Come Feel Me Tremble suffers for its lack of cohesion.

While the record fails at living up to the hyperbolic critical proclamations of London Calling's second coming, it does make for a pretty decent, if somewhat unexpected, sweat-soaked finale for The Clash's legendary golden boy.

They rival The Shins, or The Magnetic Fields, or any of the innumerable indie touchstones, but what truly sets Who Will Cut Our Hair apart is the near-total absence of traditional verse/chorus/verse framework in their songs; to nail beautiful, memorable lines with such remarkable ease is a feat unto itself, but to do so in essentially formless compositions is a different class of achievement entirely.

This perceived, grand-scheme "Importance" of Echoes is irrelevant: what matters is that it wants you to get off your ass and work it, and that you will be thrilled to oblige.

Not simply an excellent album, Chutes Too Narrow is also a powerful testament to pop music's capacity for depth, beauty and expressiveness.

Coral Fang impresses not just by some nebulous "punk" standards, but by the standards of just about anyone who wants to be rocked gently out of sleep by the dulcet tones of thrashing guitars, pogo-friendly love songs, and possibly the most compellingly forceful female punk vocals since Exene Cervenka wailed her way out of the nihilistic abyss that cartographers call "L.A."

Each new direction leads into a wall or dies for lack of momentum.

There's plenty of Minutemen twitch, Dog Faced Herman tick, Bikini Kill bossiness, and a cleverly wrapped polemic that even recalls the Desperate Bicycles' delicious DIY rhetoric.

Yes, it sounds quite a bit like The Books' debut, but it also sounds like nobody else. The Books remain more or less a genre of one.

Though still often warm and tender, Sleep/Holiday lacks the surprise or the diversity of some of their better work.

Some of these remixes are truly excellent, and some of them are disastrous.

It's a brilliant ambient musical experience-- you can tune it out if you choose and it'll still enhance your surroundings, or you can engage yourself fully and allow it to positively hypnotize you.

This is the band's most beautiful record, an expertly arranged blend of their acoustic old school country augmented by pedal steel guitar and bowed saws and sometimes colored by elements of mariachi, gospel, and rural folk.

Swallowed whole, Autumn Was a Lark can seem sonically disjointed, but it's also an apt representation of Portastatic's ever-roaming muse.

Unfortunately, Hold on Love's more serene moments only weaken the lure of their more intricate and involved songs, ultimately underscoring the group's true strengths.

Do Make Say Think have presented us with their best work yet, a varied and unpredictable album capable of imparting the chill of the winter and the warmth of celebratory joy to you without ever presenting you with a human voice.

As could be expected, the production is sharp, and the song structures are tightly wound and delicately unraveled. The problem is that the effort as a whole is too slick, and its charm suffers as a result.

Manages to ignore the essential art-rock flourishes of Sound-Dust, and in fact, [has] done away with anything even remotely interesting or new.

You don't often come across a modern album that sounds so damn old.

In many ways, Some of My Best Friends Are DJs is little more than a brief comedy album, filled with strange samples of eccentric characters pontificating on their record collections and audio systems.

On one hand, Dear Catastrophe Waitress ranks as one of the most delightful surprises of the year, although that's primarily because I'd completely given up on them. On the other hand, it's a very flawed record that at its quirky worst features harmonies so brow-furringly cheery they'd be comfortable amidst a cruise-ship revue or one of Up With People's halftime routines.

Replace crackling vinyl and subwoofer bass with somber piano and mournful cello, and all you're left with is... well, a pretty goddamn miserable woman who happens to have a great voice.

There's an undercurrent of darkness on this record-- particularly in Olsen's on-the-verge voice and lyrics-- that ultimately prevents the band from ever wheeling too far out of reach.

A career low.

We sound like everyone's favorite old rock bands, we have insipid lyrics, we say 'Come On!' and 'Oh Yeah!' every five seconds, we have no discernable identity, and we're from Australia. What could people possibly dislike about us?

Transatlanticism dulls the edges of their usually acute divinations.

The Young Machines will rank among your favorite albums if you're someone's mortifyingly jaded ex, but if you come to it craving electronic vocal-pop keeping pace with anything north of Jimmy Tamborello's shoulders, you'll end up frustrated by the simple and repetitive violin bits that drive the big retro beats.

As a technical achievement and as a piece of pure sound, The Civil War is inarguably Matmos' best record.... [but] there's less of an emotional core here than on previous offerings.

Since LFO hardly need to be innovators to produce a good record, I don't have much problem recommending Sheath, with the caveat that when pleasant, easy-going atmospheres set in, sometimes amiable disinterest on listeners' parts follow shortly.

Though it's no masterpiece, With the Tides is certainly a good record. At the very least it should ease your Britpop jones better than Menswe@r.

