It's clear Sparta have finally come into their own.

It may not be the best introduction to the band, but it's a must-have for hardcore fans of Conor Oberst's vocal discordance and stripped-down musical tantrums.

One of the more interesting – and fun – cover albums out there.

Unfortunately, unlike Deerhoof's complex sonic and logical experiments, the Curtains' material feels too spare, too underdeveloped, less like well-honed songs than fledgling ideas that'd benefit from the input of additional bandmates.

After 16 songs ranging from electro-country to the parody-heavy We're The Pet Shop Boys and various quasi-conversational raps à la the Streets' Mike Skinner about losing his virginity, I felt the man should rope things in.

Most of this over-egged sissy-boy schlock would make James Blunt wince.

While World Waits isn't lacklustre in any way, fans of Frog Queen may be disappointed.

If you haven't encountered Jenkinson's strange world of jazz-fusion-hardcore before, this is a decent starting point, and if you're more into the jazz funk than the digital hardcore, this is one of his less abrasive outings.

A sprawled-out, futuristic tribute to Diddy's own celebrity.

Save for a few minutes near the end, almost every second of Machetes gets smothered with their vocal duelling; the songs are never allowed to come up for air.

Even at its most pieced-together and deconstructed, Califone's music feels organic.

It kind of sounds like classic AM radio interpreted by a very strange garage rock band.

G-Unit needs to stop remaking Lloyd Banks's first hit, On Fire, from, like, two years ago.

This disc won't change your life but makes for a pleasant 40-minute listen.

The trio have also grown more comfortable singing the blues and incorporating meatier harmonica and guitar arrangements, and lurching tracks like Out Of The Wilderness and A Little Blues make up for weaker soft rock ballads that leave little impression.

There's still a welcome sense of spontaneity in the way the songs unfold; it just occurs at a Sunday-morning pace, which should make Meek Warrior the perfect soundtrack for watering houseplants.

Without the bizarre lyrical invention and fuck-shit-up whimsy of his earlier work, Beck's attempts at party jams come off woefully overwrought and flat, making the darker bits interspersed throughout seem intriguing by default.

Sam's Town works well as a cohesive album, despite its delusions of grandeur.

Only their radical overhaul of Nine Inch Nails' Hand That Feeds shows any sign of creativity.

The Dears' biggest coup with Gang Of Losers, though, is Lightburn's newfound ability to express his own sturm und drang through varied delivery rather than just a bloodcurdling caterwaul.

Oddly, the unconventional sequencing and measured pace of the album make the fragmented mess hold together quite well.

Fans will be thrilled to know that, despite the replacement of main guitarist and co-songwriter Ben Moody, Evanescence's sophomore album is at least as unsubtle as its predecessor.

While occasionally generic, nothing on Shine On is as annoying as their breakthrough single, Are You Gonna Be My Girl.

Unfortunately, all the intricately picked little guitar figures don't make his raspy yelping sound any less like a wet cat stuck under a couch.

A solid debut, but only a hint of what's to come.

Though the album can get somewhat repetitive, Adem's polished production and intimate songwriting minimize any flaws.

There's a little too much consistency across the album -- too few moments stand out, and too many of the hooks just blend together.

An album defined more by its background players than its star.

Somehow, Ta-Dah feels like the Sisters covering themselves, and the glitter and gloss have worn off.

Not terrible, just half-assed.

There's no cohesion... That said, Luda can still turn out solid tracks based on three qualities: clever lyrics, commitment to concepts and taste in beats.

While their performance is expansive and parts are definitely stretched out and rocked out, like on I Will Sing You Songs and Mahgeetah, this is just solid performing, not lame jam band shit.

Like nothing you'll ever hear on country radio.

Problem is, the odd hodge-podge of tracks have no apparent connection to each other and certainly don't make for a coherent statement or even a decent mixtape.

The lineup addition of [singer Dawn] McCarthy proves to be a genius move; her vocals blend beautifully with Oldham's, and her soaring solo flights make a great recording exceptional.

