Vampire Weekend’s debut comes across as a confident, precise, and, for better and worse, mature collection.

Keep Your Eyes Ahead could easily be seen as the result of making the best out of a bad situation and succeeding in spades.

Charmed and Strange, however, is a collection of interesting guitar playing with a few lyrics thrown in for pop legitimacy.

The band itself is top notch here.

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.

Full of simmering restraint, Jukebox sounds lived-in and genuine, less a genre experiment than full fledged statement.

John Neff’s expert, dreamy pedal steel and Shonna Tucker’s soothing, pitch-perfect harmony -- somewhere between Lucinda Williams and Neko Case--make Brighter another solid entry in the band's catalog.

Mission Control is a collection of catchy, raucous tunes. There’s little innovation here, but that’s not what these guys are about.

It's a confident debut, one that features two young musicians reveling in their abilities and perhaps discovering ones they didn't know they had.

With such a young, singular talent, it’s a shame to hear him aping other styles when he clearly is full of a wealth of unexplored talent.

A sprawler is always a dangerous gambit for a band. It can easily trip over the line from cracked genius into failed experiment, as The Evening Descends does.

This is a solid set of songs that’s mannered and restrained to a fault.

The lightness, even with the same downtrodden lyrics, comes from the upbeat arrangements that find their way through the slosh of feedback--an appropriate sound for lyrics that evoke the same feeling--sloshing through the everyday. Perhaps Merritt realizes that to be comically self-loathing or misanthropic is, perhaps, all a person can ask for.

The about-face may be a turn off for the “neo-soul” crowd, but it also represents a confident stride toward individualism.

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.

Unfortunately, Sigel has taken a step away from reconciling the truth on his fourth full-length, The Solution. Instead of shedding the one-note dimension of his popular Broad Street Bully persona, he simply cloaks himself in another unconvincing and uninteresting trope: the mack-lover.

Ghostface's beat selection is impeccable.

The results are beautifully solemn.

The remixes that constitute the second disc are less intriguing than the B-sides, but none of them are horrible.

Free at Last is everything that his heads could want.

So are The Hives stuck in a stylistic corner, or is The Black and White Album just a rocky bridge to something new and revelatory from the group? The material seems to drop hints in both directions.

The album complements each situation differently, and new elements become apparent with each listen.

The tunes don’t vary much from the originals, but the band renders them with vigor and style.

The pace of the album (or, more accurately, the "file") is intriguing, and even though it doesn't top the band's best work, any iPod owner should be proud to have 45:33 in the library. [Review of UK release]

The beat selection, personal insight, wit, and overall coherence surpasses that of "Kingdom Come" and fulfills many of the expectations that the latter album failed to meet.

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

Brown is riding on the coattails of artists greater than he is, but he is clearly a talented performer who can deliver high-octane club hits.

This album will sway neither the faithful nor the unbelievers from their positions along the borders of her stalled momentum.

The problem with the album goes past its unmemorable music.

The older songs blend well with the more recent numbers; Helm and his menagerie of backing musicians use bluegrass instrumentation throughout the album and ably blur the lines between traditional pieces and modern songs by the likes of Steve Earle and Paul Kennerley.

The album gains little from the effects heaped upon it, but Teenager is able to escape being totally buried under them.

In the Vines--like Raposa and his self-proclaimed "bad year"--is something rare and curious only if you’re willing to wander through the rough patches here and there and accept a subtle discord along with the harmony.

The reality is that many of these songs could easily be outtakes from "One Word," and by sharing many of the same sounds, Preparations ends up sharing a similar voice, which doesn’t excite as it once did.

15 Again hits more than it misses, and its hits push all the right buttons, musically and emotionally.

After nearly seven years, to churn out an album with three highlights and eight overblown odes (among them, 'Here It Goes,' 'Carry You,' and the forced empowerment of the title track) is disappointing.

What is here, a mixture of jagged dance-punk numbers with pretty sound sketches (of the type Underworld has employed for recent soundtrack work), all succeeds.

It's his overwrought vocal sensibility that really drags Make Sure They See My Face down into Starbucks country.

Fire & Water contains too much artifice to swallow.

The strength of the album rests not on one aspect. From the dense lyrics spanning a wealth of topics to the perfect production, The Art of Love & War proves that Stone isn't going anywhere.

This is a grownup album, made for grownups.

Twenty seconds into Necessary Evil and I'm cringing, and it's only amplified by the fact that this very same voice once performed 'Heart of Glass' and 'Rapture.'

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

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

Crafting a decidedly more difficult record was likely something Krug intended, considering these songs seamlessly segue in and out of each other. That means some parts sound almost superfluous, as if they were written expressly to maintain this continuity. Still, the effect succeeds far more often than it fails.

My central beef with Cease to Begin is not really its lack of variety, but the fact that if it just took a few more chances it could've been great.

I think we should all be thanking our respective Higher Power right now that [Lekman's] hiatus was brief, because the album he would eventually make, the stunning Night Falls over Kortedala, is among the best of the year.

However, like so many singular artists, Wyatt's presence spans the record and ultimately gives it its necessary gel. His multi-octave voice booms, croons, and cracks across the album with stunning clarity and consistency.

It's hard to say that the group took the safe route with Grass Geysers, because it's such an exhilarating listen. Perhaps it's an unfair standard, but as past albums prove, this band still has some muscles that it's not flexing here.

The record comes off as hokey.

Loud, brash, but never cocksure, Mantaray swaggers like a cat in heat.

Truly, the heavy strings and pasteurization O'Brien has effected on the last few Springsteen albums--"The Rising," "Devil's & Dust," and now Magic, the Boss's reported return to form with the amorphous E-Street Band--has robbed Springsteen of his still-youthful energy and blue-collar credentials, something that has always been key to the believability of his sometimes overly corny manner.

