While still mostly a success, Zoo marks the first time where Ceremony do not seem 100% sure of their own identity.

Red Gone Wild serves its purpose, reminding us that Redman can still be a lyrical beast at times.

Ponytail fans will surely enjoy this relatively formed incarnation of the band's energy.

While Start And Complete happens to have been recorded in just one day, lo and behold, it turns out to be album of relatively straightforward songs, staying largely within the musical and lyrical conventions of the pop/rock universe.

By this point, it's within their rights to utilize pieces of their past in building a new present for themselves, as long as they don't half-ass it and start turning out inferior remakes of their old tunes. That's not what's going on here, and if anything, No Line is ultimately a more visceral and memorable effort than either of the band's other two 21st century offerings.

It's a member of a rock band that plays tightly controlled music stretching his compositional abilities to new instruments and more subtle arrangements. They're not all successes.

It is uncompromising, brutally honest... and adroit at melding many genres together without losing sight of the fact it is first a hip-hop record.

Although it's a top-heavy record, Waterloo to Anywhere gets stronger with each listen; the melodies come through and the energy that at first seems restrained starts to break free.

Nothing new.

Tindersticks fans will find very familiar, likable material on Leaving Songs.

On Loose in the Air, the Double has attenuated the noise and cranked up the once-obscured songs. This may be bad news for the purists, but it’s a blessing for everyone waiting for a great record from this Brooklyn band.

Black Mountain seems to have perpetrated some legitimate time travel, creating a record that could have sprung from an era of muscle cars, muscle tees, and moustaches.

Given the strength of the album’s beginning, the latter half lags quite a bit, but the occasional highlight arises.

Not necessarily a mix for ages, but a mix that's pretty easy to come back to, be it road-trips, background music, or a personal headphones-odyssey.

Songs for Singles sees the Miami band continuing to experiment with upbeat, accessible metal songs, and while not fully pop yet, the addition of a more advanced rhythm section helps offset their perpetual need to drone their guitars out. The album inches the band further to reaching a goal of good pop metal that, while seemingly impossible in 2010, is a fight worth fighting.

No More Stories… finishes Mew’s transition into the swirling, arena-rock monsters they’ve threatened to become all along, with reliably decent results, but it fails to top the blissful heights of "Glass Handed Kits" or the pop-theory class of "Frengers."

Inter-Be was good, but this record proves the band can make a sound uniquely theirs. In doing so, they've also made something far more lasting.

Finn's best songs are the ones when he's fully in the present, in tune with every emotion and every detail his protagonists might experience during a particular moment.

On the whole, Together smartly meshes thick orchestration with their lean energy really well, picking up where Challengers left off and improving in a lot of ways.

Some of the material is brilliant, though much of it only hints at the gems that would eventually make up Dilla's collaboration with Madlib on Champion Sound.

The main thing preventing Big Echo from being a very good (or even a great) album is that the bulk of it is clearly and undeniably influenced by the quieter moments from Grizzly Bear’s oeuvre.

While maintaining a slick vibe embodying the sultry lowlights of an unsuspecting loft party, Foals' Tapes are nothing particularly groundbreaking--but sure as hell an intoxicating listen.

Skipping from dizzying keyboards to bluesy guitar, this is one of Coomes's finest musical hours, capturing his muddled musings into tight and coherent disarray and focusing in on the dynamic between these two exceptionally talented divorcees.

The lilt of the melodies, the consistent surprises of the production, and of course the poetry of the lyrics are all more than enough in and of themselves to keep listeners fully engaged.

Constant Future is another fine rock record from a band that gets harder to ignore with each release, even when the album's titular problem is exactly what keeps them flying under the radar.

Though heavy-handed lyrics and ominous proclamations can be tiresome and often too taxing on the arms of music that bears them, the sheer artistry of SMZ makes the band’s messages endurable.

What Portastatic is able to achieve on Who Loves the Sun? without using vocal melodies is impressive.

In the hands of a lesser band, Six could be depressive and trudging. But Jenkins and Nathaniel build this hellish world only to fill it with sweat-soaked fight songs against all those demons and devils. And in the end, they sound like they just might have survived.

Some of the artist's best work to date.

Thematically and structurally, this record is Linkous comfortably being Linkous.

Throughout the course of Quicken the Heart, Maximo Park prove they still haven’t rectified their quivering post-punk with the anthems they are concurrently and desperately trying to craft. But despite that conflict, they can still occasionally pull it together long enough to bang out some good ones.