Their distinctive differences as songwriters (Emily Saliers is soft and spiritual, Amy Ray punk rock and raw) are often complementary, but sometimes the songs cry out for more input from the other.

It's not that The Captain & The Kid is a bad album; it just sounds terribly dated.

Basically, if London Bridge doesn't make you want to rip your ears off, you'll enjoy almost 80 per cent of the album.

A densely tangled masterpiece that floods and floors by straddling swaggering grooves and boggling cacophony.

After an album's worth of tiring, spastic jazzy post-punk that smacks of musical masturbation, chances are you'll really miss At the Drive-In.

Many of Continuum's songs are on the softer, adult alternative side, but his melodic voice, warm production, complex riffs and thoughtful lyrics should cure the violent reactions Mayer's name used to evoke.

It seems like they decided to go whole hog with the Duran Duran template. Not the best strategy, considering it isn't even working for Le Bon and company any more.

The Sexyback single makes wise use of filtered vocals to artificially deepen his tone and support his macho pose, but only so much can be done with studio gimmicry. He's soon back to tweeting his game in a prepubescent chirp; the more suggestive his come-ons, the funnier it gets.

The goofier bits and sloppy sunshine pop moments are really what make this an interesting and complete album.

The sheets of noise and absence of hooks hide some interesting ideas if you have the patience to listen for them.

It feels way huger than the work of two people, with dense, textured songs that sound like a remarkable collision between two distinct personalities.

Here, Jamie Stewart and his crew of arty innovators use the penchant for sonic deconstruction they honed last time round to take their project of disemboweling pop songs to a new plane.

For the first time Audioslave sound more like a cohesive unit than a product of two groups spliced together.

Too bad only the icily sardonic Irreplaceable has any real weight or relevance.

It's a mellow album, but definitely quirky, and with enough rawness to offset her soft, pretty vocals.

Whereas Chaplin's sharply drawn social comment is rightly considered a modern classic, Dylan's Modern Times -- sung in a strangely affected croak you'd expect to hear from Leon Redbone's grandfather -- comes off like a feeble anachronism in which our man cynically attempts to pass off public-domain blues and folk tunes as his own by changing a few words.

If anything, the grooves have gotten tougher and funkier on Game Theory.

It's consistently catchy, and produced with a broad enough vision so that it doesn't get repetitive.

Sadly, co-executive producer Erick Sermon is behind many tracks, and his are the most conventional and weakest of the bunch.

Their well-honed flamboyance has finally given way to full-blown pretension, the lyrics that used to be an afterthought hidden behind a painfully contrived yet musically unimpressive ragtimey veneer of muted trumpets, shoo-bop, shoo-wahs and happily jingling vaudeville pianas.

The Future Crayon, like Tender Buttons, is a little predictable at first but grows more complex after several listenings.

Even though the songwriting's tight, the uniformly delicate touch of adult contemporary arrangements will leave you struggling to stay awake till the album's end.

Though the tunes themselves seem unassuming, based on conventional chord progressions and strumming patterns, that simplicity draws attention to Darnielle's fine songwriting.

What's disappointing if you're a fan is that the man has his tropes -- both melodic and lyrical -- and stubbornly sticks to 'em.

With folky guitar picking, lush harmonies and sophisticated melodies, this album is a must-have for all of Bachmann's fans.

Pretty much every track is a head-turner.

Though Storch and other heavy hitters do their best to craft reasonable facsimiles of a broad range of Today's Best Dance-Pop Hits, they can't hide the fact that Hilton's a shit singer who can't carry a tune even when the vocal melody is reproduced note-for-note in the arrangements.

Kelis... raps, rants and successfully maintains her spacey freakiness while sailing out into even radio-friendlier waters.

Despite any bugaboos, he's a plain great songwriter, and Skelliconnection is firmly above average.

