Overall, there's a strong sense of exploration on Sawdust; if the Killers don't seem to have much intuitive understanding of balance and songcraft, the overproduction at least suggests a strong musical curiosity underlying their obvious career ambitions.

More than ever, DEP have songs. They're also the band's most colorful to date.

I can attest that the music really does move forward similarly to my own metabolism, gradually building, holding a modest climax in the middle, and ending on a long, fluffy comedown. [Review of UK release]

Musically, American Gangster is lush and spacious.

[[Hafsol' is] ten minutes of bliss that should keep the faithful satisfied until the group reconvenes and produces something new, resuming the road to parts unknown instead of dusting off the path that leads back to where they came from.

Williams' ostensible depthlessness, like that of his forebears, is itself only a façade, and Smoke offers plenty to discover across repeated listens--particularly the way in which he tweaks his own voice, melting and reshaping it like the models' Technicolor "tears" on the album cover.

Top-heavy with sad string passages and mournful vocal loops, Untrue is an album meant to be heard at home, in the car, on headphones-- his songs feel almost like beautiful secrets being whispered to a listener.

And though their passable guitar parts-- all choppy downstrokes and wiry, insistent clangs-- lose their exuberance as the record stretches on, for at least the album’s first six tracks, they are played with such adolescent gusto that it's hard not to be won over.

Favoring the easy gravity of images and ideas over well-crafted sounds and stories, Situation finally drowns in its nostalgia.

Teenager is gloomy without feeling fatalistic; melodic without feeling facile. For the Thrills, a quick locale change has managed to yield impressive results.

Nation is saved from being a total failure at its close, with 'Deft Left Hand.'

Though having one good trick in the bag keeps him from becoming a mere oldies jukebox like so many other 40-year rock vets, the sampler platter of Chrome Dreams II suggests his renowned versatility, by comparison to its cult-classic ancestor, ain't what it used to be.

It's fun to hear Black Dice go straight for the jugular throughout the aptly-titled Load Blown, and hit the mark every time.

On La Cucaracha, possibly out of a debt to realism, the duo has mostly chosen material founded on notions of placidity (or, in the case of "Friends", erased much of the original color), purposefully disallowing their own music its previous vitality.

The problem is that while Hourglass has Gahan sounding a lot more assured and competent as a songwriter, it's also too much what you'd expect of him.

This is an album's album, magnetic over the long haul, as Raposa's careful, nuanced tension between placidity and chaos accrues force.

Even at 46 minutes, Preparations is wearying; it's the same Prefuse tricks once more, with less feeling.

Elegies to Lessons Learnt is an undeniably effective 50-minute ride, but it's also rather coldly mapped out.

Unfortunately, though, while they sound brighter and more alive than they have in a while, their default mode still leans a little too heavily on Hyde's increasingly silly beat poetry and the kind of unashamedly booming drums that haven't sounded exciting since, well, 1997.

Make Sure They See My Face is overdressed to impress when easing up may have been the best way to ease back into the public consciousness.

What makes Live so disappointing isn't that it offers too few shots of the band they were, but so many glimpses of the band they could be, if they were more adventurous in hi-fi.

Pull the Pin might be going for the uncluttered "production" of older Rick Rubin, but instead it cops the sterility of newer Rick Rubin, each song lumbering on a chassis of waterlogged tempo and Jones' wooden melodies, begging for just about anything to grab you.

In a year of low-stakes disappointment for European pop, Overpowered is a triumph.

The brilliant In Rainbows represents no such thing [downshift]. Nonetheless, it's a very different kind of Radiohead record. Liberated from their self-imposed pressure to innovate, they sound--for the first time in ages--user-friendly.

It's not until the last few tracks that Harry finds her best collaborator--naturally, it's former Blondie bandmate and paramour Chris Stein.

Flying Club Cup would be a triumph even with those layers stripped away; that's not to say that the cultural patina obscures the "real" songs underneath, but its removal allows us to sidestep mind-numbing questions about authenticity and intention.

It all sounds cleaner and more accessible than anything they've done in the past, but that might actually be part of the problem.

But while Random Spirit Lover is dense and thorny-- even opaque, at times--it's never haphazard.

Even if Cease to Begin is a little creaky and uneven and even if it never finds the resting spot the album title promises, Band of Horses do guitar-based indie very well--well enough, at least, that the next generation of American indie bands may bear comparisons to them.

Along with wry, sometimes melancholic observations worthy of Richman or the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt, these elements make for Lekman's best record, one likely to captivate even those who were skeptical of his previous releases.

Unlike "Ok-Oyot System," Hera Ma Nono credits all songs to the band, as opposed to individual band members, and no doubt the results sound more cohesive as well.

