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.

I've rooted for these guys because they nearly achieve that fine mix between tackiness and genius perfected by bands like T. Rex and the Darkness. Unfortunately, I can only give them points for effort.

With all the column inches and message board posts arguing about whether M.I.A. is an opportunist or a clever contextualist, genuine or a fraud, full of good intentions or no specific intentions at all, the closest thing to a truism about Arular is that it's a taut, invigorating distillation of the world's most thrilling music; a celebration of contradictions and aural globalization that recasts the tag "world music" as the ultimate in communicative pop rather than a symbol of condescending piety.

Although Tchad Blake's mixing is a fabulous constant, his consistency means the weaker tracks are revealed for what they are: solid formula-followers lacking the elusive intangible charm that an unexpected note or rhythmic tic can bring.

This is a solid, intelligent album that a lot of people will love-- one that'll slot onto indie-crossover CD racks right beside the debuts from Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, and the Futureheads.

In developing into such a formidable flock, the Decemberists not only have far outstripped those ridiculous comparisons to Neutral Milk Hotel that dogged Her Majesty, but have also allowed Meloy to widen his lyrical scope and hone his ambitious narratives.

If Moby has accomplished anything with Hotel, it's that he may have become the rare musical artist equally despised by both of modern music criticism's warring camps.

A huge success, a fresh-sounding record that doesn't feel too obviously indebted to anything that's come before it, much less like anything Out Hud have made before.

Whether Herren is using Surrounded By Silence to spread the word about some of his favorite acts, or to insta-build a portfolio of outside production work, or a little of both, it's a much different-- and far more inconsistent-- affair than previous Prefuse efforts.

Lullabies occasionally evokes early Black Sabbath and nods to a few psych-rock stalwarts but, like most Queens' records, it's oddly unclassifiable. It's also troublingly inconsistent.

Here A-Frames teeter on the line between consistency and monotony, falling mostly on the former side-- their endless doomsaying can grow tiresome but more often it's fun to play along.

Songs like "Vesuvius"-- not to mention "Rambunctious Cloud" and "Gnats"-- have depth, a cagey charm, and an elusive mystery that demand not just repeated but aggressive listening. Chesnutt and his collaborators don't make that level of attention easy, but they do make it worthwhile.

Naturally, the double-album's peaks occur when both members' ideas intersect.... With these moments, Hella back up their ambition with impressive amounts of ingenuity and elbow grease, creating a White Album for disgruntled Gen Xers still finding solace in shoeboxes full of NES cartridges.

A mess of an album.

Proves a better retrospective than the equally matter-of-factly titled The Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

Too many songs proceed from point A to B with little variation or depth. Those tracks seem to equivocate between the collagist Fog and the pop Fog, reconciling their tensions instead of exploiting them.

Sounds like a step backward.

Gira's songs have many one-of-a-kind nuances that tether the album even when it ventures.

Their penchant to recreate the music they love leaves little room for innovation, and ultimately the album has the freshness of an unearthed time capsule.

Despite the boundlessness of their instrumentation, Akron/Family maintain remarkable warmth... playing at restrained volumes that invite close listening.

All Yr Atal Genhedlaeth lacks is the unifying ambition of the great SFA records.

Where the weight of expectation and precedence get to have a say, this feels like not just a failure, but a heartbreaker.

It's deadly entertaining in bursts-- especially if you pick out the right bursts.

But forget about style and charisma: This band has no hooks and no energy.

Wind in the Wires is like Bright Eyes' Digital Ash in a Digital Urn if Nick Cave had made it, a fertile nexus of tradition, technology, and Wolf's powerful pipes.

The Evens positively brims with revelations, not least of which is the consistent effectiveness of MacKaye's singing voice.

Sadly missing here is Ash's sense of vulnerability, a key element to their charm.

Kasabian is brash, loutish, and seems liable at times to cut you; the consistent kick drum beat throughout it is like a great party's heartbeat. But like the roustabout in the corner, drinking all the lager and scratching up your old records, it can be more loudmouthed than substantial.

A restful wash of clean, simple lines, unfractured beats, and neon-tinted melodies.

It's fantastic stuff-- at its best, the innate catchiness of Hersh's writing gets a shot in the arm from her cavalier vocals and musical caterwauling.

No Wow steps up to the promise of their EPs and debut LP, a boisterous reminder that kids can still hook up to songs that are little more than a guitar and attitude.

Set Yourself on Fire is about breaking up and breaking down, and as such the album feels wontedly cathartic, like the moments right after you hit your emotional nadir and start getting your shit together. Stars handle the mood delicately with few slip-ups; my only complaint is that they never handle much of anything else.

Forget the details: The sheer comfort of this stuff can charm just about anyone, from the rock bar to the office to your grandma's house.

[An] entertaining, varied rock record.

Hurricane Bar has diluted the two things that made Mando Diao's first album distinct: immediacy and a sense of fun.

Sounds a hell of a lot like Stereolab.

The Massacre's best tracks have 50 dropping club-clatter and gangster lean to show us the mind behind the six-pack, gat, and Teflon.

In the three years since Last Broadcast, Doves have cultivated a better understanding of their strengths and limitations, and Some Cities beams with a revivified looseness.