Where Folkloric Feel opted for cobwebby murk, National Anthem of Nowhere dovetails in bright, tidy corners. It's at once straight-laced and funky in the way that only indie rock can be.

An album that hideously disgraces the band's original work.

A lot of Make Another World doesn't stick the way good guitar pop should.

It sadly turns out to be an unsettling piece of evidence that he's lost without someone else's pre-existing sounds to extrapolate from and transform.

Whether she's giving the rhythm section a cigarette break, trying to approximate the sound of an anesthetized New Pornographers, or adding the same sort of pseudo-dancey Casio flourishes that have colored her work since the first Azure Ray album, Taylor never fails to instill the same sense of inescapable inertia throughout.

In the end, what makes The Foley Room Tobin's best album in seven years is the way his bent for organized chaos manifests as a deft control of every sound that surrounds him: Anything's a beat, everything's a break, and the difference between sound and music is entirely contextual.

That the songs are essentially interchangeable 8-cylinder rawk is one thing; that they begin to clearly resemble the long-forgotten, acid-coated Eastern-revivalists Kula Shaker is something more distressing altogether.

Track by track, the disc's a sweet thing, but as a whole it's about as light and wispy.

Despite all the haunting vibes, woodwinds, and honeyed strings, rock music's guitar/bass/drums dynamic is dominant on Rust; it hovers between the rambunctious clatter of Broken Social Scene (which shares two members with DMST) and the elegant contortions of Jaga Jazzist.

If Dälek didn't have all this discordant float working for them, they'd be one of the most irritating rap groups in history.

A loose, warm, and human-scale record that sounds pretty nice right out of the gate.

Hold it by its edges and the experience of this album suffers––the rocky center is where we find personal truths writ well.

All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone is the musical equivalent of a late Woody Allen film (possibly a good or bad thing, depending on your temperament): The action unfolds predictably, but the dramatic effect can also be increased by your fondness for and familiarity with the idiom.

Atlantis strives for a patchwork cohesiveness, with equal parts neo-soul, reggae, rap, and rock, bound by a vaguely spiritual message and partially elaborated water-related extended metaphor.

An admirably cocksure debut on which Levi makes like a 21st century T. Rex-- which, our current retro-obsessed rock culture notwithstanding, is not an easy thing to pull off.

While there's nothing wrong with a predictable approach when deployed with expertise, it's disappointing from a band like the Frames.

Much of Numbers feels melancholy-by-numbers, so melodies seem recycled, riffs feel tedious, and the emotional register dampens.

It's an interesting middle ground the band reach here, touching upon many previous bases while not favoring entirely the guitar tomfoolery or the smirking electro-rock.

As good as the record sounds and as capably as he immerses himself in assorted flavors pop, there remains an odd sense of distance to Conn on record.

Swift's merry melodies and uninhibited sensitivity draw equally on the immaculate piano pop of Carole King's Tapestry and the strummy self-awareness of Jackson Browne's early Asylum Records releases, but it's his noticeable theatricality that sets him apart.

The Dark Horse shares [the debut's] deliberate sense of pacing, precious attention to detail and hermetic sound-world atmosphere; the difference here is that almost every song builds to a crucial moment where the Besnards bravely step out of the shadows, and in the process, transform from being a merely good band to a great one.

Aqueduct's most relaxed numbers are the strongest, where guitar, piano, and synth fuse in rare harmony.

My issue with Copia-- the thing that keeps this record from greatness-- is Cooper's approach to piano.

The most enjoyable High Llamas record in over a decade.

With Ash Wednesday, Elvis Perkins has emerged as an assured, fully-formed cosmopolitan able to merge readily recognizable influences with a sense of theatre too often missing from the legion of similarly-intentioned performers.

Unfortunately, In Advance isn't an EP, and things falter a bit past the halfway mark.

Like Mum on a smaller scale, or a lightly medicated, loose-lipped Four Tet, his introspective songs sway hazily from image to metaphor, between yesterday's folk and tomorrow's digitalism.

She spends so much time rambling about her pain that she never bothers even to try to make us feel it.

Tones of Town may lack the swooning immediacy of its predecessor, but it still sounds like a labor of love.

While these [linking tracks] suggest Schneider's appreciation for the short-form work of electronic music pioneer Raymond Scott, they stop well short of giving Wonder the thematic consistency it seeks (and needs).

When A Weekend in the City comes bursting out at you with a gaggle of second-album upgrades-- new tricks, new scope, new arrangements-- the bulk of them sound like good ideas: They've been executed by hard-working professionals.

There are building blocks for something fantastic in most of these pieces, but only in two of them have they been used to make more than the sum of their parts.

