I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass is the statement of a band insistent on showing the world it is not quite through being relevant.

Into the Blue Again is not essential, but its beauty is familiar and intimate.

Nothing new.

The members of Viva Voce accomplish a catchy cohesiveness that's at its best when they allow their songs to stray.

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.

Meadow features Buckner's most focused work in years.

When the members of Mastodon decided to make an audiophile's wet dream of a metal album, they abandoned the vein-bulging spontaneity of their former selves.

B'Day is a joyous uptempo album full of vibrant vocals, fierce production, and boundless energy. The only complaint is that it's over too soon.

The attention to detail, the avoidance of crisp production, the resonance of the instruments and voices all contribute to the depth of the music and its ability to penetrate through to the listener in an almost raw and pure state.

Slappers is a much more unified, low-key whole [than its predecessor], and it's both stronger and weaker for it.

Modern Times may not contain a single song that would rank among Dylan's all-time best, but it doesn't have to.

On Three's Co., Rademaker's songwriting has matured, which combined with the bigger production, makes for a thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying listen.

The album lacks the central focus that defined Yorn's earlier work, at times feeling like a grab-bag of style and sound.

His best work since 1999's Blackout.

The songs are imitative and lackluster.

It's an often frustrating listen, but in the end the album is a triumph.

An awkward, uneven record that comes over like something they made in a week instead of something that was continually pushed back for more than a year.

The thinness of the sound, the lack of any edge, and the fact that most of these songs start off terribly prove too much to overcome, but Razorlight is not nearly the disaster that it could've been.

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

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.

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.

With 1968, Pajo... may have finally found a style he feels comfortable putting his name on.

By merely keeping up, they don't do much to separate themselves from the flock of young bands crossing the Atlantic -- again and again.

The Body, The Blood, The Machine is the holy grail of anti-political/anti-religion records to come out in the last seven years.

Millan's first solo effort is solid, but it feels like more of an experiment than anything.

As with Icky Mettle and then with Crooked Fingers, Bachmann once again has provided a taut and startling proper debut; his writing feels completely reenergized.

If Donuts was Jay Dee's swan song, The Shining is a glimpse of what his work may have sounded like in the future.

Kelis is one of the mainstream's most exciting artists right now, and she continues to defy expectations with Kelis Was Here.

There is nothing to dislike about Classics, but I get the feeling they're holding back.

The sing-alongs abound and the keyboard definitely calls for some attention from the dance floor, but the redundancy of these twelve songs is bound to induce a few headaches.

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.

Comets on Fire is the band Wolfmother wishes it had the balls to be.

Here, Friedberger has once again proven his capabilities. At times they impress, but too often they confound, and it's beginning to seem as if he's too comfortable in his distance.

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

Christ Illusion is not a throwback; it's something new steeped in something old.

Unfortunately, Made in Brooklyn doesn't have the same urgency as its predecessor and will likely fall into the middle of the solo-record pack.

In the future, the guys in Jurassic 5 need to do a better job picking their friends and their song subjects.

In My Mind has several potential hit singles, but taken as a whole it falls dramatically short.

Highway Companion contains the most clear-eyed and hopeful songs that Petty has written in memory.

It's garage rock, sure, but it's so much bigger and heavier and totally bloody-knuckled from a bar fight.

If in the future Roderick puts more brain power behind making his music as adventurous as his lyrics, the Long Winters' albums should only get better and better.

Despite White Bread Black Beer's undeniable beauty, it feels largely out of place as a product of the contemporary spectrum of music.

There's a theatricality that's akin to the Decemberists, but the sweet disco-bobs of "I Understand What You Want But I Just Don't Agree" and "Play a Little Bit for Love" suggest a more outwardly grandness, a notion supported by the Baz Luhrmann-aping album cover.

Far too often [Karin's] voice is put through a vocoder, multi-tracked, and treated by various other electronic procedures. The result is that one of the group's main talents is stifled and limited.

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.

A solid first work.

So Two Thousand is rich in guitar-disco atmosphere and tone. But it's weirdly lacking in personality.

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.

Cansei de Ser Sexy works not because of its ability to break new musical ground but because of its ability to borrow from other influences and use them in new ways to avoid sounding totally contrived.

Muse is nothing if not distinctive, and Black Holes and Revelations is very much distinctively Muse: fantastic at points and ridiculous at others, without much in between.

Impeach My Bush is Peaches' best effort yet.

