For those curious what the San Fran-tastic Four has left in the tank, here's what: false starts, faint praise, fart noises, mischievous grins, horns of plenty, golden deadpanning.... [No. 92, p.53]

At it's best, the record finds her swapping the heavy-handed concepts that've largely driven her work to date for the irrefutable impact of raw lyricism. [No. 93, p.56]

Seventh Tree is a moody, understated gem. A finer hangover record will be hard to come by in 2008.

The Milwaukee-based post-rock sextet pretty much turns its back on proggish theatrics this time around, instead crafting tracks so organic, they could pass for natural phenomena.[#81, p. 54]

A mix of ping-ponging bangers ("Hi," "Born To Suffer"), touching, presumed-true stories ("Joey's Song," "The Oldness") and two skip-now shockers dedicated to monstrous worthlessness ("I Luv Abortion," "Black Drum Machine") [No.86, p.60]

His [James Alex's] lyrics aren't particularly strong. [No. 126, p.53]

Sadly, Beams doesn't show Dear changing up his game in any meaningful way. [No.90 p.55]

Body Pill nods briefly to vintage Detroit techno and no-holds-barred house in between stiffly edging out its own ground on the very crowded floor that is contemporary dance music, often on the same track. [No. 117, p.59]

This is a record that fans of Juliana Hatfield, Lightning Bolt or King Crimson could fall in love without compromise. [No. 96, p.60]

Carried To Dust is definitely Calexico’s best-sounding record: Each voice and instrument has its place, wheeling around Convertino’s graceful drumming like dancers going around the maypole.

Cease To Begin is a fine, fitting return to familiar ground. [Fall 2007, p.91]

Thanks in part to producer Henning Furst, she succeeds in generating a summer feel-good vibe so potent, it'll feel all the better come winter. [No.92, p.59]

A personal (and personnel) triumph for the band. [#73, p.90]

Daniel and Schmidt have created a peculiar album that reminds us of the majesty contained in vintage machinery.

The 62-year old Springsteen sounds every bit the angry, empathetic and impassioned social commentator he was on post-Y2K rockers like The Rising and Magic. [No.86, p.57]

Their stinging, smart wordplay is dependably knotted and sneered, and even though it's difficult to separate their cadences, the collective passion present is undeniable. [No. 108, p.59]

The period specificity doesn't weigh down this buoyant album. [No. 102, p.60]

This is easily her fullest-sounding, most animated record to date, dense with layers upon layers of sound... and copious multi-tracking of Marshall's intimate, elusive, dispassionately soulful voice, which is richer and more versatile here than ever before. [No.91, p.51]

If you're looking to get good and lost, this record's your ticket. [No. 93, p.52]

Hunter applies her vampiest vocals yet, and it's a natural match. [No. 119, p.59]

For all the aesthetic hopscotching, Ripe 4 Luv never falls off its sharp, catchy axis. [No. 118, p.61]

This third LP corrals sophomore sprawler Lenses Alien without killing its spirit. [No. 113, p.53]

Bid's disaffected-yet-engaging vocals and slice-of-life lyrics remain compelling as ever. [No. 118, p.59]

Rub still happily rubs listeners the wrong-right way with crass, curt tunes. [No. 125, p.61]

The Singles is as good a starting point as any, as it highlights the diversity that spanned the band's entire career. All the classics are present and accounted for. [No. 144, p.54]

Quasi has finally crafted a studio work that exudes the same whiff of spontaneity that's always been evident in performance. [#61, p.105]

The riffs jump out with their junk out, wave wildly in your face, then leave you with the bill. Yet what's always been generally true of North Carolina's finest denim demons is that they're not afraid to show off their intellect. [No. 99, p.60]

Elegantly crafted and darkly mischievous.

