Cannibal Sea's saccharine pop flirts at times with levels likely to cause diabetic seizures in the biggest Cardigans and Komeda fans, but the band does a good job of maintaining the album's balance.

I really struggled with whether Van Occupanther's literary, slightly nerdy, Ren-fair-leaning lyrics were more of a help or a hindrance to the album.... But at least Midlake risked the ridiculous.

Me and Armini merely falls short of being as fully conceived as the astonoshing "Fisherman’s Woman."

It's highlighted by an invigorated Kweli who's back to his old sound-bombing ways.

Love Remains shows that Krell is definitely adept at delivering feelings, but there's more than a couple of tracks that could use a little more personality.

Musically and melodically, this is the best work Green has ever done (even counting The Moldy Peaches -- which isn't to suggest for a second that Jacket is the superior record). Lyrically, though, it's the same old Adam Green bullshit.

This is not his best record, but it does have a couple songs that rank with his best.

At worst, McEntire renders the songs on Man-Made a tad monochromatic. Most of the time, the production and songs come together seamlessly.

Truthfully, after the first four songs, there's nothing about Challengers that isn't an evolutionary step forward for the band, making the sequencing even more nonsensical.

The album certainly has its moments, but on the whole it's bogged down by too much middling material.

By all accounts, a solid album; it’s just that we have come to expect better from someone with such a flawless back catalog.

Impeach My Bush is Peaches' best effort yet.

When looked at from afar, 8 Diagrams is far more of a success than it is a failure, and years from now, when it is fully removed from the drama and hype, it just may sound even better.

For all the excitement and dramatic tension of the opening tracks, Condon himself seems unsurprised by his songs the rest of the way, and you might find yourself reacting the same way. Pleasantly surprised at first, then just pleasant.

Most of the material is as impressive in sound as it is atmosphere.

Excerpts takes it one step further and expects audiences to linger on the great tidal shifts of memory happening in our minds every day. If we manage to lodge ourselves within his cause, Alary has a whole world behind a world to open up to us.

Replicants is solid, displaying the conflicted inner workings of a sonically agitated man, even if its restlessness makes the album feel too frenetic at times.

Cahoone has delivered another confident, solid record.

CAMP is an imperfect album, to be sure, one that both succeeds on its incongruities and occasionally stumbles on them.

After repeated listens, the fact that the end of the album doesn't live up to the beginning really starts to stick out.

Survival Skills is a call to arms, and a poetic, uncompromising one at that.

The Outsider shouldn't be framed as the second coming of a masterpiece but as a stepping-stone.

It’s admirable that Auerbach would want to start looking outside of the limitations he and fellow Key Patrick Carney put on themselves at the jump by bringing in a full band to augment his sound. But there’s not much on Keep It Hid to enjoy that couldn’t have come from the Black Keys.

For all the talk that's been made recently of Bazan's own struggles with alcoholism and faith, it's telling that on Branches the strongest, most evocative tracks are those that, in the singer's beautifully worn and warm delivery, choose, in essence, melody over meaning.

Galactic Melt is a joyfully faded and distorted take on electro experientialism. Get sucked into its wormhole.

Though the album doesn’t develop a theme throughout listening, the all-star analogy holds up.

He offers soem new aspects, as well, most notably the refined production techniques, which give the album a warmer, more polished feel.

Hold on Now, Youngster... succeeds where the band does hold on: to genuine emotions, to vulnerability, to a cohesion that threatens to shatter under the pressure of self-deprecation and relentless skin-pounding.

Levi's gift lays in kitschy nuance that is inherently pleasurable. And by diving into more conventional songs on Never, she loses a bit of this endearing personality.

Bleariness and monochrome sexual appeal are more popular than they were when The Raveonettes first broke, so you wonder how they'd be received had this been their first record, not their fifth.

The thing One Life Stand has going for it though is its thematic cohesion. This is an album about demanding commitment (from your bros, partially, but mostly from your lovers) or at the very least hoping for it.

An album adhering so strictly to a simple formula can't help but become redundant.

Few mainstream artists can hope to produce an album as wonderfully weird as The Sweet Escape.

Carey has made a debut record that is both solid in its own right and hints at the promise of great things to come.

The Future Crayon... succeeds in being just as captivating as the band's proper albums -- or perhaps even more so.

Control and ambition can go together, and Meiburg proves that, in the right hands, the combination can yield some exciting results.

