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.