The most arresting moments on Tears in the Club come when he is working with singers. ... The rest of Tears in the Club is instrumental, aside from the snatches of sampled vocals that Kingdom has long favored in his tracks, and the mix of formats renders the album a somewhat inconsistent listen.

Each track bleeds into the next with seamless precision, borrowing each other's fantastical effects from both mid-century analog plug-ins and modern digital tricks.

A set of punchy roots pop whose backbeat thumps as hard as her still-wounded heart. [Jul 2006, p.86]

Percolating tracks such as 'Pum Pum' and 'Chooga Cane' are more like undercooked, meandering jams than songs, mixing loose grooves and breezy synths as the profane Perry portrays a muttering old codger.

Lyrics referencing both Greek astronomy and the Old Testament, as well as guitar textures indebted more to Glenn Branca than Black Flag, reveal an art-rock ace up the band's tattered sleeve.

The album is their most straightforward yet. Fortunately it's not short on the witty lyrics and solid songwriting that always kept them from being a novelty act. [Aug 2007, p. 109]

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.

Instead of psychedelic pop or Princely funk, they regurgitate limp fake reggae, crappy country yee-haw, dorky Eurodance, and nasty New Age. [Dec 2007, p.126]

The music, particularly Lenny Kaye's guitars, can be both gritty and lush, but it mainly functions to uplift the words and hold them closer to the ears. The problem here is that Patti's got our attention but her couplets are too often second-rate.

Mud-footed trip-hop production... [Nov. 2000, p.208]

Even more '80s than its predecessor. [Jul 2004, p.105]

If the band could bring themselves to record with anything resembling subtlety, they might win over some skeptics. But they also might end up hanging with Lightspeed Champion. I suspect they'll take the trade-off.

These flat-voiced, fleetingly funky gangsta rips are too detached to be adorable. [Aug 2006, p.76]

Get me out of here, take me back: That's breaking up in a nutshell, and Cults till this soil multiple ways.

The jams always pull back at just the right moment, and the songs equal their folksy models. There's so much heart here that even the most exacting re-creations of bygone FM wank seem spontaneous.

Reliably excellent but emotionally detached, the Sea and Cake's eighth album is of a piece with their first seven.

It's about three songs too long and a little all over the place. [Nov 2006, p.99]

The reinvigorated results feel warm-blooded, definite, vulnerable, exposed.

The debut album from G-Unit producer Jacob "Jake One" Dutton plays like a crowd- pleasing beat reel for future employers.

Her best album-length-EP since Quarantine remains instrumental, but now skitters jazzily.

The album clicks because beyond the date-stamping visuals and the music's timeless project to unite art and pop, the longtime partnership behind Niki & the Dove has finally found a proper voice, and a proper name.

With guest vocalists crooning over synth wiggles seemingly lifted from Aphex Twin's "Richard D. James Album," the Iranian expat's first record in eight years is as tuneful as it is brazen.

It's far from an implosion, far from spectacular.

You Can Have What You Want floats dusty folk-rock melodies in thick echo, giving the vocals an otherworldly cast.

The upgrade is one of focus and intensity.

An amazing all-originals simulation, mostly of teeny-bop smashes by sundry Kasenetz-Katz-produced studio concoctions (plus the Archies) circa 1967-1970.

The musical spitting 
image of his dad Neil Finn (Crowded House, Split Enz), Liam blends sophisticated melodies and wistful vocals with masterful authority.

The aspirations here are lofty, as always, if less reflective than your average NIN lament; the songs swell, bobble, and even leak from the seams under the pressure.

This stuff may be lo-fi, but in Anderson's case, the hissy fits. [Jul 2004, p.112]

Their most mature record to date.

It's the album's studied organic liveness that resonates the longest. [Mar 2002, p.137]

[It] threads seductive, chiming melodies through robotic, New Order-style rhythms. [May 2007, p.90]

Charles Thompson has fittingly made an album that sounds more like the Pixies than any of his previous solo efforts. [Oct 2007, p.96]

The album's first half is suffused with a longing that flits between hopeful and resigned, unsure which is the worse fate. At other times, she sounds a little exasperated--mournful even--but throughout, her elegant arrangements remain taut and full of energy.

Herren has the good collaborative instincts of Handsome Boy Modeling School, but none of their seedy, crowd-pleasing shtick. [Apr 2005, p.108]

Her tender songcraft grows stronger.

The Hazards of Love feels like a gambit, with the Decemberists betting that increased bombast and literary aspiration will make up for decreased attention to pop craft. It's a hazardous bet that yields spectacular sparks but ultimately asks for much more than it's willing to give.

The Fall has been billed as Norah Jones' rock album. In fact, it's something even more surprising: a hot-blooded soul record from the queen of the even keel.