Ultimately, Aguilera's the only one of her peers with the vocal prowess to pull it off.

The Second Round isn't much different from the first.

Instead of knocking out another wall-shaking psych rock blast... Avatar comes off like a series of sedate recital pieces performed from sheet music while seated in the round.

Generally solid with more hits than misses, but my usual advice to DiFranco still applies: don't record everything you write – wait a few months and give us the best ones.

Bizarre lyrics, wooze-inducing dissonance and overly elaborate embellishments maintain Friedberger's genius-of-pretension title.

A mood-altering drug for pop fiends.

Christ Illusion sounds like an bid to get back to the Reign In Blood era by reining in the tech prowess that weighed down God Hates Us All and Divine Intervention.

After a year of Kanye and Pharrell's Lacoste-sweater-vest raps, this gutter shit should find DMX welcomed back with a vengeance.

Five Jurass's virgin excursions into P-Funk and electro find some comfortable new sonic territory.

If you were expecting some next-level shit from Pharrell Williams on his self-produced solo debut, you're in for a huge disappointment.

The mainstream-organic gloss of his production has always baffled me.

All the reckless abandon the New York Dolls name conjures, the spontaneous handclaps, sloppy guitar-slashing and youthful over-indulgence that made those early Dolls recordings such a kick are sadly nowhere to be found here.

If only Steele could keep a lineup together for more than a few months and follow through with his original plan of working with producer Dave Fridmann, Personality might've risen above the level of ho-hum patchwork pastiche.

Once you wrap your head around The Knife's strange little world, it's actually a pretty interesting place.

The uniformity of song structure, tone and tempo, though initially captivating, soon becomes monotonous.

Another Fine Day sounds less like a party platter made by boozing buddies than a desperate attempt by yesterday's alt-country stars to slap together tunes that wouldn't sound out of place between Journey and Fleetwood Mac on classic rock radio.

A sleepy stretch of mediocrity that unfolds with lackluster monotony, Two Thousand once again fails to live up to the potential suggested by their One Time Bells debut.

True, there's a pop sensibility at work here that betrays their band roots, but that's exactly what makes this the kind of dance album you can actually listen to from beginning to end.

The Audience's Listening is kinda like a Fatboy Slim B-sides collection circa 1998 without the catchy bits.

Impressive song construction ruined by heart-wrenching dramatics.

Happy New Year is unpretentiously unique, challenging and eclectic.

There's very little here that ups the ante (or matches the highlights) of the original Illinois disc.

The spare melodies and bleeps-and-loops approach result in chillingly direct songs.

As with his last couple of releases in the American series, his voice no longer commands attention with booming authority, but there's something about that gasping frailty that makes this proud final bow even more endearing.

The songs are pretty much middle-of-the-road, generic radio alt-rock devoid of any real personality.

For every moment of cynical dance pop genius, there's a dull midtempo dirge bereft of decent hooks.

Unfortunately, Furtado doesn't have the rhyming skills, vocal chops or attitude to pull off any one of her new personae.

Whether you'll like the newest Keane offering depends largely on your appetite for melodrama.

A pretty decent melancholy pop album that deserves to be heard outside of dormitories and campus bars.

The production bangs, and there are many references that'll appeal to readers of liberal non-fiction (Fast Food Nation, Chomsky, Al Gore), but some of the good Mr.'s thoughts on this future we live in are unconvincing.

Considering the expensive talent involved, this is a colossal disappointment.

With Rather Ripped they continue their slow but remarkable progression that currently finds them, for the most part, dropping old SY standbys such as long experimental noise passages in exchange for a significantly more sedated route.

As if the synthesized strings and electronic dabbling weren't sad enough, [Spektor's] ascerbic voice has been all but lost in squishy couplets about making things better and needing to "know you."

Singer Davey Havok continues to impress with his range and ability to quickly turn from a throat-searing scream to a bare-boned croon, as does the entire band's consistently exciting approach to songwriting and their music aesthetic.