Though indebted to the brassy blasts and pleading yelps of James Brown, as well as the riffs of the MC5 and Stooges, Lewis and Co. avoid sounding either self-consciously retro or awkwardly modern on Scandalous.

Richard Youngs' 11th solo album on Indiana indie Jagjaguwar ditches the keyboards of his recent releases, instead relying on disjointed guitars, eerily overdubbed incantations, and the rich, multihued drumming of Damon Krukowski (Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi).

Their most immediately pleasurable album. [Sep 2006, p.104]

With such sharp detail, Kaiser Chiefs have elevated themselves from a singles band to a group that's capable of both having a laugh and making a focused statement about life's less gleeful side. [Apr 2007, p.92]

FORGET sets out for new terrain with an expanded collection of collaborators, but isn’t far from what you’d expect from the project at this stage.

That astounding guitar mastery is still evident, but Dreaming seems more interested in evoking deeper moods than showing off. [Mar 2008, p.104]

Their bright Americana ditties have a newly retro, country-fried twist that suits them just swell. [Nov 2008, p.88]

Get Guilty dwells on the past, and that pensive reflection mutes the second half, turning Newman's boast into a wistful memory.

What we’re left with is a stylistically stimulating album that further fleshes and mellows out the band’s peppy, preppy sound, shading it towards country music and acoustic stoner-rock--the sort of thing you might hear at, say, an impromptu Earth Day concert in a park.

Frontman Aaron Aites counters the otherworldly ambience with straightforward strains of classic indie rock (think Sebadoh and Pavement). That combination can be jarring, but mostly in pleasant ways.

Hidden would be unbearably pretentious if Barnett and crew didn't execute their mission with such wild-eyed determination. Instead, it's a chilling thrill.

Though crunching at their heaviest, the band still shines brightest when they edge toward indie-rock approachability.

Sports the trademark soul loops, crackling drums, and underwater ambience of his best past work. [Sep 2006, p.103]

There's enough promise here to rattle more cages soon. [Jun 2007, p.94]

Nothing on Heartworms matches the processional majesty of Port of Morrow’s “Simple Song,” or even the go-for-broke mugging of “Fall of ‘82,” an unholy riff on Joe Walsh, Steely Dan, and Thin Lizzy. What Heartworms does have, though, is the informal approach to formalism shared by another Southwesterner transplanted to Portland, Britt Daniel.

All We Are can be a somewhat tough album to get a grip on, because it invites musical styles that seem to be set in opposition to one another to find chemistry, resulting in a genre that can really only be described in apparently oxymoronic hybrid terms like "discogaze" or "slowfunk."

'Shake the Devil' purrs with a Ray Charles-worthy retro R&B beat and the furious nonvegan chorus of 'Shake that Pig!' [Nov 2008, p.88]

It’s a lot to take in, especially from a band formerly so minimalistic, but musically, it holds together.

The meat of the album is about relationships gone awry, but the edges of that are where PUP really flourish.

The trio offers copious catchy bits, more tonal variation than the usual guitar-plus-beats norm and an appealingly pleading frontman in Ed Macfarlane. [Nov 2008, p.91]

With Simpson self-producing Earth, and with the Dap-Kings always ready to land on the one with a bari-sax skronk, it feels like a Nashville album that’s been dudded up and funked out.

The second half of this album is far more earnest; and in related news, far less fun.

These soulful laments and menacing gospel rumbles don’t really demand attention but reward it handsomely.

Lambert is still at her bubbliest playing a guntoting, wisecracking, catfighting gal next door who cusses like a sailor, or at least brags that she does, plotting revenge on lying boyfriends and town hypocrites--preferably at cowpunk tempo.

The album also features songs written and sung by other Apples, and while they're perfectly pleasant indie pop, they only accentuate Schneider's mastery.

The best bits are when the band’s own drummer Dale Crover picks up the bass for a third of the album’s 12 tracks.

With riffs this sugarshit sharp, who needs ideas? [May 2002, p.124]

It’s disorienting, upsetting, and edges toward unlistenable in its brutalist structures. But it’s a reminder that even if claustrophobia’s an unpleasant feeling, it’s always a powerful one.

The toughest cuts are still the early singles. But shorty's in the process of becoming something bigger than a hot, patois-spitting grime MC. [Nov 2006, p.101]

The now-24-year-old's voice may be simple, but it's distinctive--and as defiant as her album titles.

It's also in those nature-obsessed lyrics, delivered in tones so dulcet and hypnotic that the inclination to don a robe and commune with Vespertine-era Bjork is overwhelming.

The best songs bear the mark of an auteur weirding out, by himself.

A dark lark, but worth a listen.

My Dinosaur Life, on which the band strikes a radio-ready balance between mayhem and melody, may well trigger their long-awaited breakthrough.

The duo are most enjoyable when they just surrender to sweaty delirium on 'Summer Song.'

Led by effects-pedal guru Oliver Ackermann (the Edge is a customer), this Brooklyn trio further their rep for insane volume on their first proper studio album.

