So, forgive Corgan his infinite lyrical badness, but know that infinity's a lot to forgive.

Their gentle approach is justified by the fact that their songs are quite memorable, written with a sense of grandeur and astral beauty.

Electrified's rife with cardboard power chord progressions that should've been buried with all the other Nirvana aftermath opportunists.

Another Day on Earth is produced to within an inch of its life, with layers of intricate detail and the most ethereal synth washes imaginable.

In Your Honor, like most Foo Fighters records, is sterile and controlled; there is never any threat of dissolution.

For a genre that wants to evoke mysterious, uncharted territories, it's beginning to show signs of predictability, and while Odd Nosdam hews admirable results from it, it's just about time for an increasingly defined border to be pushed outward, into more nebulous territory, again.

Discover a Lovelier you isn't really even a bad album, only unremarkably OK.

The Oranges Band's playing is impressive but never flashy, and the melodies are inviting without being cloying.

Never have they turned in an effort as pretty or economical as Out of Nothing.

This all-star team of Northern European electro-house producers infuses the record with often low, rumbling bass, twitchy synths, and an oddly high-altitude light-headedness-- like floating, high on oxygen, just above a dancefloor.

Like Coldplay's two previous albums, only more so, X&Y is bland but never offensive, listenable but not memorable.

Man-Made ultimately sounds exactly like you'd expect a Teenage Fanclub album to sound, but with just enough extra to make it feel new again.

Even with a generous handful of tracks that easily rank alongside the White Stripes' best work, Get Behind Me Satan remains a confounding record, one that wears its "transitional album" tag like a heavy peppermint-striped crown.

As a career overview Minimum-Maximum far surpasses The Mix. This record's "importance" in the Kraftwerk story is up for debate, but there's no question it's a hell of a lot of fun.

In a sense Turin Brakes do little wrong on Jackinabox aside from the occasional gooey outbursts of gaiety.

She's onto some good shit here, but there's too much learning on the job.

There's nothing as great as "New Generation", "She's Not Dead", or "The 2 of Us" but there doesn't have to be, either, because the Tears have enough natural dynamism of their own to stand alone.

We Are Monster has the depth if you have the time. Yep, here's a fun record that's a work-for-it, in-the-details record, too.

Although not as compelling as his more subversive material, this softening of his sound doesn't carry the negative connotation of an artist losing steam later in his career; Callahan's distinctive baritone and cutting inflection are unchanging and iconic, and show that this sensitive appearance is just one more spin of the kaleidoscope.

There are a lot of reasons this album doesn't gel, not least that Liam Gallagher now sounds like a singing anti-smoking campaign, and the brash, snotty arrogance that once sold "Cigarettes and Alcohol" and "Champagne Supernova" is crushed out by his gruffness.

Everything Ecstatic marks his first slight step backward as a solo artist but it's hardly a failure.

The band's lack of swagger is refreshing amid the hot fussed-over convicts and misogynistic sun kings of the New Wave sphere, but it also hampers the less convincing tracks.

J.A.C. is ultimately a simple record covering well-worn territory that is no less engaging for its familiarity.

Like the Gorillaz's self-titled debut, Demon Days goes the way of most auteur projects, its oversize idea load making for a trip equal parts peak and valley. But also like the debut, Demon Days is better than it has any right to be, featuring singles stronger than anything released under the Blur banner since, you know, that "Woo-hoo" song.

Despite the new song structures, guitar solos, and drum fills, Brownstein's guitar still roars wildly, Weiss's drums still thunder, and Tucker still wails with a primal urgency that is one of the most compelling sounds in rock music today.

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Behind this happy clash of stylistic preferences is a subtly but surely revivified Malkmus, confident to experiment more deliberately than ever.

The lack of instant-gratification couplets may disappoint at first, but each verse's rewarding intricacies become more evident with multiple listens.

It's a perfect way into the world of Belle and Sebastian, even if the band spends the second half of the disc trying to redecorate that space.

As opposed to the didactic nature of the booklet, the audio portion of No Business tends more toward arch satire of the ongoing debate over fair use in digital media, creating a précis of its contradictions and ideological schisms rather than advancing a particular thesis.

With The Secret Migration, the band completely deserts the peculiarities that distinguished them from both peers and progeny in favor of a dull collection of pastoral fantasias that frequently wander dangerously close to adult contemporary.

