While not the definitive Tindersticks album, Falling Down A Mountain is a compassionate, delicately rendered collection of songs that warrants repeated listening.

The standout tracks are the featureless "Flame Throwers," "Odds Cracked" and "Auralac Bags," the latter of which boasts a noir-ish, alleyway-chase-scene type of beat.

The growth on display here outweighs the band’s now reliable--and easily addressable--shortcomings.

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.

It is whole, undiluted Crystal Castles--and it's as haunting and raw as might be imagined.

All the elements of Espers' sound come together more seamlessly than ever before here.

It’s the ultimate inner battle of good and evil, one that even the best of us wrestle with when making ourselves vulnerable to the entanglements and snares of love, and one that Khan has found her most confident and enthralling voice in yet.

With less of the anxiety that marked his earlier albums, that world is a joy to get lost in over and over.

As previous albums did, Myth Takes sees !!! aiming high in terms of grandiosity and intensity but falling short of its ambitions.

McCombs still has an ear for language and roll-off-the-tongue singing. His voice coats the lyrics like thick warm caramel on this one. Though often obtuse and twisted, McCombs includes some straightforward lyrics, as well, with some political commentary to boot.

What stands out on Etiquette, what makes it so powerful, isn't the full instrumentation -- it's still not exactly a wall of sound -- it's the moving and earnest lyrics Ashworth deadpans over his dark, minimalist beats and minor chords.

More so than the debut's, these songs fare like standup comedy on repeated listens: Once the punch lines are spoiled, who wants to listen to a joke again?

Ghetto Bells finds Chesnutt running the gauntlet -- string-laden balladry, desert folk-rock, thumb-piano noodling.

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.

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.

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.

In highlighting the more tasteful, nuances of their sounds, they’ve emerged with a more cohesive whole, a representation that better captures their classic-rock heart while simultaneously stripping the fat away and revealing the core behind the chaos.

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

For the most part, the album succeeds insofar as it either builds upon Malkmus's perennial themes or allows itself to indulge in experimentation.

For a debut album oozing with influences, Stuck on Nothing is doubly impressive in the way that it not only makes a definitive mission statement for a truly exciting new band but also manages to keep such a strong sense of itself in spite of itself.

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.