A top-heavy album, with his best material-- the more operatic and unconstrained works-- all unfolded within the album's first half hour.

The subject matter here is repetitive, pseudo-intellectual pandering runs rampant, pointless skits and mid-song dialogue sessions interrupt the flow, and most importantly, wasted beats fall at the hands of Slug's newfound penchant for verse-long tracks and poorly realized singsong bridges.

The beats on Fatherfucker are not only frustratingly simplistic, but the energy and surprising rhythmic complexity of the vocals on her debut are noticeably absent, too.

Even if it won't hit you on the first listen, Bazooka Tooth remains a strong outing from one of underground hip-hop's most talented, thanks to its unprecedented wealth of lyrical depth and truly individual production style.

Plays like a big, half-drunken romp through golden-era rock 'n' roll-- airy and thrilling and shifty as hell.

Costello has eschewed all sense of melody and humor in favor of rambling, mock-jazz noodling.

Awkward and poorly realized.

Halstead's knack for stunning arrangements is in top form on Spoon & Rafter, and in this capacity, his music remains compelling, if no more or less than on any of his previous trilogy of Mojave 3 releases.

Big Boi's Speakerboxxx coolly upstages its counterpart: though it, too, provides the world with one earthshaking single, it differs from The Love Below in that it also manages to maintain consistent brilliance and emotional complexity throughout.

Stellastarr's bold, cinematic sprawl demands a certain kind of tolerance, and might require a few listens before you're able to fully adjust to its dramatics, but Christensen is, in the end, an oddly convincing leader, and, if nothing else, you'll at least be stuck to your headphones trying to guess his next move.

Unfortunately, The Fire Theft actually sees the band indulging in ersatz approximations of Yes and Genesis' epic odysseys much more deeply.

Badu keeps the proceedings here buoyant and relaxed with that supple-lipped scat of hers, stretching out scant syllables at her lounging, loopy leisure.

So Team Boo turns out to be a surprisingly respectable junior-year effort-- one that puts Mates of State in the small minority of indie-pop bands that don't fall under the one-album-and-out rule.

What they do well might be best exemplified by "I Believe in a Thing Called Love", which most effectively pairs their sense of theatricality and grandiosity with their penchant for great pop hooks.

This is as close as Bowie has ever come to simply "pretty good" in his storied career.

After forty minutes of two-chord strumming, the band's unique approach becomes exhausting.

They aren't inept, amateurish or even exactly boring, but their parlor music takes a slow and emotionally neutral path that almost fights against engagement.

Stricken by the same backward-looking guitar worship disease that seems to have struck many in the indie community, the relentless string-bending and beer-bottle slides can't help but sound like stale recidivism.

For the most part, the tracks hang together and flow relatively well, orbiting the shimmering dreampop mass that serves as the record's unstated inspiration.

BSP's performance art antics and throwback posturing come with a distinct set of innovations and surprises, and The Decline of British Sea Power proves that BSP have the song-power to back up their bullshit.

Temptation is strong enough to stand with any of Byrne's other solo work, that rare film score that works beautifully as an entirely separate record.

An album by turns beautiful and possessed, by others raucous and fiery.

If you can make it past the album's frustrating layout, Hocus Pocus proves a fine collection of songs by pretty much anyone's standards.

Even in its most inspired moments, Amazing Grace lacks the fiery intensity of any of Pierce's previous outings.

Colin Meloy's songwriting makes them one of the strongest bands working today.

Everything is intricately wrought and calculated, perhaps in an overly accommodating response to fears of linearity. This fashionable awareness lends an almost palpable weight to the sound. It succeeds in adding depth and texture to the album, but sometimes overshoots the mark.

Paling in comparison to the Pixies is expected (and it would be unrealistic to expect otherwise), but Tears isn't even a good Catholics album.

The album exists in that scarcely inhabited rock-and-roll world where technical prowess coexists peacefully with clear and simple songcraft, the former never forgoing the latter.

In trading the adolescent kick of Secaucus for ripened resignation, meticulous refinement for crippling maturation, they have realized their magnum opus.

If you think intelligence in indie lyrics must come at the expense of coherence, take in a couple of these impeccably linear narratives.

Fortunately, there are a handful of transcendent moments to be found, provided you're willing to invest the time it takes to sniff them out-- which you should, since this is one of those records that matures with subsequent spins.

Each of the dozen laments on Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers balance catchy choruses, exquisite instrumental interludes, and the complex words of a man's grieving.

Ultimately, Chain Gang suffers from a lack of depth, but it's not so painfully hollow that listening isn't kinda fun.

All told, it may be the best set of songs Rouse has yet to offer.

Heart is a valuable pop record for those of us whose cardiac muscle hasn't stained completely black.

