It's unclear whether even Kotche really knows what's happening half of the time, but it's a delightfully puzzling ride nevertheless. [No. 108, p.55]

[Four has] the density that made Bloc's angular edge so full, rich and round in the first place. [No.90, p.54]

His latest EP pushes his glossy pop inclinations even further; the five tracks are quick and sweet, gussied up with quirky instrumentation. [#82, p.57]

Their ideal is to make a good album every year, and this, their third offering, meets that goal. This is teen pop with crystalline harmonies and heart-tugging lyrics, but they have a maturity that belies their years. [No. 129, p.57]

Though Calvi hardly ever breaks from her aesthetic on One Breath, she owns it so well that you'd be hard-pressed to complain. [No. 105, p.53]

The Pack A.D. hews closer to the grunge side of the equation, playing with the slow-boiling fury of the geographical touchstones of the Pacific Northwest while never forgetting the history its forged. [No. 106, p.57]

Ledges seems effortless in its creation. [No. 106, p.55]

Bejar's fans will clearly identify his unique musical fingerprint, and may have no clearer understanding of these songs than anything else in Destroyer's incomprehensively wonderful pop oeuvre in the King's English. [No. 105, p.54]

Ray may be dabbling, but she does it well. [No. 106, p.58]

Oh, what fey-but-fecund pleasures lurk in the grooves of the group's third full-length. [#74, p.91]

It does function gorgeously as a lush, entrancing mood piece, one that might pleasantly percolate along in the background, but could just as easily hold you rapt in the detailed folds of its layered, continuously evolving subarctic suites. [No. 129, p.61]

As a fan-pitched compilation of b-sides and one-offs, it's a winner. [Summer 2008, p.100]

[Lopatin] knows how to integrate plangent tones with somber piano chords to give the title track a plaintive, wistful quality, making sure to throw enough glitch in so that it doesn't get stranded on Windham Hill. [#82, p.59]

As lovely as that sounds, April loses momentum under such a reserved approach.

From The Valley To The Stars has some fine moments, but it looks awfully unflattering in the light of its less distracted and infinitely sharper predecessor. [Summer 2008, p.102]

Black Eyes gives barely a hint as to what this band achieves onstage. [#59, p.84]

What Phases lacks in structural coherence it makes up for in the stirring depth of the individual performances. These are worthy outliers. [No. 149, p.61]

Nothing Has Changed makes his entire discography sound more consistent than it actually is. [No. 116, p.52]

There are moments that could've been excised, but BJM demonstrates a most robust path when its psychedelia lasers fix onto a starting point and add to the established theme. [No. 141, p.55]

Mouseman is essentially another 17 tracks for completists hankering to mine the singer's ceaseless compendium of songs in search of new nuggets. [#85, p.58]

Let The Dancers Inherit The Party is slickly produced, dramatic and cohesive but still has the drawback of sounding derivative and overly familiar. [No. 141, p.55]

To make the perfect album, we suppose, that elusive thing that the beauteous hooks on "The Light of F=Day" and "Met Your Match" certainly makes strides toward. [#86, p.53]

Fairly golden and never uninteresting. [#73, p.110]

Baby 81 finds BRMC back in control of the street corner, cigarette squints and rock'n'roll swagger intact. [Summer 2007, p.90]

Results are varied.... Luckily, Deerhoof's blahs are better than most people's best. [No. 116, p.57]

While it lacks the singular impact of their still flawless debut, it's still an object of languorous beauty, rather like the band itself. [No. 105, p.57]

Her built-in fanbase will exult in the sulky ruminations found here. [#52, p.101]

With Four Tet, more is generally more. [Summer 2008, p.105]

Improbably enough, the resultant record could last you winterlong. [No. 94, p.58]

Sounds far richer than the one-off project that it is. [#74, p.97]

Folkier and less prone to rocking than [Ryan Adams], she's also more dedicated to preserving an overall country feel to the music. [#59, p.88]

More of the same, yes, but good enough to make longtime fans crank the volume on the way to their divorce hearings while younger converts learn that the rock wasn't born last year. [#55, p.83]

Swing Lo Magellen sounds forced and cluttered... highlights a dearth of skill when it comes to self-editing. [No.89 p.54]

There's an ever-so-slight improvement upon what has come to be expected of GBV and related releases of the last 10-12 years. [No. 94, p.58]

Its wide-open sound is full of giant guitars, processed keyboards and retro beats, suggesting a meeting between Lee Hazelwood and Ennio Morricone at the Brill Building. [No. 141, p.57]

Brock and Co. manage to entertain and amuse as often as they don't. [No. 118, p.51]

The album refines rather than revamps the Decemberists' approach; it's the brightest panel of a triptych, not a new exhibit. [#67, p.95]

When Slo Light want to pound pulses, it does so expertly. [No.106, p.53]

Though it's but a collection of outtakes and rarities, June 2009 plays like much more than just that, making for a fitting precursor to Causers' light, breezy textures and the grooving forest-lounge of this year's Underneath the Pine.

