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 Back Room has the feeling of an album cobbled together too quickly.

This is the best mix of various recordings Moore has done since A Thousand Leaves.

His tried-and-true lo-fi routine is still there, and die-hard Pipe fans will probably gobble up this release, but these thirteen smoggy ballads are like that week-old liter of Grape Fanta: you know, flat.

Arthur & Yu may be too grounded in the past to alter the future of pop music. But if they make songs this lovely, there's no shame in that.

Applaud Reznor for attempting something that doesn't read like school graffiti; shake your little fist at him for doing it anyway.

A perfect summation of everything that was great about this band.

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

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.

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.

on Arrow, it's more fun when they swagger around like the road-tested ramblers they've become.

Lucifer transforms the mundane into the magnificent, slowly but surely edging out all other summer listening options.

So while it sounds pleasant throughout, and sometimes awfully beautiful, it won't stick with you as long as it could after the album's final notes fade.

The songs are classic Mogwai, only more sophisticated--and, as such, startling different.

It's evidence of a powerful songwriter honing his artistry.

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.

This is an unambitious album in the best way.

Throughout its 43 minutes, Fool’s Gold has the air of the kind of effortless breeziness that comes with tossed-off side projects. But that vibe underscores the effectiveness of the album, which features multiple stylistic quirks that could lead Fool’s Gold in a variety of directions if they continue as a project.

Even at its most elemental moments He Gets Me High sounds a lot more expansive than their debut. It might not be essential listening, but it certainly can be taking as foreshadowing of what a high-budgeted Dum Dum Girls might sound like.

All I know for sure is that I’ve got two ears and a heart, and Manners sounds and feels pretty great.

This crackling album stands to remind that the man can still rock like all hell.

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

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.

Robyn's transition to the boldest--and maybe loneliest--girl in the room allowed her to showcase her versatile range of emotions and musical influences, plenty of which are on display in Body Talk Pt. 1.

The album encapsulates summers of falling asleep on porches, cicadas chirping periodically among the trees, shaking slightly from a passing breeze.

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

It's never anything less than gorgeous.

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.

The album's lows remain limp and strangely clinical, making its true promise all the more disappointing.

We know this routine well; it's comfortable and pleasing to the ears. But throw on a disc by one of the originators (Pavement) or the cream of the modern crop (Wolf Parade) and Tapes 'n Tapes is trumped hands-down.

On The Door, there is a sense that the sounds happening are not the products of the people creating them but rather those of some inscrutable (and vaguely dangerous) pulsing energy below our feet. It’s an amazing effect. And it’s created through the sheer power of quantity and repetition.

Unlike the Darkness or Eagles of Death Metal, these guys don't think this shit is funny, and instead of making them ripe for mockery, it makes Wolfmother that much more respectable.

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

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.

Easily the most exhilarating rock 'n' roll record to emerge in 2008.

Vessel States' uncanny familiarity is its central disappointment.

With Howl of the Lonely Crowd, Comet Gain will likely continue to lack recognition.

Hello Sadness offers the lumbering and deflated version of Los Campesinos!, hiding away their most alluring energy in favor of glum inactivity.

The Runners Four may not come off as innovative as Reveille (2003) and Milk Man (2004) did, but the real innovation here is in making chaos sound so serene.

There’s still plenty of bits on Beat Pyramid you’ll find exhilarating. But the rest of the time, you’ll find yourself wishing These New Puritans would ascend above its well-established reference points.

There is not much on Here With Me that surprises or overwhelms, but that is not Jennifer O’Connor’s brief.

If there's ever been an advertisement for allowing bands to develop before they blow up, Native Speaker is it. You'll probably listen to more immediate albums this year, but few will have the down-the-rabbit-hole quality that marks Native Speaker for success.

Tracks such as "Boner" and "Peanut Dreams," stripped of any excitement, are nothing more than highly polished and easily forgettable songs to ignore at a swanky upstairs club.

while Thank You Very Quickly is not shy about facing the challenges and horrors of certain parts of the world, it is defiant in its love for life in spite of struggle. It proclaims the power of working together and leaning on one another, no matter the circumstances.

Jiaolong may be a perfectly competent incarnation of Snaith's undeniable talents, but it doesn't quite induce the stupor it should.

All the swirling riffs and overlapping repetitions might be tiresome if not for the sad, imperfect voices at their center.

Once you get the lay of the land of Alopecia -- with its ethereal production, endlessly analyzable wordplay, and moments of supreme pop clarity -- it’s a captivating realm to explore.

At its best Gossamer is, like its namesake, delicate at first glance but possessed of incredible molecular strength.

Edwards’s newly minted disco folktronica, as easily aligned with Sufjan Stevens as Aphex Twin, is a little bit very crazy.

Watch the Throne is as much of a celebration of the A-list prominence of its two marquee stars as it is an exegesis of all of that fame's attendant complications.

Wasser’s a collaborator at heart (she was a charter member of the Dambuilders and worked with Lou Reed, Antony & the Johnsons and Rufus Wainwright, who guests on “To America”), and she sounds most natural when she’s backed by horns and keys and backing vox and slinky grooves.