The End of That feels like something built with the intentions of making a grand statement, but it comes up a few great songs short. Honestly it's pretty remarkable for what it attempts.

Those who credit Benson with the poppier side of the sonic stew cooked up by the Raconteurs can probably make a pretty good case for that notion based on his solo outings, and What Kind of World is no exception.

As its name implies, Snowflakes and Car Wrecks is meant for winter listening. But the open space on this EP is good for curled up meditations in any weather.

Shout Out Louds have long been a case for the positives of going singles-only, and they probably keep that reputation here. But by a minor degree, Work is Shout Out Louds' finest album-length statement.

Axis of Evol remains yet another solid release from the Black Mountain frontman.

It showcases an artistic range that had been up to this point unexplored.

The Looks is prevented from achieving classic status due to its derivative nature, but its finds success in the Daft Punk formula all the same.

When the proudly worn tropes – the irascible low-life characters, the working-class heroes – show up to break up the life-affirming stuff on Dream, they're an afterthought (the jokey “Outlaw Pete”) or worse (heretofore never to be mentiond again "Queen of the Supermarket" is, well, really fucking terrible). That's why the finest moment of the album is "The Wrestler."

While the frequent use of echo and the isolation of each instrument lend the record a spare quality, Strange Weather, Isn't It? is hardly akin to Bowie and Eno's emotionally stark Berlin Trilogy. Instead, the album sounds like a band trying to regain its footing by returning to its fundamentals.

Spoils contains enough perverse and engaging lyrical quirks to make it worthy of investigation, and who can resist lines like: “And here’s the dowry of the leper/ A walnut shell and a peck of pepper” (from 'Hazel Forks').

The album feels unfinished, but not totally incomplete--instead, a documentation of something altogether mystical.

Coming on Strong is one smooth record; even with all the glitch, all the bleeps and bloops, and all of the genre bending, it never leaves any residue behind.

It’s all pretty cohesive, yet the album relies too heavily on its slick production and lyrical arrangements.

Break it Yourself dodges the feedback of erring too closely to its own sources--but not all of it soars.

Overall, though, Days is a great sophomore album and solid evidence that Real Estate is growing and ready to settle in for the long haul.

The Orchard is the sound of Ra Ra Riot hitting for the middle, delivering 10 tracks of deliberate orchestral-tinged indie-pop that'll hit you in your 2007-era blog-rock pleasure center.

For the Whole World to See is not the true revelation the label wants you to think it is but it has some catchy melodies and delivers them at breakneck speeds.

The band's accomplishment on Fear Is on Our Side is that no matter what direction the song goes, the journey is always worth it, the ending is a satisfying resolution.

The Cardigans probably still won't shake the one-hit-wonder reputation... but Super Extra Gravity proves that the group deserves more respect than that.

A tight, orderly marriage of the pastoral and the psychotropic -- plenty precise, but short on soul.

On Real Close Ones, the M’s sound like a slightly older version of the band that made their first album. Sure they’re really good, but they're too pensive to make the step up to the big leagues.

No Better Time Than Now is close to a great album, but it's flawed in its existence to experiment, ultimately experimenting a little too far.

The fifteen-song album may have two or three cuts too many, but the core of The Big Bang... is some pretty damn good hip-hop

Liver! Lung! FR! is a solid album--it was just better six months ago.

An album full of majestic pop tunes in their absolute truest form.

Under the Blacklight is at once more ethereal that anything Rilo Kiley has ever managed previously.

[Producer Paul] Epworth's accomplishment is obvious throughout the record. Having remixed some of today's indie-elite, infusing garage rock riffs with electro elements, he knows the importance of dance-floor accessibility and brings out all the shadows and contrasts that make Kick the accomplishment it is.

It’s noisy, it’s incoherent at times, but above all it’s a joyous record that's totally Neil Hagerty: inaccessibly accessible.

A valiant attempt to combine varying disciplines of Eastern music with neo-psychedelia, Aufheben is a pleasant listen.

Ferrari Boyz often sounds like a Waka Flocka solo disc that features Gucci Mane on every single song. Between the duo, Waka's lines tend to be the ones that stick with you the most.

Their tics are still here--just listen to how they build the payoff of “Nova Leigh” from a variety of angles--they just aren’t the exciting focal point anymore. That’s probably better in the long run for the band, who have all quit school to rep Born Ruffians full-time, but doesn’t lead Say It to the mountaintop it could have shared with Red, Yellow and Blue.

