyrical content, !!! have also brought the beats.

Neon Bible may be a bold departure from the beloved Funeral, but the divergence is as inspired as the music itself.

Sounds are given room to breathe and interact, room to develop detailed relationships with each other, and therein lies Abandoned Language's most compelling facet.

All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone is an intensely atmospheric album, and stands as one of the band's stronger releases.

The Cost is an emotional trip worth taking, one that seems to move further inward in its focus and insight with each track.

Sex Change makes for an interesting listen and most certainly marks a milestone in the band's discography.

King For A Day is part-pop, part-prog rock, but all cultured and colorful.

Taken as a whole, The Besnard Lakes display a unique style, a winning combination of intriguing songwriting and diverse arrangements.

Terry has clearly reached a new level of musical maturity on this album, but flirting with sounds that don't quite fit in the face of such progression only keeps Or Give Me Death from fully harnessing his newfound growth.

While there has clearly been a degree of evolution... none of Eluvium's previous effects are lost with his new offering; the music still winds its way through your mind, but at the same time it moves the soul as well.

A Weekend in the City showcases what all the band's initial buzz was about, but twists and filters what might have been expected, leaving them open to praise for different reasons.

Folky, orchestral indie-pop that's surprisingly effervescent and hopeful.

The instrumentation is superb, the record feels unforced, and the music is heartfelt.

Whereas their back catalog centered on decidedly un-rogue waves of distortion, My Heart Has A Wish That You Would Not Go is a collection of quiet, often surreal songs that border on balladry.

If there is a problem with Some Loud Thunder it is the album’s lack of consistency.

His band's former work may be referenced, but Adams' personal stamp is unmistakable.

This is not a complete or coherent narrative of despair, as the two album halves don’t particularly work with one another—it really feels like two EPs sewn together. But the effort is more than evocative enough to scare the hell out of you, at least for a little while.

We’re left with a brilliant, often mesmerizing but all-too-sketchy defeatist manifesto on the surface, which, with further musical fleshing-out (Verve guitarist Simon Tong is woefully underused), might have been worth serious investigation.

Wincing The Night Away covers all the bases and proves what loyal followers have known all along, that The Shins are, for better or worse, rock stars.

If Of Montreal were previously a bit on the superficial side with their beatific pop, Hissing Fauna adds a welcome additional ingredient: a sense of gravity.

While they are not afraid to bang the drums and rock out, Menomena keep the majority of this album behind a beautiful mask of complimentary melodies.

These songs are gorgeous and the band knows how to milk the beauty for all it's worth.

With Living Well, Rob Crow has created some of his finest work.

More Fish has a fishy flavor and smell but has little else resembling the hard-hitting potency of its mind numbing predecessor, Fishscale.

Listening to Ys is like dreaming with eyes open, a detached lucidity in which clarity inevitably follows.

It appears they’ve decided to mimic the vague Abbey Road allusions Yo La Tengo made in Beat Your Ass by giving the White Album a sideways 'you-da-man' here in So Divided.

Skipping over a few songs, such as "When Butterflies Leave" and "Whispers From A Spiritual Garden" — because who wants to hear spiritual babbling when Islam can sing so diatonically correct — the album flourishes into a masterpiece of sincerity to its core.

An album to which listening compares to watching The Break-up or The Last Kiss.

When the sun comes out, you'll want to put Milkwhite Sheets away for a long time. It leaves you with an inexplicable chill and a sense that Campbell overplayed her hand.

There isn’t much that Lady Sovereign did prior to Public Warning to gain the amount of respect that she attempts to command and, to some extent, she still doesn’t make it all up here. But at least this is a good start to showcase her abilities.

With its mind-blowing dynamics and wounded memories, bandaged up in affecting, mature lyrics that dissect relationships with a therapist's perspective, the wisdom of hindsight and an artist's touch, Let's Build A Fire is almost flawless.

While Young Machetes is a slight slip in quality, it is the first the band has made so far.

Califone’s latest offering is not to be missed and certainly one of the best albums of 2006.

Genuinely soulful and unhindered by a slavish devotion to traditional Americana, The Opera Circuit is a tour de force for Hinson.

As gorgeous as Sleepy’s voice can be, lyrically the album is lacking.

Getting used to the lethargic pace of Beach House takes some doing, but it's well worth the effort.

If you’re looking for music to make heartfelt love or fall asleep to, this here’s your record.

The songs are emotive, and yet have catchy hooks; they are at times unrestrained and at others, calculated.

The band’s performance overall is agonizingly perfect and deserving of much praise.

