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.