The songs are steeped in anguish and melancholy, distressing meditations on the loss and limitations that are coming to define life for many young people in these uncertain times. [No. 106, p.56]

It's a soul-stirring collection of Real Ramona/University-grade musical mini-masterpieces accompanied by lyrical prose vignettes exuding the same nimble friskiness and wry, subversive brilliance that characterized Hersh's fantastic 2010 memoir Rat Girl. [No. 104, p.58]

It's bright and lovely stuff, but I miss the darkness. [No. 121, p.61]

It's a pleasure to hear him unpacking his toy, stretching out and exploring this new set of voices. [No. 117, p.61]

Newman has pushed his voice to a human place, upon a mantle, as if finally proud of the boys. Good show. [No.97, p.61]

Its successes just about match its failures. [#70, p.100]

Uneven. [#73, p.112]

Anxiety is the rare electro-pop album that's wholly synthetic, but plays without a hint of icy artificiality. [No. 96, p.53]

A wounded angel of a pop record ono which malice and sorrow are offset by rapturous surges of strings. [#60, p.117]

His deft handling of the pop-song idiom makes even these smaller-scale songs soar. [#64, p.89]

Their winding leads, ghostly shimmers and stacked luminous sound clouds wheel around each other like elegant skywriting maneuvers. [#88, p.54]

Oddly familiar and familiarly odd, Season Hire is a challenging and progressive counterpoint to staid and fallow takes on folk music that have been crapping the airwaves--and our news feeds--in recent years. [No. 118, p.61]

Sorry earned White Lung an audience; on Deep Fantasy, the band commands it. [No. 110, p.61]

The Universe And Me feels like Sprout’s sonic scrapbook and philosophical star chart folded into a single stellar statement. [No.139, p.60]

An impressive mix of high and low art, Local Business is at once outsider, mainstream, universal and massive. [No. 94, p.61]

Okkervil River can deliver terrific songs when ambitions are kept in balance, but this uneven record is in dire need of an editor.

While the current incarnation knows its strengths and weaknesses; Nocturnal Koreans is the latest in a late-career winning streak the band has been on since 2008’s Object 47. [No. 131, p.61]

A looser, more causal and countrified LP than a formal Heartbreakers release, these longtime friends use Mudcrutch to have some fun, jam out and exude a little bit of that old-fashioned Laurel Canyon psyche-twang sound. [No. 132, p.57]

Lyrics ... come off as exceedingly everyday - as well as vital.

Too stylistically diverse, willfully weird and lyrically cryptic to be anything more than an acquired taste. [#68, p.101]

There's a strange, practiced quality to the pop numbers that robs them of their buoyancy. [#71, p.87]

Remarkably, the shifts in tone and mood only serve Guero in the end. [#67, p.85]

Sharply written and softly played, the perfectly bittersweet End Of Love balances the books. [#67, p.87]

It sounds industrial on paper but comes off more like a hybrid of post-punk and noise pop. [#64, p.100]

Aside from a few fleeting moments of watery prog and lumpen rock, the album's 15 songs have a slow-growing charm and understated grace, something that gradually becomes powerful in its own right. [#60, p.102]

The Broken String easily takes its place alongside those classics [Wilco’s Being There and Ben Folds Five’s self-titled debut].

While Parts & Labor’s grinding wall of noise seems to invite this kind of egalitarianism, the experiment never seems gimmicky or extraneous. Instead, it becomes virtually impossible to distinguish what sounds do or do not belong. It all comes together in one glorious racket.

As she meanders through disappointment and hope, with pedal steel, accordion and strings focusing emotion, Mandell channels Nilsson and Newman to make a lasting impression. [No.89, p.56]

Criminal Heaven is an infectious, off-kilter, damn near perfect indie-pop album that manages to effortlessly cover a bizarrely large plot of musical territory. [#86]

Tracks like "Fading Dawn" hew closer to Barn Owl's sound, with the instrumentation a little less cloaked, but meditative forays like "Absteigend" are the biggest successes here. [No. 90, p.54]

On One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache, Full Of Hell pushes The Body to tempos that the doom-metal twosome rarely attempts. [No. 130, p.53]

Pere Ubu was changing rapidly, but this is shrewd stuff on which the band built its legend. [No. 130, p.61]

Pollard's songcraft remains intact regardless of presentation. [No. 130, p.61]

On "Kingfisher," the album's centerpiece, they prove when it's perfectly balanced with a subtle instrumental approach. [No. 138, p.61]

It all comes out pure, 100-proof Godfathers, as hard-rockin', contemporary and fresh-sounding as ever. [No. 139, p.55]

