What we're left with feels like a big blur--an entertaining and wacked-out trip to Wonderland, but not one that I feel particularly compelled to return to.

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.

But no matter, because the tracks that Universal has okayed are the kind of ballsy primal rock that conjures up images of a glorious multicolor three-way between Bikini Kill, the Ramones, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Young Hunger is a solidly crafted album that manages to give hints at what Chad Valley does best while musically supporting a bunch of his buddies.

Enough bending guitar licks to satisfy the yuppiest of thirtysomething businessmen and enough mellow ballads to satisfy your Dixie Chicks-loving mom.

Still, for all the sophisticated, melodic pleasure to be found on Here and Now, a comfy old shoe of an album, one could be forgiven for occasionally wondering whether things might achieve just a touch more frisson if Holsapple and Stamey surrendered just a little to the temptations of that sharp-edged sound of yore.

Finn's best songs are the ones when he's fully in the present, in tune with every emotion and every detail his protagonists might experience during a particular moment.

Although it's firmly in the commercial-R&B camp, it's got much more energy than those slickly produced records, and at times, the record's production verges on dirty.

The album is so cleanly produced that it sounds like they can't afford a flaw. And ironically, it's this seeming aversion to being perceived as imperfect that holds them back.

Mostly though, Pusha seems lost.

The album has a consistent lack of meaning and genuine feeling.

Brown is riding on the coattails of artists greater than he is, but he is clearly a talented performer who can deliver high-octane club hits.

Something to Tell You is so impossibly infectious that they can just about get away with more of the same this time around.

Music for Men is a relatively safe album for Gossip's first major release.

Even at its best, and it gets pretty damn good, such as on the stark "Black Sweat" and the rock single, "Fury," the record still sounds like it's stuck somewhere in the past.

Unfortunately the album as a whole, modulo a few bright sections, fails to come to life.

From the band we never expected to evolve, there is enough sweeping ambition to have knocked us on our heels - if only the members had learned the art of discretion.

On Intimacy his ambition often outpaces the execution.

Even as Joyner drifts out into that snow, he remembers to bring some warmth along with him, which is what makes Out Into the Snow the comforting mess that it is.

The songs are too determinedly distinctive to gainsay. But that mental sonic world that the music creates would be less intense, less encompassing, and listening would be less a transportive experience in the Tom Fec Dimension. Thankfully, this is Tobacco's world, and you can't trust your brain to determine mystery from madness.

On Neighborhoods, blink-182 took [Dude Ranch/Enema of the State/Take Off Your Pants And Jacket's] sonic template, updated it, and made an album where they tried to understand what it means to be a member of blink-182.

For all its questing, though, the album's--and the band's--heart and soul are the simple arrangements which, layered upon one another like a stack of firewood, often signify something greater than their sum.

Liver! Lung! FR! is a solid album--it was just better six months ago.

On the whole Infinite Arms is an album buried under the weight of its own sound. It's hard to know how this album could have sounded with less ham-handed production, but as it stands the mix here feels like some sleight of hand.

The songs toward the latter half of the nine-song, 50-minute album begin to blur, but overall the album introduces a good, anachronistic headspace to enter into.

This buckshot spray of quick pop tunes is another wild success in his constantly twisting variations on a theme.

They choose to remain well within their comfort zone, rendering Slaughterhouse a largely unsatisfying experience.

Their change between 2007 and now may be incremental, but it's enough to qualify as a definite improvement on their debut.