At best begs to be a fan-club download, since it offers so little to anyone not Eef's bride or offspring.

While its peaks fall just a whit short of those on its predecessor, Decoration Day's inward journeys nicely balance out Southern Rock Opera's bombastic expansiveness, and further confirm the Drive-By Truckers' status as the most poetic and insightful Southern rockers in existence today.

Deja Entendu, while a football field short of groundbreaking, has an air of substance and maturity.

Despite its obviously short shelf-life, Welcome Interstate Managers is delicious power-pop, unpretentious, loose and perfect for teenagers driving down to Ocean City for the weekend.

Sumday is all glorious, throbbing heart.

For its moments of gravity and excellence, Hail to the Thief is an arrow pointing toward the clearly darker, more frenetic territory the band have up to now only poked at curiously.

What an utter mess.

The big, inescapable problem with O is that, aside from being derivative, Rice's songwriting is also unbearably repetitive-- he stubbornly relies upon time-tested singer/songwriter formulas (quiet acoustic strumming and sober, wavering vocals), and repeats them almost exactly the same way, every time.

Like all Luna family projects, L'Avventura has a sneaky way of getting its claws into you-- background music that gets stuck in your forebrain. But also like most Luna product, this little vacation from the less-talked about half of the band starts to bend under its own uniformity of mood somewhere in the second half, and probably would've been slightly better acclimated to EP length.

Leading with a ten-minute single this outrageously creative, informed and exciting, !!! have a lot to prove on their coming full-length.

A solid set of rock songs that hovers somewhere between the professionalism of Jimmy Eat World's Bleed American and your favorite slice of homegrown emotion.

The most striking improvement is her singing. She's a stronger vocalist, her almost-plain tone rising into higher registers, and her usual range has grown more earthily gorgeous. But more than anything, she demonstrates a new expressiveness.

As he tries to return to the ponderous themes of such vague nonsense as love and hate, Acey weighs the pacing of the game considerably.

Soft, warm, but still interestingly distant.

Paper Monsters succeeds in revealing the "new" Dave Gahan, and that's what makes it a faintly embarrassing listen.

They're no Basement Jaxx, and it's easy to hope for someone with more professional skills to come fill in the Audio Bullys' blueprints.

Musically and lyrically, E is spent-- out of ideas, out of innovation, unable to cough up anything but by-the-numbers pop in the fourteen originals he wrote for this disc.

This record explodes with song after song of endlessly replayable, perfect pop.

Juvenile, simpering, weak, preachy, pointless and accidentally snooty, Dying in Stereo is about as empowering as Legally Blonde 2.

This comp makes one thing perfectly clear: for a host of bands so readily compared to the same tiny stable of influences-- "sounding like a modern-day Gang of Four..."-- there sure is a hell of a lot of diversity between them.

One part Busta-lite, and the rest full-on skater bravado: Gold Chains isn't going to tear up the world of hip-hop, but he's not totally empty handed.

Zoo Psychology's refrains are faster, shorter, and more efficient than ever.

For the first time, it sounds like he sat down in a good studio and carefully assembled a record. That's good, in that Odd Nosdam's production rode out the lo-fi thing for exactly long enough before moving on; but it's also a disappointment, because the new work isn't far off from where he was before-- it recycles a lot of his ideas with none of his usual edginess.

The cache of "weird" songs on Rape Fantasy is better than the tracks collected on Staying Alive.

How the West Was Won serves up their muscle, sweaty heart and golden grandeur in an exhaustingly persuasive light. That, and a hundred of the best riffs you've ever heard.

Each track is fully realized, thoughtfully written, and prudently performed, rolled out with a steadiness that can become a little maddening after a handful of listens.

As good as "Danger! High Voltage" is, the rest of this album is simply not worth it.

Their tendency to temper their noise with surprisingly sugary pop hooks and wormy choruses is what keeps these songs from becoming pretentious or tiresome.

An acceptably underwhelming, state of the art, guitar-centric pop record.

Built on Squares is the fun and catchy work of talented pop musicians, writing terribly interesting songs without compromising pop's essential, visceral lure.

To be fair, there is redemption embedded within, a few genuinely interesting bits wedged between stacks and stacks of gooey piano ballads.

Disturbing, complicated, and enthrallingly strange, The Mess We Made requires patience, and, ideally, an already established taste for Elliott's previous ambient output.

