Is Octahedron the band's best album? No, but if you dig on MV's unrepentantly "big" and meandering suite-driven concept-album thing, you won't necessarily be disappointed.

Unfortunately, all this talent behind the boards often feels like a waste because of Spektor's inability to let her songs stand on their own merits without the persistent interjection of vocal curlicues or verbal flights of fancy.

Nothing here totally upends what we already know of Hood's talents via the Truckers, but it does serve as a supplementary capsule capturing how he ticks.

She shows greater range than expected, but the clatter of Johannes' busy production too often obscures her charisma and renders her odd punk melodies sadly lifeless. She's better than this perplexing project.

Dragonslayer is a lither, more athletic Sunset record--easier to like, easier to understand.

The funny thing is that for most bands, Beacons of Ancestorship would be the very definition of an ambitious record--commanding, aiming for conceptual unity and broad scope. But this mode seems to come naturally for Tortoise, and their mastery of it accounts for the record's broad successes and slight drawbacks alike.

Deer Tick's primary shortcoming is that the band evokes authentically gutty music from the past without noticeably inserting much of themselves into the equation, achieving superficial mimesis and comforting recognition while failing to put their own stamp on their creations.

Rewild is how an average debut album should pan out. It might outstrip its ambition and wear its influences too blatantly, but Amazing Baby could be something special once it all clicks.

In addition finding new ways to snarl in their music, the lyrics go beyond mere cleverness into sharp, thoughtful introspection, making Travels a document of a creatively restless band out to prove something to themselves, and not just the fans they’ve picked up along the way.

While Ambivalence Avenue is an excellent album by any measure, Bibio deserves extra credit for venturing outside of his established comfort zone.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend the LP for anyone who can't make an hour on the treadmill, but there are a few tunes here worth hearing. Too bad you can't exactly make out who's cranking them out.

Let's chalk it up to growing pains and watch how early learnings further develop into an adult style.

God Help the Girl is a spirited expansion of some of Murdoch's best ideas, but until the film finishes shooting--set to start next year--we'll probably just have wild-ass guesses like mine as to the real story.

You can tell that these songs were shaped and sculpted and polished ten times over, the attention to detail and space a welcome step away from the often sloppy clumps of no-fi ruckus clattering up from garages and out of bedrooms everywhere right about now.

Even as the band sticks to the path of least resistance, it skirts the MOR sandtrap that sinks so many indie rock acts that manage to last a quarter century.

Even as a record of adequate, vaguely politicized mook-rock, it mostly falls flat, whether by lazy lyrics or some uninspired drumming from Galactic's Stanton Moore, who adds plenty of percussive touches like the judicious cowbell of 'Clap For the Killers' but sinks more straightforward tracks such as 'The Oath' like a stone.

Whatever the case, he and Switch are kicking off summer with an armful of perfect cookout-, top down-ready songs, like the daytime soundtrack equivalent of all of the summertime night's rooftop music that's been coming from Swedes Air France and the Tough Alliance and their new wave of American indie disciples, such as Real Estate and Memory Cassette in the past year-plus.

There is an alarming lack of imagination in evidence on Skeletons, and virtually nothing in the way of strong emotion.

Here, it stands behind so many other newly apparent strengths--a testament to the leaps and bounds Longstreth has made as a songsmith and Dirty Projectors have made as a band.

At the very least, some excellent songs lurk among these 12 tracks, and there's enough potential for debate about which are which to make The Eternal worthy of Sonic Youth's singular canon.

They've jettisoned just about anything that ever made them perversely enjoyable.

Looks like we finally got the Mos Def we were waiting for.

When taking advantage of the opportunity to be as dumb as they need/want to be, West Ryder succeeds, which is another way of saying acoustic guitars have absolutely no reason to be involved.

Like much of Rhett Miller, and unlike much oft-unctuous power pop, it's music seemingly made to softly impress rather than outright inspire.

Ranging from translucent psych-pop to pummeling garage-rock, they're alternately assured and vulnerable, direct and subtle, light and dark.

The debut album by these producers-turned-trio comes after blog-bait remixes galore, including a nice enough Postal Service-ish Vampire Weekend makeover, but there's little of those fine young Columbians' infectious exuberance here.

The shift in perspective necessary to "get" it, though, does work on that level: at the least, it's a fitting testimonial to British Sea Power's partially effective relocation of a classic film into a modern aesthetic scheme.

Kurupt seems so committed to the idea of saying not that much in a very complicated way that it's utterly compelling. Quik, on the other hand, is consistently literal, dealing in the concrete with memorable, loosely connected run-on raps.