Throughout it's fourteen tracks, there's no doubting The Weakerthans are smart guys who keep up with literature and politics, but over the course of an entire album the band's ambitious literary posturing drowns in the bland songwriting and lack of captivating hooks.

Neither off-putting nor engaging, Client's debut occupies a rather uninteresting place in electropop's soft middle.

These songs highlight the poseur mentality and insincerity that paradoxically plagues and blesses The Dandy Warhols.

When the Neptunes step out of their accepted hip-hop box, they find their greatest success.

Their latest LP may not pack the same fortune-telling punch of their classic records, but it is nevertheless a distinctly engaging, sophisticated experience.

Earthquake Glue meets any GBV album that isn't named Bee Thousand or Alien Lanes.

Though not quite the slap in the face issued by their debut, even this album's very worst song shines a light on what's wrong with our landscape. Find it and follow.

Their bar band approach sounds as if they've taken a book of rock history and, dutifully following along, bookmarked some of the most unremarkable passages.

An enveloping, mysterious record that marries the idealism of "the future of tomorrow today" to the stark reality of the post-millennial present and finds beauty and fascination in the tussle between melody and rhythm.

[Sounds] as much like playful garage-rock as cocky Europop.

I don't think anyone who already has some notion of wanting quebec could possibly be disappointed-- it's the genre-defying psych of The Mollusk and the incongruous irreverence of 12 Golden Country Greats, and some of the madness that is GodWeenSatan, and it's a lot better than the go-nowhere White Pepper.

The downside to this is that she sounds like she’s on her best behavior; the songs stay awfully polite and sprightly for someone who’s so good at sounding sinister. The upside is that underneath that dress, ready to impress strangers, Holly’s still pretty near top form.

If his eccentricity was tamed and the pained attempts to hop genres were avoided, Luke Steele could just produce something close to sublime. As it stands, Lovers is a fairly pleasant application of some charming reference points, but please, let's stop pretending that that's good enough.

Strays lacks what what made the band great in the first place: believable songs and lyrics.

Phantom Power sees the down-to-earth Welsh band moving away from genre-hopping and rough juxtapositions, and beginning to blend their influences into an evenly spread melange that simply sounds like a highly evolved pop band.

Pole has some worrying problems, starting with the tracks featuring Fat Jon.

As ever, Topley-Bird's voice continues to be a strange and beautiful thing, but it's admittedly less strange and less beautiful when framed against this hopelessly warmed over setting.

Between Goias and Fancy's remarkable drop-rolling bass science and the girls' bratty-Brooklynite rhyming, the better singles on here wind up sounding like something unprecedented: a booty-bass record for small children.

To what some chortle is a limited palette, the Clientele adds some new instrumentation-- steel and Spanish guitar, field recordings, violin, chimes-- to create a dense yet rich tapestry of hazy pop, like Felt at their most impressionistic.

From hip-hop to no-wave, jazz-punk disco to house music to electroclash, sleek funk to crusty noise, there's a lot to cover, and Soul Jazz does the job admirably, touring the biggest landmarks and some of the interesting diversions not on the map, but nonetheless co-existing side-by-side.

Sparse without feeling empty, clear without being awkwardly straightforward, Ui can remind even the most jaded of guitar gods that what Mingus (or Mike Watt or Peter Hook) did wasn't a fluke-- the bass doesn't have to be supplementary.

From the first song it sounds rich and original.... It's as major a step as you'd expect-- really, as you'd demand-- from someone like Why?, not only for its sheer inventiveness, but the continuity that turns these lyrical snapshots into moving portraits.

My biggest complaint is that De-Loused in the Comatorium just isn't fun.

There's plenty here to celebrate for consistency's sake-- because for what they've lacked in evolution, Guru and Premier have more than repaid in reliability.

Liz Phair proves so ultimately unnecessary, it might as well not even exist.

The thing that really bothers me the most about this album is how conventional it sounds.

Suffice to say, Menomena are a hugely creative band, and with I Am the Fun Blame Monster, they've managed to make an album that's extremely accessible yet entirely unconventional.

Perhaps the duo is just second-tier to begin with, or perhaps they just let the needle swing too far towards the rock side of the dial, but the peak moments on Scorpio Rising offer little more than enjoyable nostalgia for overhead-projector light shows.

This disc is aural aloe.

By the end of the album, Tricky returns to acting on his worst impulses, stumbling through hackneyed sonics and wincing lyrics.

Yes, it's all fairly predictable.

The Stephen Kings of menacing post-rock, it seems that in absence of Young Team's glorious cacophany their tremendous build-up often comes to nothing. And it sounds as though they've come to terms with that.

The further away from the 'Lab and into a more organic sound the band goes, the more satisfying their music is becoming.