Furnished with seductive melodies, dry beats, translucent tonality and a variety of bouncing electronic arpeggios, So This Is Goodbye is filled with pure synth-pop oxygen.

In the end Continuum feels like little-more than the self-indulgent effort of a possibly-peaked pop star.

The Rapture sound amazingly fresh right now.

This really is pretty music.

Viva Voce have always been musically intriguing and continue their winning streak with a diverse suite of songs that come together as a cohesive whole.

Taiga is a surprisingly approachable album.

Yellow House is a keeper.

Nightcrawler is essentially a sequence of fourteen overproduced songs that bleed into one another. Mind you these are not bad songs... But there is an overwhelming feeling that he is merely going through the motions.

Although not nearly as hot as early 2006’s Donuts, The Shining shows for a handful of great collabo’s and bangin’ beats and further paves the way for Dilla’s powerhouse legacy.

Through all the fascinating genre shell games, the constant on Trying To Never Catch Up is a smart pop sensibility that rarely expels an unoriginal thought.

Kill Them With Kindness works on some levels, but overall it lacks the gravitas of other contemporary pop specialists like... Stars.

Overall, the diversity of the production overcomes the same-ness of the verses to make Feedback worth a listen.

A dazzling collection of songs, Putting The Days To Bed cements Roderick's reputation as one of the best songwriters working today.

The good far outweighs the bad on this lack-of-thread-concept-album, and if you are dying to hear a modern day take on the 70’s soft rock band, check out Midlake.

Cansei De Ser Sexy is an intriguing group with a lot of budding talent and real potential.

The Audience’s Listening is artistic, witty, comprehensive, technical, but most important of all it isn’t pretentious.

Listening to The Avalanche is a lot like going back to visit old friends - familiar, cozy and safe.

Fail[s] to constantly engage the listener.

Dusk and Summer’s over-the-topness is relentless – most any second-banana Blink 182-er would sell an expendable internal organ to use one of these songs as a set-closer.

Dr. Octagon has once again put hip-hop under the knife and performed surgery on it.

Despite it’s pitfalls, Mo' Mega has great entertainment value.

A grand experiment in vocal manipulation, Son makes Bjork’s Medulla seem like child’s play.

Imperfect as it is, you still have to admire Free To Stay as a gleeful paean to the joy and freedom of being young and a happy.

Operatic in scope, ruthlessly ambitious in its range, The Paper Chase have dropped one the most unique and substantive records of the year.

One of the best albums of 2006.

Overall, A Hundred Miles Off is less intense than one may expect; there is no "The Rat" on this record.

While there isn't much variation in instrumentation or sound, the impeccable, thought-provoking lyrics more than make up for it.

Throughout, Cee-Lo’s crazed Muddy Waters-meets-Al Jarreau tenor drools soul and exudes liquid-nitrogen cool.

Now then, aside from all that, "After the Garden" and "Families" are right up there with "Rockin in the Free World" for displays of board-stomping bravado, which is of course much less the goal here than raising awareness.

If you are a long time fan of the Danielson Famile... Ships will not disappoint.

If this is Lytle’s last musical missive, he’s left us with a complete, if unfocused, dossier of his genius.

This album is not only the Like Young’s most diverse, is also its best.

Though he may not have the experience in years, he more than makes up for it in the way he crafts his songs.

Unfortunately, the opener is really the musical peak of this self-titled disc and as the album slowly slumps toward its egotistically long final track, listeners will probably have already tuned-out.

The disc is a dense, cerebral, sweated-over work of art.

Their strength lies in the fact that the threesome are capable rockers with conviction, and just enough irony to make it work.

Shut Up’s biggest downfall is it’s speed, or lack thereof. The songs lilt and twirl with Krug’s yelp, xylophones and processed guitars, but rarely does the pace exceed ballad-like levels.

Drowaton is as close to an orchestral pop masterpiece as you’re going to get.

While some tracks are absolutely reminiscent of these lads’ former bands... Maritime comes off most like Tahiti 80 or the Postal Service, crafting lofty, affable pop concerned with pristine beauty.

This is an album worthy of unpretentious adoration.

Cash grab? Perhaps. Phoning it in? Maybe. Or maybe it’s their attempt to open up to a new crowd - but whatever it is it’s better left as an experiment.

You In Reverse is equal parts subtlety and over self-indulgence, and its problems lie with the latter. More often than not, the stretched out jams seems to take up space rather than move the songs forward.

Garden Ruin is good, but there are a bazillion alt-country Coors rockers who could pull this off, and coming from an outfit with such a remarkable past body of work it is a disappointment.