While Lerche remains a promising young songwriter, Phantom Punch doesn't quite fulfill that promise.

This is comfort music, and comfort never goes out of style. And while the aura of dreamy romantic abstraction is the same, Svanängen distinguishes himself from his peers on the structural level.

Certainly they want to expound upon the past, not to replicate it, which makes Like Love Lust their most adventurous album to date, and in some ways their most calculated and self-conscious.

And that's the odd thing about this collection: If it provides people with a bridge into appreciating Ono's work, it won't be by making it more accessible.

Their most focused and fully realized effort yet-- an album that adds an imperial hugeness to the teen noir and garage-y psychedelia of their past efforts-- and one of the better pop records we've heard this year.

There are too many special effects surrounding the messages-- Craig B's penchant for preadolescent vocals included.

In terms of a debut record-- and especially given the weight of expectation placed on her to deliver something special-- Alright, Still isnâ??t anything else but a fantastic success.

If Some Loud Thunder isn't as consistent as the debut, it's an adequate follow-up that contains a handful of fantastic songs, a handful of uneven ones, and a handful of duds.

Maybe some thought Busdriver sounded self-satisfied before, but he used to sound one step ahead of the listener instead of running to catch up.

Excusing the album's inherent garishness, 666 expands Hella's core sound to new heights that, although at times hard to stomach, finds the band both at their most playful and regimented.

A slippery, engrossingly genreless take on the old theme of desolation in the city.

While Cryptograms presents its own obstacles, it's easily enjoyed as a whole. Memorable melodies and an awkward, charismatic narrator are often peeking from behind the dissonance-laden mists that self-consciously choke them.

For all the possibilities suggested by their debut album, Clinic are threatening to become the sort of rock band of which you only really need to own one album, and that album remains Internal Wrangler.

Deerhoof, an indie band who have released plenty of discombobulated pop and no wave albums, have lately turned toward accessible, foot-stomping rock. It worked on The Runners Four, but it works better and quicker on their new album, Friend Opportunity.

The results are cohesive almost by default, considering how monochromatic the bulk of the disc comes off. Yet monochrome by design isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially when you're out to challenge rather than entertain.

Wincing the Night Away is a lovely and well-executed album and-- for the first time in the band's career-- nothing more.

An astonishingly good late-period record from Of Montreal that's as uncomfortably savage in its depiction of breakup psychology as it is relentlessly catchy.

Friend and Foe follows through on the potential of their unique sound, proving their wildly great debut was no fluke.

F&M's coy pose comes off as somehow original.

Kind-hearted and disarmingly earnest, Doiron's music remains as resistant to curmudgeonly critique as it is to over-exuberant hype.

If their debut explored the space within, the Earlies' latest, The Enemy Chorus, peers into the void of the final frontier, with a similar kitchen-sink approach and more of the krautrock sprawl that characterized early singles like "Morning Wonder".

And though In Stormy Nights-- with its numerous false leads, over-the-top presentation and undisguised self-indulgence-- can hardly be said to be a perfect work, one has to admire and celebrate Ghost's determination never to step in the same river twice.

Hersh produces the record herself, and she doesn't do her compositions any favors.... Still, her voice has that edgy intimacy it's always had.

Over the course of the record, the resonance of the melodies gradually overrides the initially distracting phrasing, revealing a sometimes exquisite folk-rock album.

Their influences are all immediately recognizable and their songs all hummably predictable, and yet their Merge debut, I Can't Go On, I'll Go On, reveals the band to be confidently inventive and assured in their collective identity.

Is Rob in a Mellow Mood occasionally predictable? Sure, but there's nothing promised here that isn't delivered on, no premise underachieved.

The record fits snugly into a certain nameless musical genre that can be found in martini bars and designer-label boutiques the world over, a mish-mash of recognizable sounds and influences that's enjoyable but ultimately hollow.

Everything about this album is half-assed: From the bafflingly bare packaging to the at-times miserable mix, True Magic is a mess.

More than Illmatic, it represents the real Nas-- not the ideal-- the MC with all the skill, all the rhymes, and all the insight who sabotaged himself with bad decisions.

While More Fish is far from worthless, it's still a diluted product.

Each track offers something worthwhile, yet none raises any question as to why it ended up here.

Throughout The Inspiration, Jeezy shows a muddled desire to transcend the clichés he helped create, to create further complexity without ever resolving it.

One step forward, three steps sideways, one step back, The Sweet Escape continues in Stefani's proud tradition of being caught somewhere between the vanguard and the insipid.

In Ciara's effort to prove herself a diva, her second album flails, bloated with spoken-word interludes and boilerplate pop & b that obscures some truly good songs.

