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.

Andorra will undoubtedly win Caribou a lot of new fans and rightfully so; it's a big, bold, tuneful collection that impresses with its ambition and meticulous arrangement.

He's made a nice to return to form, crafting a mature album that nods to his past without being a retread.

Hair finds Imperial Teen in full-bore navel gazing mode, talking both obliquely and directly about where they are and, more importantly, how they got there.

There are still bands like Earlimart, quietly chugging away in Los Angeles and preserving the West Coast sound with a spirit that's more than just curatorial, as Mentor Tormentor elegantly shows.

Their caustic, candid wit--especially in the face of such misery--keeps 30 Year Low from sounding too self-indulgent or self-pitying.

Natural, the latest in the group's long line of records, is, per Tweedy's dictum, truly post-apocalyptic folk, music for when the lights go out and hope burns only dimly. It's the Mekons unlikely "unplugged" bid.

These songs rarely sound lived in or personable; rather, they're more like museum dioramas where he can pose figures like Calamity Jane, Casey Jones, and Casey at the Bat in stiff tableaux.

Planet of Ice is better than its predecessor, "Menos el Oso," but only slightly so.

Skeptics be damned that's just what Hey Hey My My Yo Yo is, an improvement and distillation of the duo's sound.

Broder is better at details than broad strokes, and Ditherer contains some excellent ones; they're just buried in the piecemeal and decidedly indelicate songwriting.

Despite its density (they fit worlds into just nine songs), the album remains exciting and accessible, albeit highly sobering.

Molina still sounds rootless and displaced, but Sojourner triangulates a place that's as close to home as he ever seems to get.

A Place to Bury Strangers may not be easy for would-be record buyers to find--it's currently limited to 500 copies and put out by, um, Killer Pimp Records--but it's worth every effort.

Aside from a few ungainly, obvious missteps--trying to play the Scott Storch melodic game on 'Amerikan Gangster,' wasting the KRS run-in on a track that sounds like a D12 refuse pile ('Sex, Drugs & Violence')--the album is finely sequenced.

Sadly, Roots & Echoes' air of studious refinement sullies even its more cerebral material with schmaltzy gestures.

Kanye West, who once again produces the majority of the album, has tried making a tribute to Common's Jay Dee-fueled Soulquarian-era sound, and he doesn't fit it well at all, managing half of its vibe and none of its energy.

Fur & Gold sounds a little bit too comfortable for its own good. Khan is a great singer, and her band is undoubtedly competent and capable, but the record sounds like it wants to be more than it is.

1990s bring hooks, sneers and, well, intoxicants to spare, with the punched-up sheen of a production budget to boot (helmed by ex-Suede guitarist Bernard Butler).

War Stories is the most unadventurous, most typically rock UNKLE release to date.

The rest of the album is stuff he's done before and better.

The band's seemingly desperate to reinvigorate their cultural cachet, but Absolute Garbage's latter half emphasizes the depths they've fallen.

The record's most interesting bits--a keen sense of melody--disappear too quickly and can't carry the album over its production bumps.

Is Is may be their most instantly accessible release, which is not a critical dig but just a way of saying it finds a good balance between alienating and inviting, between song and performance.

While the record is far from a failure, Bishop Allen's studio revisionism also falls short of offering anything substantially new to much of the EP material.

Grand Animals may jostle for more musical elbow room, but it sounds just as preening as their previous efforts.

While Vanderslice's observations and commentary sounded fresh and fierce two years ago, the same essential message run through similarly sounding songs this time around rings hollow.

[Buyers oif the CD will] hear several solid-to-excellent songs that extend the rootsy trajectory of the Magic Numbers' fine first outing, making up in winsome intensity what they lack as far as edginess or sex appeal.

On We Are the Night, the Chemical Brothers have switched from integrators to imitators.

It's a shame that premature commercial success has sullied Editors' creativity, because <i>An End</i> contains its share of bright spots.

But all the marquee names in the world wouldn't mean a thing if the Cribs didn't step up in the songwriting department, and the trio answer Kapranos' ready-for-prime-time production with chart-gazing tunes.

Generally speaking, the choruses on Rise far outshine the meandering verses, as the band snaps into a more simple and straightforward groove that highlights the trademark Kirkwood drawl.

Far more aggressive than any other record in their catalog - perhaps a preemptive response to charges of getting old and mellow. Unfortunately, that leaves the record rather homogenous.