Sonically, the album picks up exactly where the Lips left off with Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots: heavy on the pop psychedelics, occasionally odd without being inaccessible.

The urgency and bone-deep brutality of The Sunset Tree may be missing here, but Get Lonely is a gentle, lucid and honest reality that works as a testament to Darnielle's keen instincts for situational observation.

There’s not much here that will surprise longtime fans of Krug and Boeckner’s work, although they have slowly turned the wheel and moved the Wolf Parade sound on from "Apologies to the Queen Mary."

The danger with The Errant Charm is pretty much the same as any other Vetiver album -- so many mid-tempo, strummy songs can create a sluggish effect.

Something to Tell You is so impossibly infectious that they can just about get away with more of the same this time around.

Ultimately, Trees Outside the Academy will most likely be remembered as Moore's most personal solo album, not because he sang with anymore emotion than anything he did with Sonic Youth, but because within its twelve songs he tackled many facets of music that interest him.

If you're over alt-rock, then Brazen Bull is going to do little to bring you around. But if you need a new guitar rock record, one that you can headbang to without irony, then the Cribs have delivered.

Castlemania indicates that like the most accomplished psychedelia, Thee Oh Sees are thoroughly capable of adding dimensionality to "odd"--and oddness to "pop."

What makes Fort Nightly rise above the dance-rock pack is an ear for writing immediately catchy songs.

Keys and effects -- including layered samples from the bands early recordings -- sound like the foundation to the songs, creating a fuzzy expanse that the players worm their way into.

While this does fall in with a pretty crowded lo-fi movement going on, Happy Birthday is also an unabashed pop record unafraid to wear its grainy heart on its sleeve.

Their change between 2007 and now may be incremental, but it's enough to qualify as a definite improvement on their debut.

Their chemistry undeniable, this debut could serve as a watershed for both members’ future creative outputs.

A bewildering kaleidoscopic whirlwind that retains edginess and remains splendid all at once.

That their kitchen-sink approach yielded as many wins as it did on Strapped bodes very well for The Soft Pack, oddly enough presenting a band that has proven it's more than its record collection, and possesses a heretofore unseen amount of creative restlessness.

A blistering triumph of a record.

They've all called Zonoscope less poppy and more meandering. That's not necessarily the entire case here, but don't doubt the band on this: there are fewer big singles here, and this one isn't likely to spawn multiple indie hits months after its release like the last album.

Cruising through a quieter set of cornfields than its predecessor, Celebration Castle never fully grasps the energy of Laced with Romance, but its songwriting and guitar work are equally as strong.

It has sunshine in its music that isn't clichéd, a range of songs that never let the progression slow down or stagnate, and an array of emotional explorations that are refreshing and accomplished.

For Van Etten, it's a logical next step in her upward trajectory.

Tim Hecker’s beautiful meditations are inviting but still retain the edge of a seeker that isn’t quite finished with the trip.

Like much of today's synthetic approaches, Splash reaches broadly, but his process is more substantive than his content.

It holds its cards close, but it's the kind of album that rewards patience and a willingness to dig into the album's complexity and deeply personal nature.

It’s more direct in many places, but finds a power in that directness that has led some of the band’s best music.

Dance Mother leaves many unanswered questions. But a safe bet is that Telepathe have more tricks up their sleeves.

Invisible Ones stands steadily as an encouraging signpost in Fink's career.

On a whole Salon lacks more of these emotional moments.

But for all the sonic changes and glimmers of hope, the best stuff here still sounds like boilerplate Jurado. Swift's production is at its best when it adds subtle atmospherics to the fragile melody of "Kansas City," or the dusty flourishes to the chorus of "Harborview."

Even without the quirky, theatrical pop she offered in the 1980s, she has held up beautifully after her long hiatus from recording, creating a record that is very much her own.

The sound is still layered and textured, and those gut-achingly gorgeous seamless harmonies between Sparhawk and wife Mimi Parker are still there.

That the group’s second effort, Enemy Mine, is able to accommodate all three distinct voices in only nine tracks is even more remarkable. But that Enemy Mine is a firm step sideways is less so.

What Uhlhorn has done on Fin Eaves is reconcile those influences into something unique to him; this is homage or pastiche, rather than imitation. Rather than playing different influences to different effect, Fin Eaves is a whole work, the first of the band's career.

The Wedding is certainly one of the best records this band has released and, more important, one of the better rock records released this year.

The Roots manage to craft another interesting hip-hop experiment with undun.

