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.

An album that turns out to be a lot more idiosyncratic than its coffee-chain marketing plan suggests.

Tromatic Reflexxions sometimes seems to work like a Fall album, wearing you down with its relentless energy.

Slow, sugary, and perhaps a little too safe, this is not quite the return that Cinematic fans will want it to be.

His post-genre American-mythos statement.

An unexpectedly varied and satisfying listen.

As producer, songwriter and persona, Dear has come into his own with Asa Breed, a bootstrapping album that not only reveals the miles walked, but an ambitious road map ahead.

Can't Wait Another Day would be easier to love if it didn't keep accidentally signposting a shortage of fresh songwriting ideas.

Even at their silliest, even when they're treading water, no one else sounds quite like Shellac, and anyone who professes to be a serious music fan without having spent quality time with the band's albums should be forced to familiarize themselves. This just wouldn't be the first record I'd force on them.

In a sense, it seems more apropos to judge Double Up as a comedy record than as a pop record.

Like those on their last album, these songs reveal themselves gradually but surely, building to the inevitable moment when they hit you in the gut. It's the rare album that gives back whatever you put into it.

Mirrored is a breathtaking aesthetic left-turn that sounds less like rock circa 2007 than rock circa 2097, a world where Marshall stacks and micro-processing go hand in hand.

The majority of the record's new tracks need to either be more focused or show more dynamic range.

Toying with sound and rhythm, noise and melody, Square is less minimalist than Hope, more fractured than Second.

As annoying as Endicott's mascara-tainted bellyaching was on the Bravery's debut, his histrionics-for-the-masses commandeer the group's stylistic direction on The Sun and the Moon, cheapening already trite regurgitations of Robert Smith confessionals by bloating them to anthemic proportions.

Boeckner most excels when he works alongside someone who provides a stronger contrast. In Wolf Parade, Spencer Krug helps provide that balance; without Boeckner's typical foil, the results remain impressive, if not quite as compelling.

It's a great debut for a band with an impressive, distinctive sound.

Five Roses reveals Van Pelt as a talented producer who knows his way around summery pop songs.

Such frequent attempts to elevate the banal into the meaningful ultimately keep Release the Stars from achieving any significant momentum and only add weight to the notion that Wainwright's shaky aim-- rather than his lack of talent-- might be his biggest downfall.

An album of unapologetic straightforwardness, Sky Blue Sky nakedly exposes the dad-rock gene Wilco has always carried but courageously attempted to disguise.

Its few missteps are well balanced by a handful of blissful, seismic bright pockets.

Gone are the gimmicky fragments and Mcluskyesque scene-jabs. The Beatific Visions is dominated by direly catchy and fully fleshed-out songs that pop like punk, lilt like country, mutter politics, and reek of the garage.

With their new album, Maxïmo Park avoid both utter disaster and absolute success by playing it safe. Nice and safe.

Where even her most divisive albums have managed to push her artistic boundaries, Volta feels limp and strangely empty-- almost unfinished.

God Save the Clientele sounds like the work of the same band, but it shows them in a new, brighter light, broadened in both sound and outlook. In terms of sonics and tunes, these changes are welcome and logical, expanding upon the sound with which they made their name without sacrificing intimacy or risking coming across overcooked.

On No Shouts, No Calls, the Krautrock-esque sonics of the band's last album have been fused with The Power Out's flair for continental pop, but it's the guitars that sing loudest.

That it still sounds mischievous and human through the band's studious chops and omnivorous listening habits is no small feat, as these qualities have eluded them for quite a while.

Mice Parade still finds Pierce working in a distinctive space, less jazzy than fellow post-rock vets the Sea & Cake but more atmospherically nuanced than typical acoustic singer/songwriters, but it's hardly the most appropriate release to bear the Mice Parade name.

Phrases like "rare talent" are thrown around all the time these days, but this compilation makes painfully clear just how unique and valuable this music is.

While the first half of the record is promising, however, the band loses steam toward the end.

The old Francis, the quirky, quipping storyteller, triumphantly returns on Human the Death Dance... to his unique blend of diaristic, down-to-earth meditations, eerie soundscapes, and loopy abstraction.

As big as the heart-swelling hooks get, though, Fields are more memorable when they let their early-1970s folk ghosts creep into the corners of their songs like dusty cobwebs.

These tracks... show an entirely new side of Wolf: one that finally puts impeccable pop songcraft ahead of lachrymose keening.

BRMC is a big, dumb band who writes big, dumb songs.

Beyond, the band's first record as the selfsame trio since 1988's Bug, benefits enormously-- more so even than fellow MA-veterans Mission of Burma or latter-day Sonic Youth-- from the years, experiences, successes, and disappointments elapsed between then and now.

Whereas her last album's smoothed-out eclecticism could be both daunting and empty, The Reminder is equally diverse yet more full-blooded.

Tears of the Valedictorian is Frog Eyes' first substantial advance since 2003's The Golden River.

A stylish but stilted pastiche, 5:55 follows a decade's worth of mostly superior homages, often involving the same artists.

Woke on a Whaleheart is a deceptively easy listen-- steady, lulling, and vehemently organic-- but consequently, it can begin to feel invisible.