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.

A homogeneous shitheap of stream-of-consciousness turgidity.

The album tries to conjure the anchorlessness of travel, but instead it sounds oddly weightless, floating by pleasantly but unobtrusively and rarely demanding your attention.