Mezmerize's strongest moments are when the band drops the eccentricities and just rocks out.

The taught 12 tracks mark the producer's most diverse and song-based work yet.

The vaguely Brian Wilson-esque harmonies manage to keep the listener grounded as the entertaining gobbledygook passes by.

Hardly melodic and not adventurous or invigorating enough to pull off the scuzzy brassiness of its yelping forefathers, the Nein get all anguished and pissed as it alternates between grubby grunge slow jams and lo-fi oom-pah on Wrath of Circuits.

Drama in music works perfectly fine in mediated, tactical doses, but for Tourist, the stakes are unrealistically high.

The results might be a little thin on actual "essential" moments, but they're working in the right direction.

Even the most direct songs here have a precision craftsmanship rarely heard in something that is still, at heart, a rock album.

Sometimes an album is just awful. Make Believe is one of those albums.

The transition from happy teenage taunts to cursing and sex talk was probably inevitable, and quality-wise, it's a wash. It's with the sound-- as provided by producers Matt Goias and Fancy-- that you get your payoff.

Full of serious songs with sunny, heavily polished arrangements.

After the bland misfire that was last year's Achilles Heel, Headphones' debut offers some hope for lapsed Pedro-philes.

Her vocals, even on talking-blues songs like "Sweet Side" and "Righteously", reveal a woman living through all the messy frustration and unalleviated desire she's singing about.

The highs on Kidnapped are incredibly high, the lows very low, and there's not much in between.

In theory, Boredoms furthering their psychedelic side should be fantastic, and I have to admit that for sheer orgasmic sprawl, few bands have much on them. However, at a point, sprawl becomes tedious and indulgent-- and I never thought I'd say that about Boredoms.

Carousel Waltz drives a pretty flat road, without the peaks and valleys of their previous work, but that suits the grounded emotions and realizations they're addressing, skirting the line between the unaffected and mundane.

A creeper, an album of broad gestures that reveal vivid, flickering details over time, its pleasures unfolding as what it actually is gradually erases speculative notions of what it might be.

Overstuffed and vaguely monotonous, the album could be easily whittled down to a single sequence of impressive songs; Instead, it's a meandering, occasionally moving series of mid-tempo laments, some more memorable than others.

Another thrilling, excellent record.

Yet as awkward as they sometimes sound, the Go-Betweens are still writing consistently gorgeous pop songs, and Oceans Apart proves they aren't content simply pleasing their most die-hard fans; they're back to making albums that, in a better world, appeal to everyone.

This stuff would sound great behind just about any garage-rock hack, but it turns Finn's dirtbag chronicles into something epic and huge and molten and beautiful.

Here's yet another exemplary Aimee Mann album to add to the pile.

With Teeth manages to flip the script on Reznor's recent M.O. Instead of fronting like a more feminine Al Jourgensen-- hard, coarse, yet not totally abrasive-- Reznor comes across as the masculine yin to Shirley Manson's alluring yang: playful, coy, and with a flair for the dramatic.

Playfully scatterbrained.

A diverted and shapeless album that only hints at what they're capable of accomplishing.

Doughty is better off when laid bare or with a group of musicians that push him in new directions, rather than ones who simply back him.

The Ponys' playing here is taut and immaculately cohesive, and appropriately the album sports an engaging live-in-the-studio production.

There is a ton of evidence of his genius at work here.... As an album, though, The Further Adventures of Lord Quas doesn't cut it.

An exuberantly echoing starburst of lo-fi twee-pop gone grand.

So much of Bem-Vinda Vontade sounds so nice, with guitar and drum textures as lovely as anything the band has attempted. But the singing seems tacked on and the music suffers, resulting in Mice Parade's least consistent album.

When it's firing on all cylinders, Sirens' Call offers manic pop thrills that either recall the group's heyday, or slyly recalls the noise made by other people that were touched by New Order

Paper Tigers is one or two decent singles surrounded by a bunch of mediocre-or-worse filler.

There's a good album underneath all the filler-- probably the Eels' best since Electro-Shock Blues-- but it'll take some editing to excavate it.

Forget Rockin' the Suburbs; the new Folds can barely rock an infant to sleep, though at one point he tries.

Oddly, at times it seems like Darnielle works more movingly and astutely when he's inventing his tales rather than partaking in personal anecdote and/or trauma.

