Nobody is putting out music like Pop Levi's right now.

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

Everything finally does come to a rewarding payoff with the ringing lone guitar work at the end of "Triangular Pyramid," but the long drive to get there is rather boring.

I admire Cunniff's attempt to create positive, breezy music. I just wish it were better.

While Grandaddy may be no longer, Aqueduct appears confidently able to assume is place as a purveyor of lo-fi writ large.

Eluvium has crafted an album that is at once immediate and accessible while deceptively complex.

In Advance of the Broken Arm is at least two songs too long. Yet Stern's manner of weaving together fiercely subjective, lyrical daydreaming with Olympus-level fret-searing finally means that the album justifies the majority of its many decisions.

Hirway intends for much grander experience, but his shortcomings, be it insecurity or fear, do not allow him to achieve that. Instead, we're left confused over just who Hirway is, and the real loss is the lack of intimacy between the artist and his audience.

The tracks that don't work misfire spectacularly.

Sitting through an album of catchy but ultimately vapid pop songs isn't made any more satisfying when there's a staggering track near the end.

A Weekend in the City borders on emo in its wordy self-obsession, so even though the record is actually more sonically adventurous than its predecessor, it seems like a massive step backward.

On its own merits, Phantom Punch is an assured, absurdly tuneful record, and one of the best of the year thus far.

Svanangen has a wholly human presence on Loney, Noir, easy to invest in and equally easy to reap rewards from.

Yes, I'm a Witch may be less than the sum of its parts, but [some] notable tracks... make it worthwhile.

In the end, Writer's Block isn't a life-changing musical statement, but it is a superb collection of finely crafted pop songs.

The music deliberately sits somewhere between glossy and unobtrusive. It shimmers enough to mask Allen's tepid singing voice but remains far enough away to allow her largest asset -- her snappy personality -- to take charge.

Ounsworth's impassioned delivery is gone throughout most of Some Loud Thunder, replaced by what can only be described as vague indifference.

Roadkill Overcoat is a thorny album, one that doesn't give itself over easy, and definitely not on first listen.

Great musicianship does not a great album make, particularly when the singer is so out of his league.

When the proper songs throughout are so uniformly good in spite of their fractured approaches, complaining about scarcity seems despicably greedy.

Longtime fans might lament the loss of a second guitar and the balls-out thrashing that sometimes came with it, but on certain levels it may be a blessing in disguise. A leaner Deerhoof allows other facets of the band to shine, most notably Greg Saunier's drum work.

If nothing else, The Good, the Bad & the Queen is a clear demonstration of Albarn's maturation.

Wincing the Night Away suffers from a fair deal of uncharacteristic filler.

Barnes's most personal and emotional album to date.

Menomena now has to be regarded as one of today's more intriguing rock outfits.

It comes as no surprise that Fujiya & Miyagi's sound recalls other neo-futurists.... But Fujiya & Miyagi is undeniably its own band, with peppy melodicism and upfront sense of humor.

Difficult. All very difficult. But cheap dates get old quick, don't they?

The album is full of Hersh's characteristically strong songwriting and the emotional uppercuts that make her best work so gutsy.

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

The project finds strength in synergy, working off each member's best qualities; they balance a dry vocal tone here with a melodramatic keyboard sigh there.

Quite possibly the worst record by a great emcee in recent memory.

Hip-Hop Is Dead... brings out the best in the emcee, who might have produced his strongest lyrical performance since Illmatic.

If More Fish isn't as good as Fishscale -- and there's just as good a chance that it is as good -- it's the tapestry method that doesn't make for a cohesive listen.

Spottily effective gangster posturing.

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

The Evolution delivers what Ciara is known for: hot beats, killer hooks and club bangers.

The members of the crew surrounding Eminem still need to distinguish themselves individually, but in the tradition of G-Unit/Shady's best stuff, few songs on The Re-Up have to be skipped.

It's impossible to guess what kind of album would've turned out had this seen the light of day two years ago, when it was originally expected. Chances are, though, we wouldn't be talking about intensity or hunger or survival with the same emotion in our voices.

At its best, Kingdom Come is about possibility. At its worst, it pales in comparison to past albums.

Swan Lake has the literariness of the Decemberist's Colin Meloy, but its members are the kids with the intentional nerd glasses in the poetry workshop -- not the fiction one.

Orphans is something akin to taking a journey through a familiar yet entirely foreign dream-place.

Snoop sounds exceptionally comfortable, perhaps even reinvigorated.

From the lavish orchestration courtesy of Van Dyke Parks to the richness and sheer abundance of language at Newsom's disposal, Ys is a supreme achievement.

Despite the impressive stylistic voices and rich production, there's ultimately something hollow around the project.

If anyone questioned whether or not Jayceon Taylor had what it took to stand on his own post-G-Unit, Game answers all of his critics with a resounding yes on Doctor's Advocate.

While the Evens' debut was a little rough around the edges at times, those imperfections have been buffed away for Get Evens.

This selection method lacks the cohesion of a proper album, but the uniformity of the raw emotion throughout offers some thrilling highpoints.

Even if Sov doesn't live up to the hype, there is enough quality material on Public Warning to warrant more music from the self-proclaimed "biggest midget in the game."

