Other People’s Lives is a record to get lost in, especially for those who can close their eyes and trust a sly old cuss to bring them back.

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

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.

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

This is, by no means, Mogwai’s finest hour, but Government Commissions deserves praise for its proof positive of the consistent quality of the band.

I can't say with conviction that Elephant Shell will stand the test of time--it could be forgotten within a year--but such is the peril of retreading well-worn musical ground. The album should, however, stay fresh for the summer.

Here Come the Tears fits nicely in Anderson and Butler's catalogs and certainly beats anything they've done in the last five years, but it makes matters clear that all they'll ever do is release clones of what they once were.

When not so buried in dank sonics, Farrar's familiar songwriting drawl feels more crisp and lively; being able to hear the record's engaging pop hooks is a revelation. On the other hand, this newfound production clarity reveals that Farrar might be running out of ideas.

Yellow House is a keeper.

You Could Have It So Much Better might as well be titled You Could Have It Just As Good A Year Later, since Franz Ferdinand seem to belong to the school of "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it."

Overall, Black Forest (tra la la) is one of those albums which grows in likeability the more you listen to it, as the charming sounds of many subtle instruments appear with more spins.

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.

The overall sound is a bit too polished and loses some of the raw power edge that previous albums rode to critical success.

There are enough interesting things going on throughout the album to keep it fresh for several listens.

The music is jovial and upbeat, yet utterly simplistic.

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

Do the Bambi proves that art rock can be both obvious and alien at the same time.

While this is definitely a likeable album, and an extremely contagious pop effort at that, it's a hard one to get attached to.

Get Behind Me Satan is the first White Stripes album that sputters because it’s the first White Stripes album that tries to sell their image instead of their music.

As casual pop, Causes of This pleases effortlessly, though the listener doesn't get the sense that that's what Bundwick is all about here.

If you continually dig out your Go-Gos and 80s-era Blondie records to bask in the lip gloss-smacking sound, Dying To Say This To You is the modern recoat for you.

Exquisite Corpse does little to expand upon Daedelus’ aesthetic; it does, however, explore the hip-hop direction that he’s been moving towards in his collaborative work more thoroughly than any of his previous efforts.

Taiga is a surprisingly approachable album.

On Our Love to Admire that world-weariness goes from strikingly haunting to fairly monotonous.

Everybody might be less than lustrous in their own catalog but tops most group's bests.

The good news, evident from the very first listen, is a welcome diversity of songwriting and arrangements, on an otherwise basic pop rock record.... The bad news is that diversity alone cannot salvage the album from being their least spontaneous effort yet.

The end results in UNKLE's later years have been rather mixed, but Lavelle always miraculously pulls some new sonic trick to keep his pet project from falling completely out of favor.

Acid Tongue has more hits than misses. However, Lewis doesn't realize her full potential on this LP.