Yes, the Sounds' music starts to blur together, but what a blur.

What's missing is the meditative joy they achieved in their rockier moments.

Dismania makes for an altogether appropriate title for an album this interested in gathering the common ingredients of despair, anger and disaffection.

The album relies less on hooks and more on a sparse energy, but the listening is engaging enough to keep the listener around to the end, focusing more on cohesion rather than theatrics.

For those interested in a group that still finds ways to take Krautrock down several roads, Circles more than succeeds.

It's a distinct type of pop that could become truly memorable when he actually sits down to compose a full album.

Vile seems to find his best inspiration in the album's valleys rather than its peaks.

There may be moments of repetition that indicate a bit a creative bankruptcy, and even for an EP this is perhaps all too brief an outing. However, Behave Yourself easily topples most of Cold War Kids' previous endeavors.

Mastered by Nilesh Patel (Daft Punk, Depeche Mode), Robotique Majestique has the Austin-based Ghostland Observatory throwing down a solid, synth-heavy version of their stateside electro-punk, making their third release less guitar influenced than the occasional rock moments of "Paparazzi Lightning" (the duo's 2006 debut) and 2007's "Delete. Delete. I. Eat. Meat."

This is a solid listen regardless of whether or not it's breaking any new ground.

When The Virgins are paying homage to their New York forefathers in terms of their aesthetic and lyrical content, they have trouble distinguishing themselves from the Jets of the world.

Help Wanted Nights lacks the cohesion of "Blackout" or "Album of the Year," but it seems excusable to have a loose collection of songs--good songs, at least--that accompanies an as-yet-unseen movie or play, especially in the wake of the super-cohesive "Happy Hollow."

If Hartford, Connecticut's Magik Markers has built its reputation as a feverish live act, Boss wrangles all that frantic upheaval into a surprisingly tuneful and, yes, utterly ragged set of songs.

His best work since 1999's Blackout.

If that same sense of insularity and reserve -- magnified by Nastasia's pitch-perfect, inflectionless soprano -- keeps On Leaving from connecting like it could have, the music draws you in, even at its slowest and starkest.

It's far from his best work, but, as Callahan takes a detour into rootsy musical traditions such as country and gospel, it is a characteristically eccentric release.

Father Creeper is his greatest achievement thus far, succeeding, if nothing else, as demanding listeners to enter his warped headspace.

For the most part, Tomorrow Today is a pleasing addition to the ranks of retro-futurist pop records, it just lacks the rough edges that make the best Broadcast, Pram and Stereolab songs resonate so strongly.

The album rewards multiple listens with its sonic depth and subtle structural beauty. It has followed Lamchop tradition and evolved from its predecessor, but it lacks the unruly attitude that makes the band distinct.

Any other attempt at describing Khan's sound of Renaissance antiquity cross-pollinating with postmodernity--the trip-hop bass of 'Trophy' that riptides into the autoharp lilt of the spectral 'Tahiti,' for instance--falls woefully short of music so cleverly askew and oddly beautiful.

Rarely are stopgaps so magisterial, tender, and wistful. But, again, I hope that’s the point.

It's a perfectly serviceable and enjoyable post-metal/rock album that makes no real mistakes, and does manage to tweak the knobs of the formula ever-so-slightly.

The Heartless Bastards are much better on the alt side of the alt-country dynamic.

If they want to match the intensity of the singer's emotional performance, the band needs to loosen things up a bit.

White is an accomplished storyteller – and stories and music both represent the best of what a ghost can be: incomplete presences, something that seems substantial in the moment but disappears in a matter of minutes, leaving only an impression in your mind.

With experimentation comes error.

Despite Chunk of Change's flaws, Angelakos shows real promise as an innovative electronic-song weaver.

It's an album that sounds like it was difficult to make, as these two move from being the couple to being the players, and that difficulty yields some of their most beautiful moments on record yet, even if it also (and perhaps necessarily) gets in the way of the songs sometimes.

It keeps Raekwon relevant, not to mention is better than most of the hip hop out there. But it's always worrying when an artist, even one as celebrated as Raekwon, gets complacent.

The sleekness of the production--this is far gauzier than the straight-ahead brilliance of On--can get in the way sometimes.

It's as good an introduction to the band as those 2008 singles were; sometimes thrilling, sometimes disappointing, but always formidable.