That the least interesting material falls to the back is unfortunate, because most of the album is engaging.

Close attention reveals an album of highly varied moods and textures.

Even at its most ominous, though, the album never loses its verve or vitality. It's just one quick hit after another, a succession of aural whippets that last long after the record's over.

Though they haven't changed much in the span of three terrific albums, Camera Obscura no longer recall Belle & Sebastian; they only sound like themselves.

Most of these tracks merely feel professional or workmanlike, sincere recordings that sadly lack inspiration.

These are talented musicians-- and Vol. 2 is superior to the first disc-- but that development hardly merits owning two full albums of indifferent collaboration.

Everything about Laugh Now, Cry Later feels utterly tapped of inspiration and vitality, and Cube's former greatness only makes this exhausting slog that much more depressing.

The better part of this record is certainly charming, even more likeable than the folk that came before it... The only problem is that the magic fades.

The drab sound is a shame considering the well-constructed songs and Galia Durant's emerging strength as a vocalist.

A warmed-over stew of scrubbed-up psychedelia, scrubbed-up sunshine pop, scrubbed-up soundtrack music, electrofunk, and lounge that's all produced immaculately, right down to the "messy" parts.

There are shortcomings... When Smoosh are good, though, they're really good.

The first hour or so of It's Alive is perfect for Cars fans so diehard they'd not only pay for a live album of songs they mostly already own, but a live album 20 years after the fact with only two original members and a different lead singer.

This soundtrack is a nice surprise, exceeding expectations when it eschews the expected.

It's so gleefully over-the-top that even the most absurd and token-tortured lyrics neatly circumvent being taken at face value.

This is electric music in every sense of the word-- amplified, processed, and imbued with a neon glow.

Given A Vintage Burden's relatively standard space-blues construction, there's sure to be those Charalambides fans who will miss the levitational scope of the group's more free-form transmissions.

Herbert has outdone himself when it comes to his usual conceptual three-ring circus. But, crucially, this time he's put all that theoretical effort into his most memorable songs.

For all the great ideas and fantastic moments sprinkled throughout Peeping Tom, it turns out that Mike Patton's idea of pop is as uncompromising as his other musical notions. In this case, what's great in theory doesn't work so well in practice.

Even at its most dissonant and abstract, this record is human to the core, and if you're ready to face a few demons, it's as inspiring as music gets.

It's a sound as vital and inspirational as ever.

The interplay between lazy strumming and everything-in-its-right-place arrangements effectively rewrites the history of the garage-rock revival, drawing a line between "Last Nite" and Tom Petty and erasing the denial that "Maps" was the biggest song that scene's brief heyday produced.

Despite occasional flashes of inspiration, much of the record blends together into a whole that is somehow much less than the sum of its parts; the ingredients are colorful, but the end result is disappointingly dull.

[To Find Me Gone] finds Cabic nudging Vetiver toward the lost canyons of airy West Coast soft-rock and laid-back, country-tinged introspection, all harvested with a dreamy, narcotic warmth and just enough melodic grit to avoid a complete departure off into the twilight.

Tie on the celebrity blindfold, and Broken Boy Soldiers no longer seems like that much of an achievement-- just another case of men recreating their favorite vinyl deep cuts, if a bit more skillfully than most FM scrapbookers.

This could be the group's most accomplished record musically, but when Anthony Roman opens his yap he consigns the band's good deeds to the remainder bin.

Powder Burns doesn't reinvent the Twilight Singers' sound, but it's clear that Greg Dulli is searching for new and darker back alleys to walk down.

II is a perfectly balanced record, and its arrangements are so exact and delicate that it almost feels like one buzz of a doorbell or ring of a telephone could send the whole thing toppling over, splattering into useless bits.

But for now, basking in Pink's riptide, Wata, Takeshi, and Atsuo are 2006's balls-out riff-makers to beat.