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.