Made of equal parts detached beauty and inspired disintegration, it is a transmission from another place -- no matter where you live.

There's No Home offers a rewarding finish as a slow syncopation turns to an eerie final verse featuring Jana and John and Matthew Brownlie.

As a result, Thao & Mirah is a nice side-project for two great performers, but not as revelatory as it could have been for either of them.

Zammuto excels at the opposite: deconstructing life into easily digestible songs that make you feel something.

Complaining about a lack of hooks can be painted as unrefined, but frankly Era Extraña hasn't shown me why it deserves hallowed deconstruction, it may be weightier, but there's absolutely no question which Neon Indian album has the most stick.

Lyrically, it's all sort of inscrutable and encumbering to follow, but the music is so good it scarcely matters what he's on about.

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.

There is something distinctly perfect about the naivety that the Pains of Being Pure at Heart seem to effortlessly inject into every bouncy ballad of young love and young living that makes their self-titled debut not only a welcome throwback but a much needed vacation from over-calculation.

Ragon has the skill to twist all his found objects into something real and new: a strange breed of robust neo-folk with a fiery art-punk streak.

The album is a tightrope walker, constantly straddling the line between sincerity and unapologetic rocking.

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.

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.

His mixtapes still might be better (especially Midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik), but Str8 Killa is the first step toward Gibbs regaining the label contract that is so rightfully his.

While Compass, due partially to its longer track list, features a few duds that prevent it from surpassing the superior Jim, the album still shows Lidell as indie’s best answer to Robin Thicke and his compatriots, artists Lidell bests on a regular basis.

Careworn and authentic, the prismatic scatter of songs on Volume One, filtered through the sepia tinge of Deschanel and Ward’s nostalgia, sound more like out-of-time gems than the loving recreations they are.

Dead Man’s Bones evokes all the right images of a haunted October, and with such sensitivity and sincerity, it’s rarely kitschy and never inappropriate.

Like many of the instrumentals on this record, a New Age gauze covers most of these productions. It may not be every listener's particular cup of tea, but An Album is a dazzling song suite for an autumnal release.

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.

It has a known start and finish, with a middle that's tied together cleanly enough.

Here, Mind Spiders achieve what every delirious party-goer wants: a celebration that stretches to infinity.

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

Algiers is a good record, and though perhaps it could have been great, it's still another fine turn in the winding, ever-shifting road of the Calexico canon.

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.

It's hard to shake the feeling that the band's fourth album, Blood Pressures, is the one that will take The Kills to the next level.

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

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

Make no mistake, there is still plenty of rock--it's just doled out selectively instead of consistently.

Dudes may not be your mom's secret recipe for home-made pancakes, but the music is consistent, healthy, and in the right mood, quite delicious.

Them Crooked Vultures sounds more like an awkward attempt to introduce classic hard-rock rhythmic synergy into a Queens of the Stone age album, an effort that proves remarkably disappointing.

Marked with woe from beginning to end, BerberianSoundStudio is closer to antichrist than Hallelujah, but Broadcast reminds you that divinity is intrinsic with death.

Although it's a stylistic elephant in the room compared to Invisible Girl's other offerings, it's a welcome indication of Khan and BBQ's scope and talent, testifying to their expanding interpretation and application of garage rock's attributes.

The poetry on To Be Still is sometimes a bit too delicate for my taste, but the songs show off much more than words alone. They display a quirky vocal talent and songwriting skill.

He's doing something he hasn't done in years: approaching each concept, no matter how trite or overdone, as if it's his first time, surprising himself as much as he surprises us, and in the same breath.

Another World is under 20 minutes long, but it’s more than a placeholder. It’s the portrait of an artist as a changeling, moving above and beyond his former skill-set.

Sparsely lit lover's folk is by no means a fresh development, but The Rural Alberta Advantage continue to take the sound in new, interesting ways.

It takes its time, but its rewards are plentiful.

Right now, I can’t think of a better album to listen to after having a shitty day. Glasvegas is a masterpiece of modern miscreant malaise.

It ultimately lacks cohesiveness and direction to evolve into something truly outstanding, but still remains intriguing enough to possibly earn points with the more adventurous listeners.

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.

Like the subjects of these songs, the music itself wanders.

Usually, by the fourth album, bands of the non-willfully-experimental type have grown comfortable with their sound. Yet, the Bronx of IV is not a complacent one, shaking out the cobwebs of inactivity as opposed to settling into a groove.

You won’t hear anything on The Rhumb Line you haven’t heard before, but that doesn’t prevent it from being one of the year’s best debuts.

Whether you call the Arctic Monkeys' evolving sound Britpop or Britprog, it's clear the album shows remarkable progress for the band.

It's the sound of a cooking band truly cooking it in the studio. Everything sounds like it's about to jump the rails at any given moment.

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.

200 Million Thousand has more hooks and is better top-to-bottom than any previous Black Lips effort.

An album of sporadic delights much like Dance Hall at Louse Point , this is a footnote in Harvey’s career, but not one that’s entirely unworthy of investigation.