The least bullshitting, most accomplished and first consistently great release from Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton.

As with his last two releases, Baby I'm Bored is gutted by under-worked, inconsequential two-minute ideas.

With these production qualities, the band is just comfortably abrasive, snagging against the mix of bent-string guitars and strange, trebly percussive clamor.

Lullaby for Liquid Pig is deceptively potent; in just thirty minutes it divines your most closely held memories, guiding you farther and farther back with endless, heartbreaking choruses.

It's mind-boggling that such sloppily arranged, barely listenable stuff is getting this kind of attention, but that's celebrity for you.

An unfortunate combination of familiar methods, beats and timbres won't overshadow the ultimately uninspiring music.

This is a guy that more than understands the music he's goofing on-- he worships it.

The group envelops the different elements of music available to them-- from folk, to rock, to Gram Parsons-influenced pop-- in such a way that is alternately enjoyable and excessively off-putting.

It's tempting to call it one of the most messily brilliant things we'll see all year, but it can't, in good faith, be recommended to everyone: if the duo's buzzy neurosis was enough to drive some people nuts before, the raw jumping and nagging of Anxiety Always will sound to many like the shoddiest, most amusical sham to be held up as a masterpiece in many of our lives.

Fruit Bats seem to be further embracing modernity and sounding great doing it.

Though it may not quite reach the peaks of 1997's The Nature of Sap, its polish and expert production make it Portastatic's most diverse and accomplished work to date.

Summer Sun is pleasant, if nothing else, but that's such a loaded word for an album that clearly aspires to (and ought to be) so much more than it accomplishes.

Because Up in Flames is so focused on big moments and aural candy, it's wise that Snaith decided to keep the record under 40 minutes. He blows you out and then packs it up.

Thickfreakness isn't quite their debut, but it's still a powerhouse, even exceeding its ancestor in total spectacle. Raw rock grandeur as so frequently conjured up on this album is hard to come by in any capacity; if that means having to overlook a few minor flaws, it's worth it.

It's the sound of innocence, like night-long basement parties spent listening to cheesy 80s rock records: derivative in a naïve tributary fashion, while still glimmering with songwriting promise.

If Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid has that lovable ten-solid-songs consistency, it's less a matter of lacking filler and more a matter of writing a lot of inoffensive but uninspiring tracks that all wander down the same avenues.

The record is experimental in the truest sense, each of its tracks signifying a possible point of departure.

Therein lies the contradiction of The White Stripes. How do you combine the shit-hot with the "twee?" Elephant's shortcomings suggests the enterprise is futile.

[An] album that, like its predecessors, is as accomplished as it is stunted, waddling wadlessly towards its intentional exile on Cute Island.

Though their minimalism might sometimes sound like straight distillation, the tunes still hit, and hurt.

No peaks, no gorges, just a steady oscillation between adequate and inspired.

At best, this record is Suicide resurrected as a novelty act; at worst it could pass for an extreme deodorant commercial with swearing.

The problem with Fear Yourself is not that it sounds big, rather that it sounds condescending to the man it's supposed to be all about, and more importantly, by.

Looking like Michael J. Fox clones decked out in garage rock gear, The D4 present aural amnesia with the lyrical complexity of an even less non-ironic Andrew WK.

The album starts to wear thin by the homestretch.

The Listener is ultimately such a strange record that it's hard to really classify; Giant Sand fans are going to love it, naturally (all twelve of them likely already own it), but people new to Gelb and his accomplices might be left scratching their heads.

I just always felt comfortable in my thinking that one Toad The Wet Sprocket was more than enough to fulfill a specific emotional and intellectual niche. Am I wrong?