It's a serious-minded, dramatic record, dressed up with strings, marimba and reverb-soaked guitars. [No. 109, p.60]

On Lost At Last, Vol. 1, he trusted in the spontaneous nature of creation, letting the songs dictate the direction the arrangements take. Eighteen players joined him in the studio, but they remain in the background, mixed down to add subtle, almost invisible nuance to these bleak songs of heartache and dejection. [No. 149, p.59]

Burnt Offering resembles nothing so much as the soundtrack to a '70s exploitation flick. That's no dig. [No. 116, p.55]

If Morning Glory was Oasis' Rumours, then Be Here is its messy, glorious Tusk. [No. 136, p.59]

Daughter OF Everything fits neatly alongside recent work from guys like Mikal Cronin and Ty Segall, and untethered garage rock like this never goes out of style. [No. 107, p.61]

The crisp production of Strange Geometry does give the group's more sedate inclinations a mild kick in the pants. [#70, p.89]

The title track suggests maybe they've found a perfect merging of the '70s and the heavies, as it shifts from funky shuffle to skulking stomp. The rest is still King Crimson than King Diamond, but that's not a bad thing. [No. 136, p.61]

There's a duality to Fragrant World that, sized up alongside its two predecessors, reveals an inherent character trait and a more troublesome trend. Bad songs turn into good songs, and good songs turn into better ones. [No.90 p.51]

He's still evolving, and though the double CD Psychedelic Pill is far from nostalgic, he's spending a helluva lot of time looking back. [No. 94, p.61]

Though Station only gets fully cranked twice (the Battles-esque title track, the explosive 'Youngblood'), Turncrantz’s surefooted playing will keep your interest from flagging.

Some [of the songs] are funny, some are sad, and the best are somewhere in between. [#88, p.54]

Discerning Anglophiles will warm to the charms of the Divine Comedy's 11th album, Foreverland. [No. 136, p.55]

Make no mistake, Blame It On Gravity is a guitar-pop record at heart. Other than a few twangy flourishes here and there, bassist Murry Hammond appears to be the one keeping the country faith, delivering one of his best performances on “Color Of A Lonely Heart Is Blue.”

Stones-y rockers a la "Heartstopper" and "Trouble" have more chug and balls than Richards' band has displayed in a while. [No. 126, p.59]

Cosmonaut is a mostly understated genre-jumper that serves as the platform for frontman Bid to exercise his dry wit. [No. 136, p.59]

It's drowsy, but drowsy with one cup of coffee in it. [#68, p.108]

Even on the weaker songs, when the chord changes come secondhand and the influences arrive undigested, Wrecking Ball remains an ugly slab of guitar sludge that’s well worth the pain.

Whimsical, immaculately realized music. [#67, p.98]

There’s True Sadness, whose songs touch lyrically upon all things sad but with various shades of unsubtle sound to guide them. [No. 133, p.54]

While there's a bit less winsome lilt and a bit more loud fuzz, the songs still sound like a bulked-up amalgam of early Pavement, Television Personalities and your favorite shamble-rock outfit. Why change it if it works? [No. 136, p.61]

The voice and lyrics still confound but it's the music on this concise third LP that demands notice. [No. 107, p.55]

It's amazing that, however slowly, the Ex is still exploring fresh terrain. [#50, p.87]

It's hard to ignore that the arrangements feel like templates. [No. 107, p.55]

Speed rock, Gretsch guitar thunder and frontman heroics give this rockabilly cat his claws. [#54, p.102]

It's everything you ever loved about obscure French and Italian new-wave cinema soundtracks without the stench of rancid popcorn. [#55, p.74]

Sounds like it was put together using spit, eyelash glue and sequins that fell off David Johansen's costumes all those years ago. [#64, p.90]