Often brilliant, occasionally creepy songs such as the bitter toe-tapper "Without You" and the optimistic six-minute epic "Light of Day" aren't appreciably improved by the trappings, but still cut deeply

Surprisingly hot to the touch, Wild Beasts' third album does more with less, paring down the quartet's groove-inflected chamber pop to expose raw burning desire.

Amos' classical-label debut is a wildly imaginative ride full of orchestral fireworks and fairy-tale melodrama, though anyone with a Ren Faire aversion should stick to more straight-ahead songs like "Edge of the Moon" and "Job's Coffin."

Even when they're shouting, they do so in a particularly musical and distinctive way, and although their smash is one of five This Is… songs the duo had no hand in writing, they nevertheless suggest a consistent sense of authorship through the intensity of their shared ecstasies and frustrations.

John Shade moves with composure and ease through arch, almost dour indie pop ("The Believers") as well as joyous dollops of Of Montreal–inspired electro pop.

Rob Barber intensifies the band's trademark polyrhythms with snappy post-punk bass and eerie dub echoes on disco-leaning tracks like "On Giving Up," while singer Mary Pearson eschews lyrics about happy trees for stories of loneliness and alienation.

On Shangri-La, YACHT add sinewy live instrumentation to their previously chilly electro, and when frontwoman Claire Evans, possessed of Kim
 Gordon's cool authority and Annie's playfulness, 
espouses her utopian "belief system," the 
bubblegum beats make it easy to buy into the philosophizing.

The result is a satisfying if not uneven release that never drags in its lament, looking toward the next ballad lost among the chaos. Richly produced fuzzed-face guitars and clattering percussion accentuate the band’s classic noise-pop formula without ever feeling staid.

Hardcore is mostly content to refine the band's epic, frequently breathtaking constructions.

Two Tongues is some of the most powerfully original music either camp has released, with the intimate production raising the goose-bump factor of Conley's and Bemis' earnest, if wildly contrasting, vocal styles.

Pretty much every guitar band going is currently toiling in the same ’90s nostalgia mines that Kempner dives into here, but few are able to do so with both technical prowess and its emotive content intact.

If the Sheryl Crow–isms of the first few tracks throw you off, sit tight: From tempestuous meditation "The Beast" on, every song is chillingly badass.

This lo-fi duo... continue to make charming albums while simply shrugging at their own limitations. [Jan 2007, p.88]

In a scant 30-plus minutes, Modern Guilt modestly proves that it's still restlessness, both artistic and personal, that drives the only living boy in Los Angeles.

It's all blatantly unsubtle, but also raucously fun.

A Place to Bury Strangers is one of those bands like Clinic; they've never made a bad album even if normal listeners have decided they only need one or two of them. Transfixiation might not be one of those two, but the abnormals have more fun.

The real strength here is the feline sharpness of Lambert's voice.

are a few new wrinkles--the manic push-pull of "Meeting of the Minds" could almost pass for System of a Down--but it's generally overdrive-guitar heaven.

On Pebble to a Pearl--an authoritative, refreshingly organic pop-funk manifesto featuring musicians who've played with Al Green and Stevie Wonder--the exhilaration of liberation literally screams from R&B workout 'Can't Please Everybody.'

UGK 4 Life is a fitting capper to this Texas duo's storied career--nothing groundbreaking, just funky, rough-hewn, celebratory tracks.

He shows the consistency to scatter those songs throughout Fetty Wap’s 17 tracks and to mostly stick to the limited formula that made them hit as hard as they did on the rest of the record.

Even as they add unimaginable depths to a deceptively simple form, Kannon reasserts their commitment to merely existing, unapologetically out of genre and out of time.

Frightened Rabbit's best material rivals brothers-in-brood the National and Arcade Fire, and even their B-level stuff is better than that of most acts working in this vein. But unlike those leading lights, these guys don't have the pop instincts to throw in the occasional punk scrappers, chamber-folk interludes, or disco rave-up to keep things from getting monotonous.

II feels like the dance-music equivalent of a compost heap: warm, organic, funky, but a tad squishy.

Fortunately, the old pros gel well often enough to keep things rolling -- with some help. [Jan 2002, p.107]

A near-operatic concept record about fantasy and delusion. [Mar 2007, p.91]

The album is a dark gem, a high-IQ song cycle that combines guilt, neurotic lust, and low self-esteem into piano-based tunes that come studded with lyrical daggers.

There's no instantaneous party classics on Jack Ü – no worthy successors to "Turn Down for What" despite its obvious influence, but maybe a "Bubble Butt" or a "Big Bad Wolf." As a guileless continuation of the escapist, dub-tinged blowout that Diplo effortlessly pursued with Major Lazer, it's one of the beatiest prizes of the year so far.

The sunny brutalism of Rancid's East Bay ska-thrash has lost nary a step and their ethical-emotional rigor is as sweet as it is pure.

Romance, their third album in 24 months, is more slickly assured -- and far less twee -- than its predecessors.

The People's Key proves Oberst has learned to balance a cutting perspective with a bleeding heart.