Admire finds the band's balance shifting significantly; the rhythm players often seem more like glorified session men than integral components of a sleek post-punk machine.

Through whatever process they use, the band has also managed to create yet another wonderfully singular indie rock record, unafraid of unfettered passion or self-sabotage, and which affirms a shrouded, hybrid style as unquestionably theirs.

Cross is a harsh and mostly instrumental set that nonetheless plays like the ideal crossover electronic-pop record. Justice knows how to sequence a dance album to avoid drag and boredom.

The economy of Ethan Johns' and Steve Lillywhite's production helps, as do the straightforward arrangements and, most important of all, Finn's most commercial and least quirky set of songs since 1991's "Woodface," or even the group's self-titled 1986 debut.

Perhaps TMBG are just happier making kid's music - even when they try to grapple with adult situations on "Upside Down Frown" or "Climbing Up the Walls" it still comes out G-rated.

The bad news is that the overwhelming vibe is still that of easy listening digital mush.

"The Devil Is My Running Mate" a weak ending for a strong debut full of the kind of confident, charismatic songwriting that just can't be taught.

Music this theatrical demands a stage. On disc it plays a bit like a conversation-starting party favor: colorful and bright, but no substitute for actually being there.

These are longstanding punk tropes boiled down and Vig-ed up, removed of their typical dirt sheen and bolstered by a couple extra guitar tracks.

At every turn Marry Me takes the more challenging route of twisting already twisted structures and unusual instrumentation to make them sound perfectly natural and, most importantly, easy to listen to as she overdubs her thrillingly sui generis vision into vibrant life.

Fantastic Playroom puts the emphasis on the content, not the trend, and in so doing makes a damn good case for post-punk's matriculation.

Even if the concept falls flat, though, T.I. vs. T.I.P. still warrants a listen, if only because T.I. seems constitutionally incapable of releasing an album full of uncompelling music.

A few songs go a little too far with the crunching stop-start bits and displays of power, at the expense of songwriting, and the closing title track reaches too hard for a grandiosity it doesn't achieve, but otherwise, this is a good album from a band whose ability to make good albums has long been underappreciated.

More consistent-- if more predictable and less spectacular-- than pretty much any other record in his exhaustive catalog.

There's a distinct lack of fun in the instrumental wankage of The Mix-Up, a bad sign for a band that has seen their results fade in direct proportion to how seriously they take themselves.

What torpedoes Build a Nation is the heavy cream of reverb and echo that drowns the vocals.

Monch might flounder into familiar indie territory if his music weren't so lucid and lively.

Good as it is to have these dudes back, their reunion sounds disappointingly anticlimactic.

The Fragile Army is an all-out orchestral and choral assault for optimism in a turbulent era, but only infrequently are the Spree's songs as memorable as their numbers.

The highest highs of Icky can't quite reach the altitude of the band's breakthrough singles, but some of that inadequacy is tempered by the group's more robust sound.

While the band has certainly grown musically, it also seems less patient and focused; much of the record feels like a hastily recorded jam session with a few superfluous electro-bobbles floating above the fray.

It can be exquisite in short bursts, but drags a bit over the course of this 16-track album, which is too homogenous in its dreamy, mid-tempo mood to justify its length.

By only gently nudging the musical formula on It's a Bit Complicated, Art Brut have succeeded in crafting a satisfying half-mature sequel, but may have only delayed, rather than thwarted, the sophomore jinx.

In Camera is an impressive debut for both band and label.

This record lacks a single guitar-driven rock song, instead spoofing saccharine dance-pop and exotic tropical genres.

Indeed, when the strings are given the spotlight, the strongest songs are created; ditherings with Theremin, xylophone, and scuttling drum machine are less impressive.

It's not so much that the songs themselves are weak, just that many of the choices made in them are.

Slapping a brand new bag on these pasty-white-dude tunes more often bombs than not.

If you're down with the diversity and can sit still while the band tears through every idea it has left, Wild Mountain Nation is a revelation from beginning to end.

Most so-called "cinematic" records earn that distinction due to some quirk of reverb or their use of space, but the Long Blondes only have modern England's typically confined, 17-year-old-from-Doncaster guitar-dudish sound. Instead, it's the songs themselves, their narratives, and their characters that speak to the band's widescreen ambitions.