The virtually quirk-free Laughter's Fifth settles nearly its entire weight onto Jayne's songwriting shoulders. Fortunately, however, it's a load Jayne sounds as if he was born to tote, and here he delivers what is undoubtedly his tightest, most satisfying batch of songs to date.

She has an urbane sophistication that sets her apart from the likes of Ashanti and Nivea.

Awfully Deep makes for churning, menacing background music.

Despite their abstraction over the last few years, Autechre aren't an altogether different beast than when they started. In fact, they're smarter, more refined.

This is raw and raucous rock-- pounding drums, throttled prog riffs and breathy, hypnotic invocations.

This is Weird War at their most minimal and stoned.

The 22-20s evade most of the typical British rock potholes (i.e. histrionics, pretentiousness, unapologetic 60s-aping, among others), and can actually be taken at face value.

Armed with more ideas than should probably be legal, Architecture in Helsinki can't be bothered to dwell for too long on any one of them, and it's this fickle nature that will make you either adore them or deplore them.

The album is full of big rock guitars anchored to big rock effects, but it somehow never manages either to sound big enough or to rock hard enough.

Missing Satanic Panic's multidimensionality, the album feels like the hollowed-out shell of something great.

Martha Wainwright proves Martha Wainwright has a strong, distinct, fully formed musical identity, which would be just as impressive by any other name.

Massed vocals and backing harmonies are two of the few things the National have added to their sound since their last album, and though Alligator is satisfying and engaging, it's not quite as bracing as their stellar sophomore outing, 2003's Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers.

Musically, this debut is lovingly and exactingly orchestrated with an array of instruments-- not just the usual piano, cello, and drums, but also flute, organ, melodica, and horns-- that subtly shade the songs' emotions. Strangely, however, Hinson entertains few possibilities and seems to rely too heavily on his acoustic guitar to shape the tracks.

The upshot of these six tracks seems to be that Adult. have been listening to a hell of a lot of Bauhaus. And I have to give them credit: They've followed that impulse right out to the sweet spot.

It's a really solid record, unassuming yet memorable, subtle: It's mildly melancholy, modestly dark, and discreetly brooding.

By maintaining their singular aesthetic while venturing into more inviting pop sounds, the weirdest band from Brighton just might have become the smartest.

Most of Lost and Safe is pleasant enough but not much more.

Odyssey is Fischerspooner's attempt at kicking and screaming their way out of punchline hell, so it's a bit of a surprise how good everything sounds.

Hot Hot Heat sound like they're playing scared and playing it safe, and in doing so fall through the cracks between their established fans and their imagined ones.

Jurado is back to doing what he does best-- pairing simple, sprightly arrangements with mobile vocal melodies.

With today's cartoons darker and more violent than ever, I'm sure cartoon music could someday sound as though influenced by Suspended Animation, but I highly doubt any rock music will.

This album is weighted heavily with [Efrim] Menuck's quavering, strident vocals; a fact some listeners might reasonably regard as an obstacle. Thankfully, however, his bandmates frequently come to his aid both instrumentally and vocally.

Maddeningly inconsistent.

Though Barnes and company fail to bring this bewildering array of streams into confluence, the album contains enough flashes of such melodic invention and daredevil instrumentation that armchair travelers can't help but be drawn to the group's exotic scrapbook.

Black Sheep Boy creates a roomy and natural showcase for Sheff's high-wire vocals, and as a result, it may be the band's best album.

The happy-music-with-sad-lyrics shtick has been done often, but rarely so well since the Lucksmiths' namesakes.

Many of the songs appear to be little more than weak echoes of their similar predecessors.

Jones still croaks out songs with that wretched voice of his, an amalgam of nicotine, alcohol and AOR. The guitars still churn out feeble riffs more appropriate for a Hot Wheels commercial than a grown-up's rock album, and even when they're on to something it feels like they're only fumbling with a good idea.

Rock made on an assembly line-- predictable, economically efficient, and about as dynamic as a Model T.

Beauty and the Beat sounds like a record made by someone who once devoured the catalog and history of his favorite artists, traced their lineage as far back as he could, and has discovered his place in the genealogy. With that enlightenment, Edan is no longer an impersonation of his idols, but one of their peers.

Only two things matter here: the production, which is masterful, and Beanie himself, a virtuoso of lonely, bitter desperation.

Morrissey's singing appears to have taken a giant leap over the past seven years or so.