The most shocking aspect about You Forgot It in People is just how easily everything seems to be accomplished. Every note and transition is smooth and effortless, and there is such a wealth of brilliantly executed music.

Rather than letting one in on the game, Lafata's lyrics keep things at comic/ironic distances, where they're shrouded in the mystique of embodying pop-cultural critique.

Band Red spins bouncy, raw, sloppy and slightly erratic punk that can stake a claim for carving out a jagged edge of its own, complete with loveable, contagious sing-along sounds.

Surprisingly misguided and disjointed.

Cex's production style favors an air of deep melancholy and foreboding, similar to the style of the Anticon Collective.

One Word Extinguisher doesn't shock the way Vocal Studies... did but, if his debut drew the vivid hip-hop/electronic blueprint, Herren convincingly takes his plans and constructs something big with the follow-up.

This is giddy pop-rock in Technicolor.

It's spontaneous and weird and, while its initial thumping may turn off those liking their trip-hop controlled, those who are ready to sweat a little will be rewarded by this unique duo's evolving imagination.

[The songs] are just similar enough to blend together in a close listen, but they also work as a diverse soundtrack behind whatever it is you're doing.

O's seductive, cooing/shrieking contributions to the power of the Yeahs are immense, but they are no bigger than those of guitarist Zinner or drummer Chase.

Road-testing new material has produced a tight and confident work that transcends many third and fourth attempts by artists of similar caliber.

They're trapped by this, their one-trick shtick; it the same old song, played again, Sam, for all those girls in white belts who won't stop 'til they get enough.

Throughout Love and Distortion, the Stratford 4 convey through their music that sounding like other good bands that came before them isn't a bad thing.

She remains utterly, excessively self-involved.

A dizzyingly crafted explosion.

As a whole, The Secret of Elena's Tomb is a compendium of many of the things Trail of Dead have been to date: provocative lyricists, well-honed musicians, and now film directors.

Idlewild are rapidly outgrowing their influences as they forge a unique identity that leads me to suspect that they may soon be inspiring a slew of like-minded new bands.

Just like every other record Malkmus has been involved with, it doesn't feel like an album, doesn't feel like one whole work, doesn't feel focused, or of some specific intent. Pig Lib sounds rambling and goofy and slump-shouldered and half-assed and happened-upon and lazily comfortable with every step that it takes.

May well be the best of its seven studio albums, one that even approaches the heights of the stellar Singles Going Steady collection.

In one instant, lead singer Jordan Blilie is whispering passionately in your ear. In the next, he tears into your insides with growls so piercing you'd think he'd transformed into a savage beast.

More life-affirming than life-changing, on Up the Bracket the Libertines deliver a stellar set of songs that -- both musically and lyrically -- neatly synthesizes the past 40 years of English rock.

Music of reassuring terror.

The Magnolia Electric Co. succeeds where other albums of a similar nature fail because it has the courage to point towards what is wrong with itself and the medium through which it is presented.

They are pop and punk and rock and indie and a combination of all these things, but, more than all of the above, they are Harris' personal songs and they are incredible.

Drawing notions of rhythm, tonality and structure akin to the work of avant-garde greats Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra and Kool Keith, Antipop vs. Matthew Shipp is an inventive, spaced-out fusion of classical free jazz and futuristic electro hip-hop.

You aren't free after all, because once you've let the album in, you may never shake it off again.

Easily the band's most consistent, tonally tight disc thus far.

If there's one misstep on 100th Window, it's that [Sinead O'Connor's] talent and her range are underused.