Heart is a valuable pop record for those of us whose cardiac muscle hasn't stained completely black.

Throughout it's fourteen tracks, there's no doubting The Weakerthans are smart guys who keep up with literature and politics, but over the course of an entire album the band's ambitious literary posturing drowns in the bland songwriting and lack of captivating hooks.

Neither off-putting nor engaging, Client's debut occupies a rather uninteresting place in electropop's soft middle.

These songs highlight the poseur mentality and insincerity that paradoxically plagues and blesses The Dandy Warhols.

When the Neptunes step out of their accepted hip-hop box, they find their greatest success.

Their latest LP may not pack the same fortune-telling punch of their classic records, but it is nevertheless a distinctly engaging, sophisticated experience.

Earthquake Glue meets any GBV album that isn't named Bee Thousand or Alien Lanes.

Though not quite the slap in the face issued by their debut, even this album's very worst song shines a light on what's wrong with our landscape. Find it and follow.

Their bar band approach sounds as if they've taken a book of rock history and, dutifully following along, bookmarked some of the most unremarkable passages.

An enveloping, mysterious record that marries the idealism of "the future of tomorrow today" to the stark reality of the post-millennial present and finds beauty and fascination in the tussle between melody and rhythm.

[Sounds] as much like playful garage-rock as cocky Europop.

I don't think anyone who already has some notion of wanting quebec could possibly be disappointed-- it's the genre-defying psych of The Mollusk and the incongruous irreverence of 12 Golden Country Greats, and some of the madness that is GodWeenSatan, and it's a lot better than the go-nowhere White Pepper.

The downside to this is that she sounds like she’s on her best behavior; the songs stay awfully polite and sprightly for someone who’s so good at sounding sinister. The upside is that underneath that dress, ready to impress strangers, Holly’s still pretty near top form.

If his eccentricity was tamed and the pained attempts to hop genres were avoided, Luke Steele could just produce something close to sublime. As it stands, Lovers is a fairly pleasant application of some charming reference points, but please, let's stop pretending that that's good enough.

Strays lacks what what made the band great in the first place: believable songs and lyrics.

Phantom Power sees the down-to-earth Welsh band moving away from genre-hopping and rough juxtapositions, and beginning to blend their influences into an evenly spread melange that simply sounds like a highly evolved pop band.

Pole has some worrying problems, starting with the tracks featuring Fat Jon.

As ever, Topley-Bird's voice continues to be a strange and beautiful thing, but it's admittedly less strange and less beautiful when framed against this hopelessly warmed over setting.

Between Goias and Fancy's remarkable drop-rolling bass science and the girls' bratty-Brooklynite rhyming, the better singles on here wind up sounding like something unprecedented: a booty-bass record for small children.

To what some chortle is a limited palette, the Clientele adds some new instrumentation-- steel and Spanish guitar, field recordings, violin, chimes-- to create a dense yet rich tapestry of hazy pop, like Felt at their most impressionistic.

From hip-hop to no-wave, jazz-punk disco to house music to electroclash, sleek funk to crusty noise, there's a lot to cover, and Soul Jazz does the job admirably, touring the biggest landmarks and some of the interesting diversions not on the map, but nonetheless co-existing side-by-side.

Sparse without feeling empty, clear without being awkwardly straightforward, Ui can remind even the most jaded of guitar gods that what Mingus (or Mike Watt or Peter Hook) did wasn't a fluke-- the bass doesn't have to be supplementary.

From the first song it sounds rich and original.... It's as major a step as you'd expect-- really, as you'd demand-- from someone like Why?, not only for its sheer inventiveness, but the continuity that turns these lyrical snapshots into moving portraits.

My biggest complaint is that De-Loused in the Comatorium just isn't fun.

There's plenty here to celebrate for consistency's sake-- because for what they've lacked in evolution, Guru and Premier have more than repaid in reliability.

Liz Phair proves so ultimately unnecessary, it might as well not even exist.

The thing that really bothers me the most about this album is how conventional it sounds.

Suffice to say, Menomena are a hugely creative band, and with I Am the Fun Blame Monster, they've managed to make an album that's extremely accessible yet entirely unconventional.