While there's plenty to like here, and more to admire, he's never made a record quite so challenging to love. [No. 146, p.54]

20 Years sounds like it was a blast to make. The playful side of the band, which often gets scant notice, is on full display. [No. 147, p.55]

He's most successful when stripping down his lyrical ideas and melodic underpinnings to their simplest expressions, in a live-in-the-studio trio format. [No. 150, p.55]

Unknown Mortal Orchestra's sophomore effort is marked by a certain familiar mystique that does well to recall the charisma and dazzling psychedelia of its predecessor. [No. 95, p.59]

It's his best work to date. [No. 109, p.61]

The Western Lands offers more bang for your buck. [Fall 2007, p.96]

It's an overstuffed, uneven album, one that's not disappointing as much as it is disorienting. [#67, p.111]

Matangi ends up being worth the wait, which in this case is high praise indeed. [No. 105, p.58]

It's a canny hybrid. [No. 95, p.53]

Major comes across as the next logical chapter for one of music's most-unique and positive forces. [No.90 p.56]

Five years past, you'd figure Prekop has found something beyond tenderness and cool timbres. He hasn't, and that's OK. [#67, p.110]

Organically crafts sounds that are reminiscent and yet uniquely its own. [No. 141, p.57]

Its busy arrangements, brimming with the atomic energy of colliding guitars, synths, bass lines and drums, largely belong to no version of the band we know, instead a succession of growth markings scrawled in graphite. [No. 134, p.61]

The relationship songs are distressingly generic; she backpedals on her "edgy" (for country) envelope-pushing; and she sings about what's she's not. [No. 122, p.57]

Even as he points out life's injustices and unpleasantries, there's an ease and comfort with which he accesses his long list of Americana influences. [No. 143, p.57]

Though Parc Avenue is undeniably epic, Plants And Animals take a casual approach to their sound, stuffing the songs with structural shifts rather than browbeating us with grandiose statements.

Some of these songs are potent, for-real rock songs. [No. 124, p.61]

Cameos from pop princess Kimbra and Bloc Party guitarist Russell Lissack are the delicate icing on Mew's richly satisfying prog/pop cake. [No. 120, p.59]

A howling, blustery, white-knuckle ride that is nothing less than astounding. [No. 119, p.59]

The single-minded pursuit of a sound that was fresh about the time that Melkbelly's members started kindergarten makes for an album that's competently executed but easy to forget. [No. 147, p.55]

Watt's voice may not be quite as preternaturally stunning as that of his partner, Tracey Thorn, but it's eloquent and expressive, and fits beautifully with these 10 unflinching, autumnal ruminations, character sketches, pastoral travelogues and reflections on loss. [No. 109, p.61]

No Wow is mechanical yet sexy, and a soulful, grinding groove is key. [#67, p.102]

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

Recommended for those who long to hear Radiohead make a post-aughts indie-pop record, A Different Ship is without a doubt one of the most impressive and enjoyable efforts of 2012. [No.87, p.60]

Even in the more sedate moments, there's an underlying insistence that ties the 11-track set together in a typically neat package that sits comfortably and appropriately in one of rock's greatest band catalogs. [No. 141, p.58]

Somber early works by the Cure and Joy Division read like knock-knock jokes by comparison. [#46, p.66]

She once again raises the bar for her personal best... [#50, p.85]

There hasn't been a set of pretenders this convincing since Interpol. [#61, p.107]

While things get a touch unfocused in the final stretch, the Hot Chip chaps are always god for a grandly uplifting closing statement. [No. 115, p.53]

They've managed to write one the hookiest, most satisfying albums of their career. [No. 119, p.53]

LP2 is certainly worthy of standing next to a genre classic. [No. 137, p.53]

I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life is merely very good. [No. 150, p.55]

On par, quality-wise, with the triumph that was last year's Stereo/Mono. [#61, p.110]

The sound is more polished than the old bedroom-pop days, but four albums in, it is getting a little same-y. [No.87, p.52]

With two exceptions, he avoids the obvious hits, choosing to shine a light on Haggard's often downhearted love songs with arrangements that avoid country-music conventions. [No. 143, p.55]