Delineated acts aside, the disc maintains a certain sonic consistency, carefully balancing discord with grace; the structure does pay off, however--particularly the first two-thirds.

Leaner and more direct than its predecessor, "Hocus Pocus," few fans will be disappointed with Grass Geysers...Carbon Clouds.

While We Are the Pipettes often swells and soars... it doesn't come near the symphonic grandeur of the best of 60s girl pop. At its best, however, these pocket-sized songs still burst with verve and vitality, mixing heart-pumping melodies with carefree, almost conversational vocals.

It's a success, without doubt.

If Magic revisits the subject matter of previous career crests, it unfortunately recalls "The Rising" in its sound: Brendan O'Brien returns to the producer's seat, once again shuffling most of the E Street Band to the music's margins and focusing his attention squarely on the Boss.

They may not be doing anything especially new, but Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings are the very best at what they do, and they've made another excellent album.

Although Good Arrows is aimed in the direction of a synthesis between the band's two predominant elements, the result misses the target by just a bit.

On the right day, at the right time, the album's powerfully claustrophobic intimacy is more palatable; on the wrong day, at the wrong time, in the wrong frame of mind, White Chalk may be the longest half-hour in the world.

They're sounding less and less relatable, leaving us pining not just for the days of a little grunge trio from Seattle, but for the relentlessly catchy and charismatic Dave Grohl of the Foos' still-fantastic self-titled debut and the better half of "The Colour and the Shape."

The Shepherd's Dog is Iron & Wine's most diverse and progressive album yet, a deft transition to a very different sound that explores new territory while preserving the best aspects of Beam's earlier recordings.

It's not so much that the quality varies, but that a bloated, lethargic feel permeates the record.

Beyond the Neighbourhood is the sonic equivalent of a beautiful coffin.

The rest of Washington Square Serenade ranges from good ('Days Aren't Long Enough,'a duet with wife Allison Moorer) to merely serviceable ('Red Is the Color').

Growing more staged, warier, and a little less playful with age, Stars don't quite match the wily rush of "Set Yourself on Fire" here.

Like its predecessor, In Our Nature is a collection of sparse acoustic recordings. But it's a more thoughtful and atmospheric work than either "Veneer" or last year's "Stay in the Shade" EP.

While this is certainly not a great record, it probably has broader appeal.

It's tempting to write Stephens off as self-obsessed (which, in all fairness, places him in a long line of beloved singer-songwriters, from Bob Dylan on), but nonetheless, there are some compelling melodies here and more than enough commitment.

It's to the Weakerthans' credit that their lyric-driven songs can be, in a way, useful, at least by helping reassure the sentimental souls with whom Samson's deftly told stories resonate. Still, they're rarely as striking here as on the groups' previous albums.

Yet another standardized LP of glorified Dave Matthews tunes.

There's definitely something new going on, and most of it comes from the seductive voice and lyrics of Ambrogio.

LaVette is a proud interpreter, and even back in her earlier days she was covering David Bowie and Neil Young, but on Scene of the Crime her choices are a little less NPR-friendly than they were on the all-female critics darling roster of "Hell to Raise."

If these songs constitute the Cave Singers' most pronounced attempts at transcending standard folk tropes, it's the gentle, percussion-free lullaby 'Helen' that ultimately proves most successful.

Shocking Pinks' DFA debut is an auspicious one by a young artist who knows as much about loneliness as he does noisy pop classics.

It sounds good--Brown's detached, wispy/gritty voice is pleasing as ever, and I like a pop string arrangement as much as the next guy--but it doesn't add up to much in the end.

Once Upon a Time in the West is pretty dull itself.

Trees Outside the Academy is, in fact, a song-based album--and they're good songs, too.

Spirit If… offers jams that don't really jam, acoustic ballads about fights and lies, and lushly orchestrated songs that come together effortlessly while cracking up hopelessly.

The problem with Asleep at Heaven's Gate is that the second half isn't nearly as strong as the first.

The entire album sounds like a half-hearted compromise between what the group was and what the group wants to become.

Akron/Family have stepped into the light for the first time with Love Is Simple, and the results alternate between gawky and deeply enjoyable; the record is bursting at its seams with lovingly and vividly realized ideas culled from a broad selection of prior works.

It's not Les Savy Fav's most immediate record, nor is it their best.

If you aren't already in the know, though, let this serve as some sort of wakeup call to the Oakland band's best collection to date.

The Last Sucker isn't as huge as "Psalm 69," but it is Ministry's most exciting record since.

Even at its prettiest and most accessible, The Western Lands is still a very insular, sometimes uncomfortably intimate album, and listening to it is akin to sharing a tiny but comfortable space in Talbot's closed little cocoon.

