Tears of the Valedictorian is Frog Eyes' first substantial advance since 2003's The Golden River.

A stylish but stilted pastiche, 5:55 follows a decade's worth of mostly superior homages, often involving the same artists.

Woke on a Whaleheart is a deceptively easy listen-- steady, lulling, and vehemently organic-- but consequently, it can begin to feel invisible.

The problem with Twelve isn't the staid song selection so much as this dogged insistence on staying faithful to the originals.

If Favourite Worst Nightmare is notably lacking something, it's another song like the debut's standout, "A Certain Romance".

It’s not quite the departure that Point was from Fantasma, but it feels like a natural next step.

I highly recommend that Animal Collective fans seek out the re-reversed copies of Pullhair Rubeye [available illegally on the Internet]. They are enjoyable.... But then there's, you know, the thing that sits on store shelves and costs money. And that version of Pullhair Rubeye is remarkably dull.

While some of the album's songs are terrifically cloying, I can't call it a disappointment; it's more a case of diminishing returns.

VI strips down the prog to an ingestible 2-guitar/drums setup, forgoing many of the spacey, Yes-influenced synths and flare of previous releases and instead narrowing its focus on more immediate hooks and transitions.

As evolutions go, Ode to Ochrasy makes for a particularly awkward adolescent phase, the sound of band that is outgrowing their loud-fast-rules roots but still too timid to sever them completely.

The meat of the album is generally good, with strong vocals and decent songs, but there's enough gristle on this record that it ultimately obscures some of the pleasures of listening to it.

There are a few quality tracks among these 16-- enough for a pretty good EP-- but this is an 80-minute album with at least an hour of stuff on it that sounds at best like studio outtakes.

Low on anthemic hooks and heavy on riotous noise breaks, Year Zero finds Reznor waving his digital hardcore flag high.

On Paths Taken, the Junkies sound like a band battling obsolescence and trying entirely too hard to make an impression as an inventive and therefore relevant band.

Their inability to come up with truly novel material leaves them stuck at indie's Triple AAA level both artistically and commercially.

Grinderman may be intended as a somewhat goofy reassertion of punk vigor and virility, but the disc is no laughing matter.

The political lyrics are the most troublesome.

Somewhere underneath all the high-gloss, ornamental swirlies and lacquered doilies are haphazardly camouflaged well-written songs.

Ghosthorse and Stillborn tends toward lazy, meandering nothings.

Ali's focus on his inner landscape is the rapper's greatest asset and his biggest liability.

Night of the Furies retains the urgency and emotional mobilization of Neighbors, but with a darker edge.

The emotional complexity--or rather, saddled contradictory feelings--aren't all that set her apart from her peers: She also draws on influences from outside folk which, largely due to her finger-style treatment and accompaniment choices, wind up adhering to a folk template.

This stripping down and moving away from easily definable mood makes And Their Refinement of the Decline a bit harder to grasp initially than any previous SOTL record.

Nux Vomica retains its predecessor's flair for the grandiose, but repositions the Veils as purveyors of a gothic Americana, inhabiting desert-stormy vistas that are just expansive enough to house the band's most valuable asset: Andrews' magnetic, outsize persona.

Jarvis is the record of someone losing hope, the sound of dejection turned up to 10.

Traffic and Weather finds them treading water in the worst possible way.

Flirtations with big-sky atmospherics can hardly hold these songs together. What sounds like a hodgepodge of Edgy experiments and raised-Zippo nostalgia is just that: a hodgepodge.

Little Pop Rock's acid-casual serenades... could've featured on any Mary Chain album from Darklands onward. And that's a comment on both the songs' lack of deviation from the JAMC's Sunday-morning-Velvets songbook, and the songs' consistent quality and unhurried charm.