An album that's sonically deep, dark, and one of 2006's finest.

Raised in a library of music and having already dissected his influences, Rollie takes confident first steps as Cadence Weapon.

He's grown up, alright. With the energy Jay brings to most of these tracks, you'd think 30 was the new 60.

Like the best work of its participants, Beast Moans is no pornographer's rubdown; it delivers on its tease.

Love is turning everyone into an audiophile, then, which means it's making younger people a little older. And it's also a mashup remix, which means it's making older people a little younger. They were just a pop band, yes, but if anyone can bring all these music fans together under one tent, it's the Beatles. Which is what Love is ultimately all about.

The end product, neatly compartmentalized into three style-segregated discs, is about as perfect a summary of Waits' appeal as can be found on the open market, a shadow greatest hits that offers testimony to his unique and diverse talents without recycling any of his album material.

What the album actually does is present a calming looseness-- nothing shocking or obscure, and better for it.

By the last two discs, the songwriter finds more success in being less reverent.

Disbanded in their prime before they grew stale or flat, they still feel pregnant with promise, tantalizingly unfinished; like an actor cut down in youth, they've remained an irresistible lure to the imagination of pop romantics ever since.

The people who hear this record will split into two crowds: The ones who think it's silly and precious, and the ones who, once they hear it, won't be able to live without it.

While the band once pushed forward with a strength that seemed to surprise even them, So Divided ultimately feels scattered and flaccid.

As rap music, The Doctor’s Advocate is good; as tangled psychodrama, it's better.

Whenever Rice risks truly touching us emotionally-- say, when he's asking a former lover, "Do you brush your teeth before you kiss?" on "Accidental Babies"-- he undercuts himself with go-nowhere melodies and formulaic arrangements.

It's difficult to slag a folk album for being unoriginal, but the letdown here is that Milkwhite Sheets sounds uninspired at a time when so many musicians are digging treasure from the same ancient, mist-shrouded hills.

Get Evens is as quiet and pretty as its predecessor, but the effortless ease is gone, replaced by a sort of busy anxiety.

A vibrant living record whose nervy, protean spirit pushes it miles beyond mere alt-rock radio nostalgia.

For every moment that Sov's supreme wit and impeccable cadence is fitfully showcased on Public Warning!, there is a moment when her gifts are squandered amidst anxious beats that try to compete with her huge personality.

Pretty Little Head is better than her debut. It's less showy, more confident, tighter, lacking antics-- it's confounding stylistically, just as her debut was, but less an act of throwing ideas at the wall.

Nothing here sounds like it's been fully thought out or planned, and Songbird sounds all the better for it.

Strangely, all the missing elements and nostalgia-grabs that make the first half of Endless Wire such a sad listen organize themselves into a form that is faintly exciting for the second part.

Despite a couple brief dull spots, the ingredients are so carefully selected and masterfully performed that the collection creates a pretty endlessness, existing at its best as one long take of dark-n-stormy post-rock.

The album's overall flow and structure is decidedly disjointed, with a scattering of tiny, demo-quality tracks adding virtually nothing to the record.

The group is a conglomeration of influences that, while pleasant enough, doesn't rise above being anything more than a mixing board of cool-sounding favorites.

While the album isn't arranged chronologically, listening to it as such reveals the series of intuitive leaps between lo-fi bedroom folk that emphasized monotonous gloom and cacophonous samples to comparatively laid-back country biased toward majestic arrangements and electronic beats.

Do they embarrass themselves? Not in the least. But they do raise the question of why this album even needs to be heard outside the band themselves, and why it should be in stores.

While +/- are sharp songwriters and capable mimics, they've gone through one more transformation as a band without arriving at a destination. That said, they remain a step ahead just by their modest ambitions, impulsively coloring and pushing their songs past the comfort level, always adding some detail to keep the listener's interest.

Calamity shows Cohen struggling to balance his twee pop tendencies with experimentation, the same thing Deerhoof mastered on The Runners Four.

Born is his blandest, most non-descript offering yet. Even the so-so Have You Fed the Fish? seems like a masterpiece in comparison to the downtrodden piano banalities that slosh all over this latest nadir.

It's an overwhelmingly agreeable record, if one that's not always gripping.

The sheer size of Hello Everything's scope dictates it's a bit of a sprawling beast, more a collection of moments than a cohesive record. Nonetheless, it's a consistently enthralling listen.

Surrounded by young artists, it's remarkable how well Jansch avoids buying into his myth. The kids add spirit without the avant tendencies of their regular gigs, and Jansch seems rightfully at ease and assured with this new band.

The heavier quick-change songs push several different buttons at unexpected moments, but the more straightforward songs, the ones that should glue the record together, flounder.