If you don't smell the brimstone smoke of hell when listening to Nothin' But Blood, then you just don't get it. [No. 107, p.53]

As with his main gig Ex-Cult, Shaw’s detuned, smoke-trailing vocals are the runaway engine to which this crazy train is hitched. [No. 133, p.57]

Faced with conventional, if not threadbare, tunes, Sylvian becomes grand in comparison, humming and mumbling through the subtlest opera of tweaked, quaking noises. [#60, p.117]

Not quite essential but is damn close. [#58, p.97]

The album's most human aspect is its contradictory nature, an ultimate lack of emotion that make the exhilarating Homework and the sentimental Discovery so accessible. [#67, p.90]

This newly minted prissiness... gives the twinkly keyboard and tangled guitar of "Oh Fine" and the mock-pomp circumstance of "Was It A Crime" a starry-eyed sensuality. [#64, p.92]

Every song here is perfect, glimmering pop gem--and the lyrics are often brilliant--but they're played with a measured precision and lack of dynamic range that makes it hard to differentiate one from the other as the LP unfolds. [No. 112, p.52]

Hot Cakes isn't really trying to be funny so much as just plain fun. And it is. [No.90, p.55]

Taut, catchy songs ripe with beginner's pluck. [#71, p.105]

The most impressive thing about the band's second record is how relentless it is. [No. 126, p.59]

[Mike Polizze's] an understated master of the rock 'n' roll hook.... With big and booming Superfuzz Bigmuff-style production cleaning up the band's Drag City debut, that distinction becoming clearer. [No. 96, p.58]

As is the risk with such serious-minded albums, a few songs err on the side of heavy-handedness... but Arcade Fire's raw passion and heartfelt ambition remain intact. [#75, p.90]

Debbie Downer, perhaps, but Austra sure knows how to make misery sound like a good time. [No.99, p.52]

Offering finds the band retooling its sound, and a few songs meander. But at its best--on the vibrant. assertive title track, on the buzzy, fizzy "Recovery," on the swaying, bittersweet "Good Religion"--it rivals Cults' revivalist previous offerings. [No. 147, p.51]

That Different Days is so listenable despite its flawed nature is testament to Costa and Anderson's wonderful songwriting and shrewd decisions. [Jan/Feb 2005]

Pushing his backing band (featuring Willie Nelson’s kids Lukas and Micah Nelson on guitars and vocals) into a stomping Crazy Horse vibe, Young provides the album’s frills with his keening voice and bracing guitar. [No. 133, p.60]

The tight, buzzing guitars and chugging rhythm section have been deconstructed--subdued, even. [#54, p.78]

Eventually, Walk It Off reveals Tapes ‘N Tapes’ debut, 2006’s The Loon, to be both leaner and meaner.

Listening to this breakup-on-tape is captivating. [#64, p.98]

Throughout, minimally invasive production from Vladislav Delay creates a fuller sense of emptiness, resulting in one big, glorious downer. [No. 112, p.61]

While Moms never reaches the earwormy heights that it leads off with, there's still a bunch of choice moments [throughout the album]. [No.91 p. 56]

If you aren't smitten with this band yet, you will be soon. [#73, p.94]

What the album lacks in diversity and lyrical depth it more than makes up for with Technicolor-daydream choruses. [#75, p.98]

The group's self-titled debut smoothly splits the difference between the glassy, grime-inflected production that Nguzunguzu typically trades in and a whole host of contemporary club sounds from around the world. [No. 118, p.57]

Arnalds' voice is the centerpiece, as each of the 12 tracks lives or dies by her pipes. [No. 96, p.52]

Axes comes off as a spikier, more experimental Stereolab or a more adept Raincoats. [#68, p.91]

The more significant development is one of subtle, writerly progression. [No. 142, p.53]

This may be more apple peel than you care to chomp on for a sloppy experimental pop act making its debut. [#53, p.92]

Predictable pleasures abound. [#74, p.95]

To Survive is both sparser and more polished than last year's "Real Life." [Summer 2008, p.107]

Heartworms is a slow-burning grower that rewards repeat listens but requires some commitment to love. [No. 142, p.58]

Album number two pulls back from that musical and writerly intimacy [found on the debut] - if only slightly - trading a degree of specificity for a degree of universality, and adding just the faintest touch of gloss. [No. 85, p.57]

Velocifero is a mere knob's turn toward the excellence the band still seems to be working toward. [Summer 2008, p.107]