This album isn't on par with the Sadies' searing early material or recent similar country-rock albums from the likes of Oakley Hall or Okkervil River.

The musicians have crafted a lucid soul record (barely longer than a half hour) centered on humility, devotion, and other mature sentiments that are blissfully out-of-sync with pop/youth-centric music.

This album will still take away the breath you aren't holding: It's at once bleak, aching, and insidiously beautiful.

I think The Shepherd's Dog is probably Iron & Wine's best record to date (Beam has never once even made a mediocre album, so this says a lot).

Smokey Rolls down Thunder Canyon may be his best so far.

Mired in the generic neo-new-wave and self-consciously emotive yawn of contemporary fashion indie rock, Athlete's unimaginative music matches up nicely with the shallow lyrics.

What we get is a self-indulgent and silly album that never makes any lasting impression.

War unfolds less like a cohesive concept album (though a rock-opera would be a likely future addition to the group's discography) as much as a series of telenovela vignettes.

It's true that most of the attention Gonzalez received in the beginning was from songs other artists' wrote. The difference with Gonzalez is that he picks songs that fit his minimalist and whimsical approach--and he often makes them better than the originals.

Although Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy has the dizzy invigoration and winning enthusiasm of an excellent first album, it also suffers from a kind of first-disc immaturity, an urge to pack everything in at once and as early as possible, rendering it top-heavy and inconsistent.

Two Gallants, the band's second for Saddle Creek and third overall, shows significant artistic growth.

Sampson's penmanship here is the most minute and observant among a recent batch of great songwriting

Last Light contains fine songwriting and production and collaborations, but it offers little new.

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.

Invitation Songs is as compelling and likeable as their combined past projects were hard and edgy, as if they've been doing Nick Drake covers all along. That's no small feat.

Without question, part of Shocking Pinks' charm is the intimacy of its unpolished production values, but, with a little more patience and rigorous revision, it's easy to see Harte's best songs being even better.

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.

Most of Asleep at Heaven’s Gate is forgettable, uninspired, middle-of-the-road indie pop.

Often eccentric and unpredictable, Love Is Simple is wholly listenable because it is compelling, honest, and joyful.

Most notably is how these songs manage to seem loose, fun and deliberate all at once.

The twelve songs here drip with coatings of sentiment and sparkly instrumentation that are saccharine and plastic.

What's missing where these lame boasts exist in Curtis is the vulnerability of moments on The Massacre (especially 'A Baltimore Love Thing') or any of the rich narrative that graced his first album, not to mention any of the goofy, sing-along catchiness that previously made his singles chart events. Musically 50's collaborators don't feel like they've brought anything near their best to the table.

Rare is the album that's able to expand an established band's fan base while completely satisfying the cult of early flag planters, but Strawberry Jam has that chance.

West's writing and delivery has improved since "The College Dropout," though they're still marked by both a cleverness and a clumsiness.

On an album where even the guest stars feel like samples worn out from repeated play--the back cover announces the song 'Flashlight Fight (Featuring Chuck D)'--the few innovative tracks offer hope that the Go! Team won't stagnate by its third outing.

Bluefinger is catchy in spots but ultimately forgettable.

Rise Above is deliberately challenging and obtuse; its ceaseless changes and refusal to settle are its most important similarities to Damaged's abrasive and exhaustive loudness. Translating Black Flag's anti-intellectual screed into arty free-jazz concept is one thing. That it actually merits repeat listens is another altogether.

Attack Decay Sustain Release sets a dance-friendly party mood and sustains it over the course of forty minutes, but it does not explore new territory.

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."

The best tracks on Love’s Miracle match Yow’s wildman performances with equally manic music. Qui doesn’t always achieve that balance, and the album sometimes feels like it’s getting by on quirk alone. But when it hits, it hits hard.

It is a snapshot of Pinback at its most practiced and self-aware: fluid, calculated, penetrating, yet always at the fringe of its former incarnation.

You have to applaud these guys for jumping out on a limb with this strange trip of a record, but they probably shouldn’t take up the ‘60s-revival cause full time.

Harris's frivolous humor loses its charm when the music falls flat.

The stylistic buffet has enough strength to survive a handful of duds.

Aesop Rock's None Shall Pass is filled with precise lyrical detail and head-nodding production, and the result is his most accessible record of his career to date.

Had there maybe been a more analytical approach to creating shamelessly tricked-out pop songs, maybe some of Brings on the Comets would sound more successful.

There isn't a bad song on the record, but neither is there a particularly good one.

The songwriting is simply the biggest flaw of We Are Him, and in an album so reliant upon the vocal performance, it's a flaw that's too hard to ignore.

you've heard them before. But it's not enough to sustain interest. The dead spaces in between just feel flatter in comparison, and those same hooks end up feeling disposable. It's a sharp, quick-burn of an attraction.

If the album sounds simple, it's because it is simple; it's the attitude, idiosyncrasies and Architecture in Helsinki's refusal to fall into the fey trappings of paint-by-numbers indie pop that make it such a distinguishing treat.

The result is Kala a stark confrontation of set notions of authenticity and identity--and my new favorite record.

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.

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

Although such swaths of varied, nebulous beauty obscure Snaith's musical core--if there is one--the music is so joyful in its rag and bone cherry-picking of the best of Britpop's history that such concerns are rendered pointless.

Kweli shows again that he deserves the respect he receives, but Eardrum is simply not cohesive enough.

The album's midsection gets bogged down in songs that sound too similar: more lovely piano, more soft cooing, too many gimmicky studio effects.... To Espinoza's credit, he gets Mentor Tormentor back on track.