The stream-of-conscious raps that peppered her debut have been scaled back, replaced by relatively more traditional compositions, but the music is still deliciously unpredictable, and the words are a pack of SweeTart poetry.

Ultimately Songbird feels a bit rushed, and when you have as gifted a songwriter as Adams working with as gifted a songwriter as the Red-Headed Stranger, it's a bit of a letdown to ponder what they could have done.

Theirs is music brimming over with passion first explored, then exploded.

The album's second half is still woefully lacking, one big mess of boredom and monotony.

This album works adequately, maybe exclusively, within the folds of Bright Eyes' self-contained space, and that's really not such a bad thing.

The original Pussy Cats may not be classic enough to be untouchable, but Nilsson was enough of an oddball original, and the album carries so much back story, that a remake of it just ends up being a "why bother" moment.

All over Let's Build a Fire, +/- fails to capitalize on the moments of beauty and originality by either doing too much or doing too little.

Comparing his remarkable contributions to Deerhoof with this boring, nondescript effort suggests that Cohen should open his studio doors and welcome collaborators.

Squarepusher's wide range is bound to disappoint some listeners.

Save for the unnecessary interludes, the strength of Press Play is in its ability to employ so many different styles, sounds, influences and mold them into one extremely coherent package.

How lucky to be either a new or old fan, hearing Jansch at such a late age and in such a remarkable state.

Another stellar song collection.

The musicians' new sense of restraint gives us what may very well be the Blood Brothers' smartest album yet.

A beautiful back-porch album.

Micah P. Hinson and the Opera Circuit is a pure expression of turmoil, a cathartic release through art that skillfully avoids self-obsessed mawkishness.

Be Still Please occasionally falls victim to over-orchestration. But McCaughan proves too much of an indie-rock veteran and pro to let that sink the entire album.

With their music and attitude backing up this mature, sophisticated and affecting version of themselves, the members of Oxford Collapse stake their claim among not only Sub Pop's ranks, but as one of indie rock's best new bands.

Transcendence has yet to occur, but they have taken the required step in acquiring a broader range of exposure.

An almost-perfect blend of '60s-style Britpop, '90s-style Britpop, and the post-punk of the new millennium, Inside In/Inside Out is the rare debut that features not only the kind of exuberance/naivete that only bunch of nineteen-year-olds could produce, but also the thoughtful consistency characteristic of seasoned professionals.

While the rawk portion of Meek Warrior... is a bit of a letdown, Akron/Family hasn't lost its knack for making pretty with the acoustics.

[The songs] demand reconstruction that can only come from multiple listens. Unfortunately, the initial impact of the record is so muted that only an artist as challenging and road-tested as Beck warrants such effort.

Loose, sloppy playing and power hooks.

This is far from an album that will appeal to all, but it's a hell of a lot more fun than the Hold Steady's previous two efforts.

The Dears really do sound a lot like late-'90s Blur.

Most of The Crane Wife consists of rehashes of Decemberists staples and by-the-books, cookie-cutter indie pop that runs the gamut between pleasant enough ("O, Valencia!") and barely tolerable ("Summersong").

Like fellow hook king/smooth soul singer Nate Dogg, Brown takes most of his solo record and spreads some watered-down slick R&B all over the dance floor and fucks up everyone's game.

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.

Thankfully, on Live a Little, he... sticks to what he does best: creating lovely, literate pop-rock.

Ultimately, Beach House is a mood piece, finding a specific tone and lingering there for its entirety.

Though the production value of Love and Other Planets intermittently occupies the same close corners that Homesongs did, Ilham's newer work presents a concept that is far too vast to for him to have covered on his rather intimately constructed solo debut.

The Lemonheads is a harmless, melodic album that brings familiar material to longtime fans and new audiences alike.

What remains is a band conflicted about how to stretch and how far to stray from a winning formula, between living up to expectations and confounding them.

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

She may not excel on her solo album the way she has with Broken Social Scene or Metric, but it's still a rainy-day listen.

The most impressive part of this album is that, throughout its entire tuneless, dissonant thirty-three-minute duration, Human Animal is rarely boring; it's filled with cool sounds.

Luda has officially entered his "transition stage" as an artist. I hope it will produce better records than this uneven offering.

Couple the immaculate playing with a contagious, everlasting energy, and you have a true representation of My Morning Jacket on top of its game.

One of the most likeable albums of the year.

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

What Darkel does offer is more of a good thing: songs that sound like the follow-up to Moon Safari, if Air weren't so progressive.

The album is more polished and accessible than the band's previous work and other childlike plinky pop like Danielson.

It seems to me that this album has already been made countless times by countless bands.

The Letting Go benefits as much from diversity as from Valgeir Sigurosson's recording.

Fergie is talented enough to compete with the likes of Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera, but the material on The Dutchess won't take her to those heights.

Food & Liquor is the best hip-hop album of 2006.

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.

Return to Cookie Mountain makes Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes look almost silly by comparison.

It's sad to see a band that touts itself as experimental sounding like a watered-down, unfocused version of its younger self.

Infectious, progressive, immediate dance music.

So This Is Goodbye displays an impressive maturation on the part of Junior Boys leading man Jamie Greenspan.