A return to textbook Mekons-- from gracefully shambling country to deep-beating tribal rhythms, by way of good, clean rock 'n roll.

Zoomer is a very, very good album, but one thing it makes clear is that the songwriting aspect of this sort of lap[pop] hybrid must continue to improve.

Spoon's latest is their magnum opus to date; it takes a scalpel to the highlight reel of their career, cutting and pasting a 35-minute tour de force that ends too soon.

The problem is the production.

If nothing else, Frank's 33-minute Devil's Workshop is the punchy record that should have followed Teenager of the Year.

Loss, regret, and a minor key brilliantly permeate jangling guitars and rhythmic and tonal shifts-- and although it's no Closer or OK Computer, it's not unthinkable that this band might aspire to such heights.

None of these tracks are all that interesting beyond a listen or two-- even the best ones get tired fast.

An uncompromising, energetic monster of a record.

It's jaw-dropping, certainly, and what's more, it actually works.

After a few tracks, it becomes increasingly more difficult to ignore the pathetic lyrics and boring flows-- even the production seems redundant, bland, and horribly imitative and regressive.

They've managed to broaden the nervous-tic angst-rock of their previous band into something more readily adaptable without reducing it to mealy-mouthed pop regurge.

There's very little on Son of Evil Reindeer to perk up the ears for anyone with more than a couple Jeepster products in their Case Logic.

The results as a whole, whether fabulously disastrous or formidable, offer an aural spectacle that other 55-year-old, or even 35-year-old, rock stars should dream of wrangling.

Love it or hate it, the precious, nasal vibrato Oberst affects is the tie that binds all these varied tunes together in the end, and in most cases, it compliments the music admirably.

The album crawls from the speakers like a stabbing victim and gives up a great moan; it's a difficult listen, but the rewards are great.

Better to track down this decade's insane explosion of tangents individually than to be given a brief summary by a hit-or-miss marketing device.

What truly separates Daybreaker from other Orton efforts is its lack of emotional resonance-- moments where Beth just belts it out or where she actually seems engaged with the songs she's singing.

Despite these moments when PE shows their age, they have largely prevailed with Revolverlution by revamping the very structure of how we digest music.

The Vines get credit for ambition, but Highly Evolved covers so much ground that none of it seems convincing: there's just no emotional depth here.

Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots is a bold and inventive work, brimming with ideas and sublime moments of brilliance. But it's also unfocused and top-heavy.

Charango reeks of Warner Brothers' attempt to find a viable audience for this waning band.

Fans of Superdrag will like this, provided they're okay with more of the same.

This isn't a record, it's a portfolio: it's noisy but catchy, it lets them try out different styles, and it makes you give a good goddamn.

After the initial bustle of a few extremely strong tracks, Optometry wanders blindly for far too long.

The detached, semi-ironic delivery doesn't play well with the perky club beats.

Loewenstein's problems seem to spring from a penchant for textbook hard rock and an almost astonishing lack of range, failings that are amplified by his choice to record all of At Sixes and Sevens' instrumentation himself.

Heathen Chemistry also takes the time to cop riffs and progressions from previous Oasis hits.

Gedge seems oblivious to the fact that all the gushing critics and cliquey consumers are crowding the 60s, 70s, and 80s lounges, leaving him to hog the stage in the remember-the-90s room.