Each of Alter's twelve tracks are structurally slippery, shifting seamlessly from style to style in a way that makes it almost impossible to accurately map their paths. The subsequent mazes can be disorienting, but it's the most thrilling brand of dementia, as well as an acute reminder of the tension and balance true songwriting prowess can build.

He set out to make a mediocre album, and succeeded admirably.

There are so many types of music he's experimenting with on this album, not even from track to track but within each song.

To the familiar, Robin Guthrie has already proven he's better than this; to the uninitiated, Imperial offers a muted exposition of his talents.

Unfortunately, about halfway through the album, the sound wears itself out, as the samey melodies edge towards the too-familiar.

The Gossip sound best when flowing through lo-fi constraints: when they don’t have a hi-hat, and the down-tuned guitar is missing string.

What gives this record its internal order, and makes it stand out over previous laptop explorations of immense record collections, is the simplicity of the other genres that he dabbles and draws upon to flesh out the beat.

Surprisingly personal and emotionally resonant, Ether Teeth is potent inspiration stretched perhaps too thin, but undeniably captivating in its moments of brilliance.

Those expecting the dense, powerful, and insistently upbeat onslaught of Mass Romantic will no doubt react to Electric Version with some degree of initial disappointment. Repeated listens, however, reveal that Electric Version not only displays Carl Newman's brilliant and unique pop sensibility, but allows it enough space to reveal previously obstructed layers of emotional depth.

One Word Extinguisher shows a range of emotional grappling usually foreign to instrumental hip-hop.

It's just straight rock and roll, really, and I mean really straight rock and roll.

From the title on down, the new CD tries hard to conjure an ambiance of languid sin-- opium, absinthe, vintage porn-- but that aesthetic is just a few steps from your average bachelor pad with a zebra throw and ceiling mirrors. In fact, that's where copies of this album will inevitably spin, a soundtrack to excruciatingly banal seduction.

There's something uncomfortably sterile about The Sea and Cake's new, seven-song Glass EP that precludes it from functioning emotionally.

With an open approach to queer sexuality and radical politics, The Smell of Our Own offers an alternative to the saccharine teen spirit we're so used to sniffing. It's a sensual celebration of stinky, real-life sexuality.

Don't just judge it as an album by a band coming off a major line-up change. You won't need to.

Counterfeit 2 correctly presents itself as a box of hobbyish bric-a-brac for friends and completists.

Song in the Air is a far more dynamic and internally cohesive record than any of the band's previous efforts.

The problem here is that, while the guys are definitely on here, they're still nowhere near groundbreaking, and as a result, they rise and fall depending largely on Karen's delivery.

In a bizarre twist, the whole becomes far less than the sum of its parts; less than anything close to a new album, less than even a new EP, and certainly less than Wire has proven themselves capable of.

It's here we enter the world of the tame, a land where Sting is king and Phil Collins is raucous.

I'm Staying Out compensates for its lack of spectacular innovation by showcasing its players' technical prowess and busting out a handful of intensely sincere performances.

This is an interesting first step into new territory, a statement of intent.

The least bullshitting, most accomplished and first consistently great release from Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton.

As with his last two releases, Baby I'm Bored is gutted by under-worked, inconsequential two-minute ideas.

With these production qualities, the band is just comfortably abrasive, snagging against the mix of bent-string guitars and strange, trebly percussive clamor.

Lullaby for Liquid Pig is deceptively potent; in just thirty minutes it divines your most closely held memories, guiding you farther and farther back with endless, heartbreaking choruses.

It's mind-boggling that such sloppily arranged, barely listenable stuff is getting this kind of attention, but that's celebrity for you.

An unfortunate combination of familiar methods, beats and timbres won't overshadow the ultimately uninspiring music.

This is a guy that more than understands the music he's goofing on-- he worships it.

The group envelops the different elements of music available to them-- from folk, to rock, to Gram Parsons-influenced pop-- in such a way that is alternately enjoyable and excessively off-putting.

It's tempting to call it one of the most messily brilliant things we'll see all year, but it can't, in good faith, be recommended to everyone: if the duo's buzzy neurosis was enough to drive some people nuts before, the raw jumping and nagging of Anxiety Always will sound to many like the shoddiest, most amusical sham to be held up as a masterpiece in many of our lives.

Fruit Bats seem to be further embracing modernity and sounding great doing it.

Though it may not quite reach the peaks of 1997's The Nature of Sap, its polish and expert production make it Portastatic's most diverse and accomplished work to date.

Summer Sun is pleasant, if nothing else, but that's such a loaded word for an album that clearly aspires to (and ought to be) so much more than it accomplishes.

