That’s not to say it’s not a very promising album taken as a whole, and its clear that the two work well together. A little more consistency in their focus and less pointlessly meandering distraction could really see them do justice to their own talents and produce something truly classic.

Dinowalrus is at the surface, speaking the language spoken years ago by the voices on those dusty LPs they hold near and dear but that’s part of the problem.

Vampire Weekend's willingness to write an album of exciting new material, rearranging the very core of the sound they've come to be known for, will be maddening on first listen for those who loved their debut--but those who stick it out will discover that there's a more mature, innovative band in its place.

It just feels like all the wacky studio noise takes away from what could have been a really fun album.

An occasionally fun, occasionally catchy pop record that will log a few hits, move a few units and ultimately be forgotten once this particular pop trend goes the way of Crunk, Snap Music, the Power Ballad and all the other castoffs in the ever-expanding pop graveyard.

Fall Be Kind shows the band on the path to becoming an even mellower band and nothing here is exceptionally energetic except for the last half of Graze.

Barwick’s angelic voice channels whale song, her textless mantras capture a serene ambience, and her ear for arrangement are far beyond her years. Most impressive, though, is Barwick's relentless inventiveness: Florine is unlike anything you will hear this year.

For a first try, the Black Keys do a decent enough job providing the backbone upon which this collection of rappers can spit and strut, but the actual musical output is overshadowed by the concept of this collaboration, and that is Blakroc’s biggest problem.

Glitter and Doom doesn’t include a pocket-sized Waits who sings and dances atop your candelabra with a pawn shop marimba, but it provides you with the tools to imagine such a sight.

The potential Young shows is infectious and encouraging, but her debut was going to be a buzz kill from the start, if only because of the hype.

Instead of the dynamic sound Mayer is capable of, he has instead continued along the same nicely-paved road he has ridden his whole studio career, a path that has always elicited the same reaction from this writer – a shrug.

These ten songs are immaculately composed, proving that besides holding a pop motif that isn’t really revelatory, there’s enough variation to satisfy a few repeated listens.

Call it voyeur. Call it artificial. Call it exploitative. Just don’t call it boring. It’s the first 50 Cent album in some time that can boast that.

The result is easily one of the more intriguing and overlooked releases of 2009, and an infinitely disturbing meld of visceral semblance and quiet complexity.

Although these compositions show a ton of improvisation, Radian pigeonhole themselves to a one-note range that imprisons Chimeric with a threatening, claustrophobic mood.

It’s music that will soundtrack those peculiar moments where you really pay attention, free of distractions. This is music to spend time with and worth making time for.

Weezer disappoints again. The rest of the tracks are, for the most part, more throwaway power-pop in the vein of the "Red Album."

Molina and Johnson proves to be inessential listening for fans of either artist, but should prove suitable listening for those of us who want a mild-mannered soundtrack to our lamentations of modern city life.

Even if the songwriting didn’t completely explore the full scope of Cobain’s capabilities, Bleach also represents that point in time when money was an object and the music was all that mattered, a precursor to a cultural shift that made Sub Pop a national brand.

The girls are solid musicians, and they’ve structured their little songs well enough. The record is pretty short too, clocking in at 24 minutes, which is good, because I was bored already at the 15 minute mark.

Earthly Delights shows that they have yet to exhaust their uncanny vision.

It’s a bold, enchanting and captivating record that is of genuine interest to hear, as opposed to a long drawn out chore, which an album like this it could have so easily been.

These songs probably sound otherworldly when played live, but the over-laden stylization actually fills Lungs with unnecessary fat.

The album definitely has its moments, and the first half is very engaging, but they lose it in the long run.

Embryonic is a true 21st century freak-out and it's only appropriate to end this decade with such an ambitious, intrepid undertaking.

xx is a fantastically innovative album, and this band is exploring new territory.

Love 2 is not only the latest chapter in Air’s space-rock adventure, it’s a sequel that triumphs its predecessor.

While we sit here wishing for that next sublime Built To Spill album, There Is No Enemy serves as a good fix to hold us on over.

Even if this is a by-the-numbers creation, it certainly adopts the same fiery posture that every Burma album encompasses. It just has to be looked upon with a different mindset. So here’s a toast to conviction.

Bonfires on the Heath is another shrewd effort for the London based band.

Like Califone as a band, Singers is never boring but rarely excellent. It’s just entirely decent.

Ultimately, a surprisingly successful mood piece, there’s a lot of fat to cut through--but this actually becomes one of the album’s more winning attributes.

Don’t get me wrong, Album’s best songs (Lust for Life, Laura, and Hellhole Ratrace) are utterly essential, but take these out of the equation and there’s really very little to get excited about. Unless you count the band’s back-story, that is.