It feels like a resurfacing, like a promise, and it's a grand closer for this classically GBV (collection) album.

Wedren is game, and the hooks are there, but it’s been proven many times that a person can never truly go home again. It’s how far away Live From Home ends up that provides its greatest interest.

Even as Joyner drifts out into that snow, he remembers to bring some warmth along with him, which is what makes Out Into the Snow the comforting mess that it is.

Barring any idiomatic prejudices against the contemporary production techniques, there are no glaring missteps here.

Yes, believe it or not, The Get Up Kids have produced the first truly surprising album of 2011.

Given the track record Clipse have maintained through this decade with their other two albums and three mixtapes (I’m not counting the official Re-Up Gang album, and neither should you), this is a fine album, but it's still a letdown, plain and simple.

King lacks an overall cohesiveness or direction.

It is a better album than its predecessor in almost every regard, but it hardly shows Condon taking risks.

It's clear that Young Magic have all the tools and instincts down pat; even without meaning to, this album delves happily, though briefly, into pop excellence.

There's a deep sincerity here among the saccharine, and no amount of painstakingly throwback falsetto harmonies can shroud May's songwriting from its fluttering, well-intentioned heart.

Hebden seems to be using the Ringer material to delicately maneuver the Four Tet sound away from the folktronica tag that was foisted on previous releases such as "Rounds" and "Pause."

The 22 tracks on this album range freely in length from 11 seconds to six and a half minutes and a rare few would stand on their own, as the musical shifts between them can be so slight.

An air of pretentiousness definitely sits over Supernature, but this is a rather enjoyable work that surpasses most material of a similar nature.

At this point in his career, Slug seems fully aware of his own routine, and he’s either embracing it with a cheeky self-confidence (read: he’s getting boring) or he’s run out of interesting things to say but still feels like he’s somehow controversial in his honesty.

The rock was catchy, but it’s the slow stuff that flips you on your axis with its depth.

Hurricane Bar sees the group amp up the hand-clapping choruses and delivers a leaner collection that recalls everything from the Animals and the Small Faces to Hanoi Rocks and the Libertines.

They may play noisy guitar rock, but they also wear military uniforms in concert and write songs about Czech history. Man of Aran illustrates both the successes and shortcomings of that dichotomy.

Ring is an ambitious and impressive statement, and one that should help Glasser avoid that one-off attention to become a lasting artist. Its highlights are unique and mesmerizing, and the few lesser (and by lesser, I mean not flat-out fantastic) moments leave room for her to grow from here.

The band plays its own game of seduction throughout the album, giving us danceable, practically glandular beats while singing lyrics of fear and loathing.

It's been a captivating listen thus far, and will likely remain that way wherever he takes it next.

Like Pigeons before it, A Different Ship is a solid album, but one that still finds Here We Go Magic on the road to perfecting and updating their sound on a full-length album.

More than the last few albums, Wolfroy rewards this kind of close relationship between listener and performer.

The Air Force goes beyond music that you play to clear out a party; it's the album you play to let your invitees know that you actually hate them.

Brimming with the enthusiasm of a true lover of music -- jazz, in particular -- The Further Adventures of Lord Quas will appeal to listeners who don’t bring any preconceived notions of what a hip-hop record should sound like. But even for the biggest fans, the second Quasimoto record can feel uneven.

The fact that it turned out quite well makes that fact that much more satisfying, and elevates the album above mere curiosity to a possible road sign pointing towards Fuck Buttons' future material.

As False Priest beds down in its second half, the album still has a sonic charge, but the frenetic sense of discovery from the first half drifts away.

Cokefloat! is a complicated punk album, all id and very little superego. It's not juvenile so much as it is childlike, and what makes it childlike makes it heartbreaking.

Rockwell is a promising debut, and she’ll be wise to stick to the road less traveled on future excursions.

Widow City is a fascinating album. Unfortunately, sometimes it's more fascinating than it is listenable.

With Calla’s song structures and melodies more concrete, though, Valle’s desolate imagery has begun to lose a bit of its mystery, and consequently, some of its appeal.

Here the hairier, dronier doom aspects of the band’s sound have here largely been put on hold to focus on songs, and the results are the sort of mixed-bag of serious stunners and unfocused ideas that we might expect from a superbly talented and intelligent band trying to eke out a new path in the wake of a defining album.

A solid set of tunes with some interesting musical elements not typically present in Beam's dynamic.

The songs are given more room to fully explore the emotions that fill the members' voices, and the music is fleshed out to portray portraits of moments in the married couple's life.