Black Dirt delivers sulky dirges ("Blood Moon"), alt-country hangovers ("Mange"), and funeral ballads ("Goodbye, Dear Friend") with equal aplomb, as their leader's bedraggled voice groans with hard-earned heaviness.

Ultimately, the set is a little schizo, but it channels enough rap-rock frisson to make it more than just a between-albums snack. [Sep 2002, p.128]

He trades in his 8-bit bloops and Sean Paul remixes to reach for R&B ringtone ubiquity on this solo debut album, warming over Timbo's jittery electro on "On My Mind," but faring better when lashing a live wire across vicious first single "The Vision," and whetting the stabbing synths of "Tron" and "Slaughter House."

Tracking and self-editing issues have always plagued her Minajesty's projects, but never more so than on this one, an album that probably would've landed with bigger fanfare had Minaj not so loudly touted it as all but an instant classic all year long.

Winging away from Major Arcana‘s dark, tense pockets--the jagged, crackling riffs and the jarring way Dupuis’ voice faltered at the end of her desperately insightful verses, as if she were about to fall off a cliff--stretches Speedy Ortiz thin at times on Foil Deer.

With a squeaky Neil Young falsetto, backed by shambly wah-wah guitar and mop-bucket percussion, Earl chirps blithely inscrutable lyrics through a strand of airy, bedroom-psych pearls.

Structural issues aside, the strength of the material on The London Session is enough to place the Queen back on track to relevance, after a number of less-inspired efforts had all but sapped her career momentum.

His deceptively fragile vocal style and skewed lyrical genius were already evident at age 22 in these 13 acoustic songs recorded over two nights at a Michigan Episcopal church.

Throughout, drummers Carl McGinley and Eric Hernandez play tight, tribal beats. The heat subsides at times, but it never breaks.

[Wheat's] most rousing collection. [Jun 2007, p.97]

The only misstep is frontman Adam Levine's raunchy lyrics. [Jun 2007, p.94]

The duo's relentless cool never quite tips over into White Stripes-style heat, giving Midnight Boom the unapproachable, icy allure of a runway model. [Mar 2008, p.104]

This Is Not The World isn't quite the breathless playground once populated by robots and carnival kids, but 'Think Tonight' possesses a fist-pumping riff that's one piano short of an Andrew W.K. song. [July 2008, p.96]

On their eighth album, spouses Brett and Rennie Sparks continue to put a brilliantly surreal twist on everyday subjects, using nature imagery to evoke the weird intensity of all-consuming passions.

Guitars and synths, both shimmering and scouring (depending on the volume level), can’t quite override the sweet harmonies at the heart of 'Die Slow,' nor can the toms stop them on 'Death+' or 'We Are Water.'

His new LP, Nephew in the Wild, is largely cut from the same cloth, a collection of (mostly) sad songs looking back, just from a perspective that’s a little older, wiser, and well-adjusted.

Fully formed songs suggest themselves, but too often prematurely dissolve, with vagaries always favored over the tangible.

Cass McCombs confronts life's miseries with a smirk and a softly rocking beat on this enjoyable sixth album.

Hypnotic and strangely thrilling. [Feb 2007, p.86]

Equal parts faithful-but-twisted boom bap and avant-indie rock, the album drips with elbow grease. [Mar 2007, p.91]

It’s a consistent, methodical unsteadiness that hangs a song on a single blurred synth tone, a suspension bridge between two guitars acres apart in the mix, and then shoots it with bolts of electricity.

Kittie still spew the alternately golden-throated and throat-shredding thrash of their 2000 debut, Spit. [Dec 2001, p.154]

Exhilarating and at times exhausting, the competing rhythms atop call-and-response choruses deliver a jittery math-rock fix cut with humanism, warning against fundamentalists of all stripes even as they embody the multicultural promise of their homeland.

If you come to this collection strictly as a fan of one particular period, you may have to work to appreciate the others. An Artist’s Legacy is certainly comprehensive, but it fails to highlight any common threads that might help us navigate Cornell’s long and varied career.

Their sophisticated studio treatments make every sound sparkle. [Aug 2006, p.84]

Apparently, [Craig Fox's] been stockpiling solid songs: From the slinky "Go Tell Henry" to the stinging snarl of "Underestimator," everything here is taut and lively. The lone drawback: It all sounds terribly familiar.

Early EPs were lumped in with math and prog bands, but those impulses recede on this debut full-length: Clearly there's some showing off on "Carrying the Wet Wood," with intricately intertwined fretwork and drumming, but it's all in service of sing-alongs, tied together by Dave Davison's pinched, inimitable voice.

The British trio's caffinated, smart-ass guitar pop only underscores that aura of snarky confidence. [May 2008, p.111]

However much she slurs her lines on this fine fourth album, the shabby rockers and frayed ballads cut deep. [Nov 2008, p.93]

Rather than straining for pop sophistication, Fridmann simply brightens and focuses the band's darker, more obtuse corners.

Whichever side you fall on, King is worth myriad repeat listens: Dolph bridges the gap between his hometown and the Atlanta production that dominates rap’s mainstream.