When it closes with the eerie, smoky gospel influenced Youlagy, you know it’s fantastic and you know you’ve found the most breathtakingly beautiful album this year.

New Leaves may tackle some subtle rites of passage - small in scope but difficult for most men to deal with--but they’re approached with such delicate grace, it’s hard to question that this may be Kinsella’s finest hour yet.

Most bands are simply prolonging the genre’s decline by playing insensibly catchy pop under the sonic crust we’ve come to know it for. Failing either, we’re left with the dull ad nauseums of the musical record. And that, in a sentence, is Born Again Revisited.

I remember listening to the new songs and really enjoying them, but wishing the sound wasn’t so thick and muddy sounding. It’s a production problem that plagues this album all over.

What I am saying is that the songs on this EP already feel old, excavated from the self-titled record and surgically removed from the romanticized 80s.

With Journal for Plague Lovers, it feels like Manic Street Preachers have finally closed the door on a painful chapter in their career and, rather fittingly, they’ve done it with some aplomb.

Polished to the point of being nausea-inducing, this album has been packaged to a precise remit: robotic, stadium-rock-lite that follows the tried and tested formula of acoustic quiet bit, drums come in, second verse, chorus, repeat to fade so strictly that you’ll feel like banging your head against a brick wall and/or adding your own beat-box percussion.

It’s trashy yet too self-conscious for its own good, it’s lovingly crafted yet ultimately hollow, it’s dance music which veers from so catchy you can’t help yourself to chin-stroking music to nod at and appreciate.

The band seems to have decided musical chops and precision production are more important than ideas, turning Time to Die into a startlingly streamlined affair that passes without leaving much of a mark.

They are capable of making albums that are big, over the top and fun. The Resistance is over the top, but comes off as boisterous and overblown.

In summation, though, there is not much you could ask for in a Big Star box set that is not included here.

Even if Ashes Grammar drifts quite nicely as a whole--best listened to it with eyes closed in a meditative position--it seems most appropriate for the short attention span generation.

Only one year later and we have Two Dancers an album so laden with lush densities and provocative melodies that you would be forgiven for thinking this album had taken ten years to make.

As it stands, Yo La Tengo has created a solid gold collection of nine tracks.

As the pieces continue to invert themselves halfway through their running time, the album begins to resemble a child’s ambitious science experiment gone haywire. For this, Signal Morning shines.

The real inexcusable thing about The Blueprint 3 is how boring and sterile it all sounds.

This is fun music that is all at once euphonic, brash, unsophisticated in its simplicity--but powerful for that same reason.

Whereas I don’t necessarily believe it a step above the Mystery EP, still ably showcases the talents of BLK JKS, their world-influenced musical hybrid a unique presence in an industry dangerously close to being oversaturated with no longer distinctive hipsters spouting tra la la’s.

Get Color goes by fast and leaves the listener satisfied but begging for more wonderful, eardrum punishing noise.

How these twee-approved embellishments help the record are hard to prove, seeing as none of them give it the edge it sorely needs. Yet, in the least, the gentle sighs render Mister Pop as intermittently pretty as it is prosaic, and point toward a new, if unstable, direction for the band.

I love it the same way I love looking at signatures in my yearbooks: as distant reminders of past friends and better times. Sure, this album is awesome, but the fact remains that this is a continuation of an old idea in lieu of a new one.

To put it simply, it’s a near perfect conclusion to one of the finest records I’ve heard this year.

Turner’s defense mechanisms are as honed and as vicious as his rather formidable bullshit detector has proven to be in albums past, and whatever Humbug lacks in middle fingers, or even thematic continuity, it makes up for with sinister gazes and scathing ambiguities.

It bears to be dissected because it is pretty much all over the place, even if what they wanted to achieve could be stored inside a magical pot of gold.

The EP works much better as a B-side companion to Furr, because neither the energy nor the ratio of good songs to so-so songs is high enough for the record to stand on its own.

Memoirs at the End of the World, as ambitious as it seems, never seems to overstate it’s welcome.

He has found his musical voice on Watch Me Fall, and while it may not be the best album of 2009, but it’s certainly one of the most enjoyable.

Not only does the music feel like filler and lacking in substance but the album itself feels like it’s only purpose is to merely keep music ticking over until something worthwhile comes along.

It closes with the sigh of "Bramble," another one of the band’s well-crafted whispers that seems more like a lo-fi sketch than a fully realized song. In isolated moments like this Welcome Joy shines as a companion piece equal to their first release, "Invitation Songs."

King Of Jeans burns with enough vitriol and frustration that the music escalates the album’s importance. And, at times, they do grant second-party attention.

