Sometimes bludgeoning, always regal, Blue Cathedral is a calcified, hippified holy place.

Marks the first time the band's sound has taken a step backwards.

In its punchy production and eagerness to mix hard rock with boppy little guitar leads and cheeky catchy choruses, Kiss & Tell is a direct throwback to that fertile crossroads between thickheaded 70s AOR and the pop/new-wave nexus of the early 1980s.

Simply put, this album sounds absolutely huge, its relentless attention to detail eclipsed only by the stunning emotional power it conveys.

Kings of Convenience would do well to assimilate more of Øye's electronic leanings into their original sound, rather than merely mining sad troubadours past for inspiration and leaving these tracks as sparse source material for the obligatory remix album.

With one part arched eyebrows and droll wit, and one part melancholia and sharp social observation, the Sisters' debut is bursting with golden moments.

As much as Ladd continually references the past, from Dr. Livingston and Picasso to Minor Threat, Funkadelic, and De La Soul, he moves the air with a beat that's entirely his own, the sum of too many parts to reflect any one too prominently.

It's not innovative, but it's deliberate and economic, with no filler and an inviting dose of Sly Stone-derived soul.

One could hardly expect a three-disc set of Low's castoffs, demos and flipsides to dazzle.

DEP is still struggling to re-establish a unified and compelling sound, and their newfound penchant for melodic exploration seems out of place amid the album's most inspired thrash moments.

An extremely listenable, laughable album, a futuristic freakshow of deep, stirring melodies and innovative beat arrangements.

The exuberant overload of Blueberry Boat will thrill and transport you with the ineluctable force of a great children's story, one whose execution matches its imagination.

The band's sound benefits greatly from DeLaughter's realization that not every instrument always needs to be playing at once.

A batch of songs guaranteed to be huge hits as soon as we're all sucked into a giant time warp and plunked back down in 1974.

Not a bad album, yet contains too many mediocre tracks to be comforting.

The bicoastal milieu of Out of the Shadow is apparent: It reflects both a lush, sunny "California Dreamin'" temperament, and Gotham's grimy, melancholic disposition.

Its majority carelessly regurgitates the painful cliches of "enlightened" hip-hop's critical and commercial darlings, while the band falls back on their organic hip-hop sound as a gimmick and piles on guest appearances to disguise their lack of creativity.

Doesn't extend the sound of the band's debut so much as inflate it.

Invoking Disintegration is ridiculous, but The Cure is remarkably more thrilling a listen than the band's most recent guitar-heavy predecessors.

It's essentially a one-trick sound, but here, they do a better job of adapting it to their post-dated needs than they did on previous albums.

What For Stars lack in originality they overcompensate for in emotionality.

Spacesettings is liquidated, hookless, and entirely flaccid.

The tracks on The Concretes are easily their most accomplished, fluid statement to date.

As another impressive portion of his potent '04 output, Will to Death's immediacy and quality should quiet the critics-- particularly those who pegged his early solo records as the work of a narcotics pain-train washout.

In the end, the ambitious misfires and pre-coffee drowsiness of A Ghost Is Born don't ruin the album entirely-- they only serve as distractions that make it much more difficult to excavate the band's strengths from the surrounding detritus.

Detractors will be sure to note that In a Safe Place can feel numbingly repetitive at moments, but all that expansive diddling contributes equally to the record's allure: Like rolling past the North Pole or through West Texas, this record plays with its own redundancies, building an entire universe from strange, barren pieces.

No doubt, Chilltown consistently delivers solid hip-hop cuts. But in comparison to his 2002 release React, Sermon's well of creativity might be running dry.

One of this year's most interesting records.