These songs rarely sound lived in or personable; rather, they're more like museum dioramas where he can pose figures like Calamity Jane, Casey Jones, and Casey at the Bat in stiff tableaux.

Planet of Ice is better than its predecessor, "Menos el Oso," but only slightly so.

Skeptics be damned that's just what Hey Hey My My Yo Yo is, an improvement and distillation of the duo's sound.

Broder is better at details than broad strokes, and Ditherer contains some excellent ones; they're just buried in the piecemeal and decidedly indelicate songwriting.

Despite its density (they fit worlds into just nine songs), the album remains exciting and accessible, albeit highly sobering.

Molina still sounds rootless and displaced, but Sojourner triangulates a place that's as close to home as he ever seems to get.

A Place to Bury Strangers may not be easy for would-be record buyers to find--it's currently limited to 500 copies and put out by, um, Killer Pimp Records--but it's worth every effort.

Aside from a few ungainly, obvious missteps--trying to play the Scott Storch melodic game on 'Amerikan Gangster,' wasting the KRS run-in on a track that sounds like a D12 refuse pile ('Sex, Drugs & Violence')--the album is finely sequenced.

Sadly, Roots & Echoes' air of studious refinement sullies even its more cerebral material with schmaltzy gestures.

Kanye West, who once again produces the majority of the album, has tried making a tribute to Common's Jay Dee-fueled Soulquarian-era sound, and he doesn't fit it well at all, managing half of its vibe and none of its energy.

Fur & Gold sounds a little bit too comfortable for its own good. Khan is a great singer, and her band is undoubtedly competent and capable, but the record sounds like it wants to be more than it is.

1990s bring hooks, sneers and, well, intoxicants to spare, with the punched-up sheen of a production budget to boot (helmed by ex-Suede guitarist Bernard Butler).

War Stories is the most unadventurous, most typically rock UNKLE release to date.

The rest of the album is stuff he's done before and better.

The band's seemingly desperate to reinvigorate their cultural cachet, but Absolute Garbage's latter half emphasizes the depths they've fallen.

The record's most interesting bits--a keen sense of melody--disappear too quickly and can't carry the album over its production bumps.

Is Is may be their most instantly accessible release, which is not a critical dig but just a way of saying it finds a good balance between alienating and inviting, between song and performance.

While the record is far from a failure, Bishop Allen's studio revisionism also falls short of offering anything substantially new to much of the EP material.

Grand Animals may jostle for more musical elbow room, but it sounds just as preening as their previous efforts.

While Vanderslice's observations and commentary sounded fresh and fierce two years ago, the same essential message run through similarly sounding songs this time around rings hollow.

[Buyers oif the CD will] hear several solid-to-excellent songs that extend the rootsy trajectory of the Magic Numbers' fine first outing, making up in winsome intensity what they lack as far as edginess or sex appeal.

On We Are the Night, the Chemical Brothers have switched from integrators to imitators.

It's a shame that premature commercial success has sullied Editors' creativity, because <i>An End</i> contains its share of bright spots.

But all the marquee names in the world wouldn't mean a thing if the Cribs didn't step up in the songwriting department, and the trio answer Kapranos' ready-for-prime-time production with chart-gazing tunes.

Generally speaking, the choruses on Rise far outshine the meandering verses, as the band snaps into a more simple and straightforward groove that highlights the trademark Kirkwood drawl.

Far more aggressive than any other record in their catalog - perhaps a preemptive response to charges of getting old and mellow. Unfortunately, that leaves the record rather homogenous.

Admire finds the band's balance shifting significantly; the rhythm players often seem more like glorified session men than integral components of a sleek post-punk machine.

Through whatever process they use, the band has also managed to create yet another wonderfully singular indie rock record, unafraid of unfettered passion or self-sabotage, and which affirms a shrouded, hybrid style as unquestionably theirs.