Sequenced beautifully to balance lyrical narratives with haunting instrumentals, it’s another Six Organs of Admittance album...but so much more.

It’s hard to find fault with the record since anything you think might be lacking, melodic interest, harmonic development, rhythmic drive, etc, was certainly left out deliberately.

It may be a bit dull and overlong (a three to five song EP of this would have sufficed), but he doesn’t care. It’s his music and he’ll do what he damn well pleases with it.

The power of this album comes from the mystifyingly cohesive blend of piano ballads, orchestral choirs, heavy metal, and completely danceable electronic.

Regardless of classification, Japandroids have created something pure, something without pretense and without any concern for how smart or cool they will sound.

YACHT’s music is as simple and enjoyable as their philosophy. You won’t end up ruminating on it all night, but you are very likely to enjoy it while it’s on.

Much of it is quieter, cinematic, and, of course, better than Our Love to Admire. Thank God. Sometimes we are impressed by not being miserably disappointed again.

As a collection of odds and ends, No One’s First… is a necessarily disjointed album. It’s alternately disappointingly simple and refreshingly unique from song to song, torn between country, radio rock and classic Modest Mouse.

The Fiery Furnaces are more than capable of producing catchy three-minute pop songs. They simply waited until now to do so, resulting in one of their best albums yet.

It’s the most countrified record he’s released and, as such, lacks some of the more distinctive and heart-breaking qualities shared by his best work.

Totems functions as a decent well for drawing singles but, as an album, lacks the connective tissue to make it stand out within Clark’s impressive catalog.

It’s a maiden voyage with a few kinks that need to be worked out. One promising aspect is White’s new pet project, The Kills singer Alison Mosshart.

Just as they’re getting closer to solving an apparent diagnosis of identity crisis, The Most Serene Republic break the mold by being even more eclectic. A few positives abound.

As with any album that features epic, largely instrumental tracks, pacing is paramount, and Sleepy Sun does an excellent job breaking up the Goliath tracks with hit-and-runs like Red/Black and with some lovely acoustic numbers.

While it won’t be for everyone, and won’t be an album for all occasions, Life on Earth is a stark, devastating achievement.

Very, very few people have something clever to say and the musical ability to put it into song. That leaves us with ten pleasant songs about nothing much in particular, sung by vocalists of middling charisma.

The triple LP effect doesn’t ruin the album, but it would have been stronger had they edited the whole thing down to the best songs that could fit on one disc.

While Eavesdropping On The Competition and Jonesy Boy won’t necessarily being appearing on any coffee tables in the near future, they don’t feel up to the standard of the other nine songs. This is a small complaint because when Catacombs works, it really works, and it mostly really works.

Like a prestigious college, this band may receive more attention than it really deserves, but these art-punks truly have a lot going for them. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for anything this different.

jj have crafted a truly fascinating album and one of the best hidden gems this year

The major problem is that this doesn’t sound like a band that’s pushing itself any more, or at least not making the same sort of pushes that lead to the brilliant sucker-punch of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and the vastly underrated A Ghost Is Born.

Wait For Me hugs the middle of the road with such caution, it’s strenuous to either love or hate.

Farm succeeds just where Beyond did, by being an absolutely awesome record. If there’s one thing that can be taken away from it, it’s that we can all relax now and let Dinosaur Jr. do their thing.

'One More Time With Feeling's' dynamics shift and her lyrics are vague, but carry a heartfelt sentiment. Far has too little of this and winds up being a mixed bag.

Overall, these tracks feel more like the B sides of Random Spirit Lover, maybe the acoustic B sides, the tracks that didn't quite make the cut but would definitely be of interest to ardent fans.

So, despite feeling that this is a good, rather than great, album, my score for it may have gone up a point or so by the end of the year. Here’s to the return of Tortoise...

By no means a feel-good record, Travels With Myself and Another is rich with enough black humor, sharp perspectives and tight muscular music to make it one of the best rock albums of the year.

On this fine album, Wilkinson seems intent on capturing this precious, ambivalent space.

Save for a handful of forgettable excursions into tampering with a perfectly good formula, it’s a very well-written, cohesive collection of songs.

It’s dark and joyous at the same time, fun and epic sounding enough to seem meaningful, despite my inability to make out most of the lyrics.

Lines, Vines and Trying Times isn’t a good record and definitely isn’t the kind of thing you should be looking to investigate further. But if you’re reading this review, the chances are it’s not meant for you, so giving it a thumbs-down is hardly earth-shattering news.

It's certainly heavier, but it's tuneful and heavy at the same time.

Though it often oversteps its own ability a few too many times, The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion is clear in aggression and ambition, rarely annoying listeners with undue hubris.