Because Up in Flames is so focused on big moments and aural candy, it's wise that Snaith decided to keep the record under 40 minutes. He blows you out and then packs it up.

Thickfreakness isn't quite their debut, but it's still a powerhouse, even exceeding its ancestor in total spectacle. Raw rock grandeur as so frequently conjured up on this album is hard to come by in any capacity; if that means having to overlook a few minor flaws, it's worth it.

It's the sound of innocence, like night-long basement parties spent listening to cheesy 80s rock records: derivative in a naïve tributary fashion, while still glimmering with songwriting promise.

If Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid has that lovable ten-solid-songs consistency, it's less a matter of lacking filler and more a matter of writing a lot of inoffensive but uninspiring tracks that all wander down the same avenues.

The record is experimental in the truest sense, each of its tracks signifying a possible point of departure.

Therein lies the contradiction of The White Stripes. How do you combine the shit-hot with the "twee?" Elephant's shortcomings suggests the enterprise is futile.

[An] album that, like its predecessors, is as accomplished as it is stunted, waddling wadlessly towards its intentional exile on Cute Island.

Though their minimalism might sometimes sound like straight distillation, the tunes still hit, and hurt.

No peaks, no gorges, just a steady oscillation between adequate and inspired.

At best, this record is Suicide resurrected as a novelty act; at worst it could pass for an extreme deodorant commercial with swearing.

The problem with Fear Yourself is not that it sounds big, rather that it sounds condescending to the man it's supposed to be all about, and more importantly, by.

Looking like Michael J. Fox clones decked out in garage rock gear, The D4 present aural amnesia with the lyrical complexity of an even less non-ironic Andrew WK.

The album starts to wear thin by the homestretch.

The Listener is ultimately such a strange record that it's hard to really classify; Giant Sand fans are going to love it, naturally (all twelve of them likely already own it), but people new to Gelb and his accomplices might be left scratching their heads.

I just always felt comfortable in my thinking that one Toad The Wet Sprocket was more than enough to fulfill a specific emotional and intellectual niche. Am I wrong?

The sparse and largely unobtrusive music, and Jurado’s wanting vocal range place the emphasis on storytelling, one his strongest assets. The results, however, are a mixed bag.

It's as much the arrival of The Jicks as it is the rebirth of Stephen Malkmus: The band has become a grounding force he can push and pull from, a safety net allowing him to take risks.

All eleven tracks on Bad Timing are gems that balance a knack for brain-lodging choruses with the grime and stylistic drift of Exile on Main Street, begging a record collection's worth of comparisons with nary an instance of outright thievery.

They've still got angst to spare, but their wit has been ground down by 'maturity,' or whatever you want to call it, into a bitter thing that saps a lot of that reckless energy.

The songs, interludes, pacing and sequencing are all as they should be, helping to make Quicksand/Cradlesnakes Califone's best record.

Though Mull Historical Society is an act one could easily file under "pleasant-enough pop," at 13 tracks (plus a bonus disc!), MacIntyre's strictly 80bpm velvet-lined melancholia will test the patience of any Anglophile.

In short, if your favorite bands aren't played between Audioslave and Foo Fighters on modern rock radio, Cave In probably isn't one of them.

Burn, Piano Island, Burn balances so perfectly between commercial appeal and untainted creativity that it's as if the band have been digitally inserted atop a mountain no man could conceivably climb.

Like The Clash before them, The Libertines draw primarily from decades of rock tradition-- blues, dub, a healthy whiff of the English countryside, and a few gorgeous rock riffs straight from the brainstem of Chuck Berry-- and fuse them into an unruly and triumphant monster of an album.

Skimskitta isn't particularly strong or potent, but it's relaxed and smooth enough to induce a very mellow, mild buzz.

With a bloated 60+ minute runtime and some truly misguided dabblings with e-bows and saxophones, Log 22 presents Bettie Serveert at their most self-indulgent. And it's not pretty.

It's an unrefined, poorly calculated mess.

Awful as it might be, Oskar is not easy to dismiss because awfulness has always been a part of Momus' gambit.

Diamonds on the Inside's breathless Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock whirlwind is tiring, at best.

Beans twirls and stretches his language, depicting the life of a poet-rapper, heavy on non-traditional boasts and battle rhymes. But he lacks the gulping, deep tone of former APC cohorts Priest and Sayyid, which means the beats usually usurp his rhymes.

The band's new sound is nothing short of painfully, achingly banal.