When it comes down to it, there's a very poorly kept secret about this band that will likely determine what you think of Dark On Fire: some of these lyrics are just borderline retarded, combining rhyme-first, ask-questions-never couplets with more arson imagery than a Thursday album.

50's new album is a blatant rehash--a bottom-line sequel that insults the same audience it mindlessly panders to.

The album's second half is slightly more abstract than the catchy pop that precedes it, but these moments are tempered, causing the record to feel more focused.

While it might not be as substantial a record as we're used to hearing from him, it is his greatest leap forward, and further proof that few are as skilled at tracing out the complicated contours of pride, success and ambition as he is.

Proof of Youth mostly recaptures the enthusiasm and unique sensibility of "Thunder Lightning Strike," further filling that niche for lo-fi sample-based old-school-noise-rap we never knew we needed filling.

Much of Happiness Ltd. suffers from one of the cardinal sins of radio-ready rock: stuffing unmemorable verses between overblown choruses.

Bluefinger is the best overall solo record Black has released in a long time, but it's still only good, not great.

'Rue the Blues' is easily the most euphoric thing here, with that banjo-tuned-guitar, um, pickin' up a storm, I guess, and Sullivan opening his throat when he sings.

Rise Above will drop plenty of jaws, and, like Deerhoof, Dirty Projectors are restructuring rock on a compositional level rather than a sonic one.

Wiley has kept his formula mostly intact: skittering, hiccuping bounce rhythms, synths that sound like a turbocharged Super Nintendo with a subwoofer attached, and a manic, borderline-toasting flow that plows through everything in its path.

SMD's excellent debut album as a stand-alone group, Attack Decay Sustain Release, is for dancing, not moshing.

Help Wanted Nights finally finds Kasher challenging himself again, imposing constraints and seeing how well he can work within them.

While Yow's performance is consistently excellent, it doesn't always seem to further the cause of the music; there are too many moments on Love's Miracle that effectively reduce Qui's extremely talented instrumentalists to a backing band and the inimitable Yow to a sideshow.

If there's a gripe to be had with them, it's that a surface listen reveals a whole lot of lovely tones and not much else, and Autumn of the Seraphs is just as uniformly gorgeous and tasteful as any Pinback record.

Pollock is clearly in her comfort zone here, both vocally and musically.

Good Bad Not Evil is the record where naysayers, disinterested friends and acquaintances, and anyone else within earshot has to sit up, shut up, and listen.

The sound is as warm and rich as could be expected from a craftsman of this caliber--David Piltch's upright bass tone alone should be bottled and sold to the highest bidder--but musically and melodically Civilians falls short of making much of a connection itself.

The more succinct songs on North Star Deserter sound like a return to the dark woods after years in the city.

Unless you're a diehard retro-rock fan, you might want to leave this figurine in its natural environment: on the shelf.

The album is not as wholly satisfying as either "Clandestino" or "Esperanza," mostly due to a handful of truncated, underdeveloped tracks toward the end, but it's still full of excellent songs and inspired collisions.

Harris reduces pop's limitless possibilities to one-joke self-parody, his youth his most distinguishing characteristic, an unremembered yesterday always more vibrant than today.

Going Way Out With Heavy Trash is a lot of things-- wild, aged, loose, dangerous, ridiculous, respectful-- but it's not a joke. Even if it is kinda funny.

If it doesn't quite confound like "They Were Wrong" or thrill like "Drum's Not Dead," Liars still finds the band ignoring whatever you thought you wanted or needed from them, and doing what they damn well please.

Beats-first, lyrics-second people have enough here to return to, and lyric freaks know there's plenty here to unpack.

It was a mistake for VHS or Beta to subjugate their dance beat into a perfunctory structure for the guitars to smash against; the riffs sound like they're there for their own sake, biding their time and waiting for a moment of catchiness that never really arrives.

Madson finally strikes an equitable balance with Level Live Wires, a tightly constructed soundscape that hangs together more cogently than anything he's conceived to date.

Calling them wack MCs isn't saying much though--they're the only MCs of their kind, competing only against themselves. No wonder they make music that sounds like it was made in a void: heart in the right place, perforated with off-key singing and C-grade rapping.

On We Are Him--Gira's sixth and arguably most engaging album as Angels of Light--he lands some of the best of those complete releases.

The abbreviated runtime of Places Like This makes it seem as though they could have given their ideas more space to breathe, rather than piling them up like a stack of pancakes.

Kala is clattering, buzzy, and sonically audacious.

Challengers tracks end with uncharacteristic whimpers instead of bangs.

Either they're utterly serious about their flirtation with the mainstream or they're taking the piss with a wink. In both cases, the songs suffer a smothering slow death by context.