There's a difference between a damn fine song and the brilliance that made up Stevens's previous two releases, Illinois and Seven Swans. Unfortunately, The Avalanche clunks through track after track of damn fine songs while only rarely hitting these moments that make your body tingle in euphoria.

What makes it breathe, what allows it to flourish above its glitchy techno, its processed wizardry... what untangles it from a mess of circuitry and power strips and anti-virus pop-up warnings, is Yorke's incredible, distinctive voice.

Some of the artist's best work to date.

It's disturbing like a Mike Patton record, with blink-and-you'll-miss-it lyrics that serve as confrontational one-liners.

Despite all the stupid records he's put out before, The Return of Dr. Octagon is the first one that plunges wholly into self-parody. He's now a fully realized clown, a prop, a joke and, most disappointingly, a sub-par rapper whose forced ideas and personality obstacles have devolved into flimsy, uninspired character sketches.

B continues to acquit himself admirably on purely technical terms, wrapping a slow, slithering tongue around the quick stabs of his guitar.

Fast Man Raider Man isn't your father's Frank Black; it's Frank Black for your father.

There is nothing awful here, but Loose never meets the dizzyingly high expectations it was saddled with.

Those who enjoy the smooth sounds of inoffensive MOR will find little fault in Keane.

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

Guster manage to let out a bit of their inner Oasis without sacrificing any of their "I-knew-them-first" credibility.

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

With News & Tributes, the band has matured to where the songs are initially gratifying but also grant further rewards with subsequent scrutiny.

With The Warning, the band again forces listeners to drop the safety of labeling and comparisons with other bands.

The album's great achievement is that it melds the civic with the personal. Mo' Mega spans a bigger range in its eleven tracks than most albums twice its length.

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

The Sun Awakens' sparseness has a deepness to it that requires spending time with the album in its entirety in order to truly understand it.

To call the album the band's most accessible to date is no slur. There's nothing wrong with accessible indie rock when it's this pristine and polished.

Begin to Hope has its highs and lows, but it is a journey worth taking.

Folk-ambient doesn't get any better than this.

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

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

There are few compelling reasons to listen to The Exchange Session Vol. 2 more than once.

A blistering triumph of a record.

Mojave 3's new material isn't an abandonment of any strengths; it's an embrace of the simple pleasures of the classic '60s garage-pop style of songwriting.

Another collection of songs that can be stamped with the compliment of being incomparable.

Gone is most of the musical adventurousness that redeemed the most seemingly cliché moments of the debut.

These original songs have been influenced in many ways by what's come before (what isn't?), but they're inventive, catchy, and kick-ass enough to stand on their own.

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

Sure, 2004's God Bless Your Black Heart may be the Paper Chase's best album in terms of accessibility, but the band has taken its usual dark angle and bent it another hundred or so degrees toward further obtuseness.

One of the year's best guitar-rock albums.

Let it wash over you, let it slowly but surely catch your attention, and steadily let the music build its case for how engrossing it can be.

A lean, focused record, Scale is Herbert's best record to date, and a must-buy for any dance-music fan.

Peeping Tom's almost exclusively synth-oriented songs (save the occasional bass and guitar) are ostensibly intended to highlight Patton's voice. This only accentuates his overwrought yet indifferent performances, however.

The most elaborately impenetrable album we're likely to hear this decade.

A concise killer of an album.

A Hundred Miles Off needs a single or a hook to balance its trebly extremes, and Leithauser's good-ol'-boy tenor has lost some of its edge, tripping too easily into the whiny nether regions.

It's never anything less than gorgeous.

So Amazin' may not be the huge leap in artistic achievement she may have hoped for, but it is a step in the right direction.

The songwriting is bland and the production is overdone.

With Powder Burns he has surpassed all expectations brought on from his previous releases.

Whirlwind Heat does nothing to disprove the argument that this recent flock of slinky, neo-post-punk bands aren't doing anything Gang of Four did much better a quarter century ago.

The members of Art Brut manage to infuse humor without pushing it too far. Or maybe they do push it too far, and that's why it feels more important.

A disappointing missed opportunity.

Although it's similar in style to the band's first three, numerically named releases, The Spell transcends more-of-the-sameness with the strategic addition of some elements culled from Amore and a further honing of the band's unmistakable sound.

Earlier efforts may suffer from a bit of kindergarten syndrome, in both the styles of singing and instrumentation, but Ships seems to see Danielson maturing at a faster rate.

Just Like the Fambly Cat sounds like a Grandaddy album, but only in that it rehashes everything the band has already done.