Where ["The Bliss"] bubbled and spat like hot fat, its meticulous construction overflowing with polyrhythms, Black Noise seems disjointed and overlong even though it runs for roughly the same duration.

What Midlake has crafted here is monastery music – glorified Gregorian chants that achieve nothing if not snuff out the candle light in your head that represents your slowly melting interest.

The derivativeness quickly overwhelms.

Taken as a whole, The Soft Pack isn’t exceptionally challenging or memorable, though it does leave space to appreciate a few of its singles.

Should his solo career continue, this record could stand as an in between point between his teen past and his adult future, but as it stands now, it's just a muddled, occasionally interesting but often baffling pop-rock album.

However many crystalline moments of beauty their records contain (and of course there are some to be found here), for me there remains a cloying sense of the overtly melodramatic, of uninventive repetition that it is hard to ignore.

In the case of Blackjazz, Shining spreads lyrical passages across songs, repeats song titles with different music attached: they basically create an environment that can only be understood as a whole.

It’s not a completely futile exercise--there are some decent tracks--but it falls far short of the quality of its predecessor.

Romance Is Boring is fun, knowing, astute, energetic and packed with vignettes of youth and love lost.

Instead of modest waltzes and looped drum machines, there’s an evident maturity in the way the production unveils itself as richer and far more multifaceted. When you can’t break the familiar, expanding on those opportunities only makes you more in control.

What I find so satisfying with this album, is how Four Tet envisions the lushness of a song, and sonically creates a buoyant, lighthearted blend--a complete album for the lively and lighthearted.

Realism strikes a compelling balance between cringing honesty and organic chemistry that comes through in its crystalline composition as well as its more rugged manifestations. Complete reinvention isn’t necessarily reached, but isn’t quite the ultimate goal either.

While it is by no means required listening, Couple Tracks is certainly worth it for newcomers and short-time fans of an up and coming experimental punk band. And while it never achieves an album feel, it's got enough short blast of quality to make it worth the money.

One's enjoyment of Dream Get Together will depend greatly upon their appreciation for good jam sessions. Jam sessions are fine after all, but it's hard not to be a little disappointed in Citay after hearing the disparity between what they are capable of and what they want to be.

My high expectations for Boca Negra, misguided as they were, have been consoled, if not met, by the realization that if any act can legitimize avant-jazz beyond its narrow niche (never mind my aforementioned doubts), Chicago Underground Duo have the verve and creativity to enable it.

They simply combine their voices and come up with something unique in the process, which they’ve achieved. I’m interested, though, in how far they take their sound before it reveals any potential lack of versatility.

This third effort is trying too hard to innovate by, once again in Editors fashion, obviously borrowing from somewhere else.

While it provokes some unpredictable moments, it's heartbreaking to listen to such tuneful moments of inspiration buried beneath towering stacks of old debris, and not the vintage kind.

The album twisted and turned its already discombobulated songs around and around, never letting anyone get comfortable. It showed a more cerebral Spoon than ever before.

So in a sense the imperfections are actually its perfections because it represents E’s state of mind purely: his every whimsical thought, his waking up and not knowing how he’s going to feel that day and his whole-hearted honesty to allow every fucking shred of it be put to record because he has the audacity, intensity and conviction to do so.

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.