Indistinct lyrics and plodding dynamics confine most of the songs to "just okay" status, but a few arresting tracks seem destined for a yet-to-be-built rock Valhalla.

Though Day by Day doesn't include any tracks as memorable as 1999's 'Beng Beng Beng,' Kuti still shines.

Though Kweli can't change his voice he was born with, he needs to figure out how to make it as compelling as his material. [Sep 2007, p.133]

Credit producer Butch Vig, too, who brings the trio closer to sonic Nirvana by coaxing out their snarls and then compressing and polishing them to maximum shininess.

Among those still cranking out shambolic odes to the suburban bored, these reformed shitgazers rule.

Her 1976 debut (reissued plus one new song free for download) is brief and unpretentious, a soprano celebrating heaven on earth over harp and piano.

This Gift flags halfway through when an odd excursion into retro-'60s twaddle gums up the works. [Feb 2008, p.97]

Build a Nation roars and throbs with vintage fire. [Jul 2007, p.92]

He, like the Beta Band, deftly creates a patchwork of Britain's mushiest styles, from Rubber Soul-era Beatles to Badly Drawn Boy's acoustic wanderings. [Sep 2006, p.108]

Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker frontman David Lowery splits the difference between the former's loose eclectic twang and the latter's tight psych-country on his solo debut.

There are light nods to the times—single “Love So Soft” lightly updates Thankful’s Christina Aguilera-penned “Miss Independent” and Breakaway’s “Walk Away” with a half-time chorus, and tracks like “Didn’t I” and “Heat” recalls Adele’s collaborations with Max Martin. But the rest is stubbornly old-fashioned: sloughing off the flakiness of the millennial male while extolling the virtues of taking it slow and pushing for commitment.

When pop structure interrupts the soundtrack-y vibe, it's modestly and briefly too much of singer Sian Ahern's sad, smok voice would lessen the mystery. [Apr 2008, p.102]

Dear infuses the snapping, beeping compositions of his second album with a sincere yearn, broadening the genre in the process. [Jul 2007, p.96]

What Tapes lacks in classic names, it makes up for in flow.

No longer the self-obsessed antihero, Slug continues his shift to serious storyteller, but the narratives here lack coherence and detail, while the music - ominous piano, lonely guitar - feels sketchy, like partial demos.

Blööz, blahs and mad-stonerpunk.

The dusty, reverent feel of even the album's wildest rockers gives the sense that he's just a lone wanderer battling solitude with sound.

He's already sophisticated enough to paste lines about real heartbreak onto chunky, melodic beats ("True Story"), then turn around and be an equally passionate goofball ("Getting Dumb"). Leaning toward the latter could make him a star outside the backpack circuit.

More than anything, I and Love and You proves how miscast the Brothers were as folkies, because their ambitions are so much larger.

Most of the music is fiercely restrained, characterized by short songs, skeletal atmospheres, and performances that have a mechanistic, flatlined intensity. Bad? No, but stiff, and sapped of the dynamism the twosome seemed to come by so naturally in the past.

A near-perfect album by a band that seems, finally, to have found their identity. [Jun 2007, p.89]

Braxton’s tunes here rarely warrant her gusto, and the coupling of virtuoso performances with rather mediocre material squares with Sex & Cigarettes’s larger theme of the dissatisfaction that results from pouring one’s heart into an undeserving relationship. It’s a depressing album, but not quite in the way that’s intended.

The musical ideas here will be readily familiar to anyone who has heard Pantha du Prince's work before.

The effect is like a vaguely remembered, pleasantly low-key dream. [Mar 2008, p.97]

Despite the invocation of those crusty legends [Guided by Voices], Business is no lo-fi throwback.

It's a relatively solid record, but without any of the spectacularly gritty flashes the Wu are known for.

Sounds like the Band in a coma. [Jul 2006, p.82]

Alex G has always found power in the broken and uncertain. He’s just gotten a lot braver about spinning that chaos into beauty.

Jimmy Eat World might still be stuck in "The Middle" a year from now, but this album's more thoughtful homestretch at least suggests the possibility of alternate futures. [Nov 2004, p.115]

Medicine County is more boisterous than 2008's Dirt Don't Hurt, but there's still something pleasantly lackadaisical about Golightly's delivery, and her songs never feel like they've been blindly co-opted.

The record maintains their signatures, with breaks and samples undergirding or woven through indie rock guitar figures and extremely regular-person vocals. Barlow has a bit more control over his vibe now, but he still sounds like the ultimate ‘90s indie guy, detached and overly intense at the same time; Davis like the eccentric bedroom genius who wandered in from the Shire.

This record recasts her unnerving spell--brooding country-pop riffs that conceal devastating lyrics. [May 2003, p.116]

No, Virginia compiles a clutch of new tunes, old demos, B-sides, and cast-offs from the previous album, but it scores biggest with an obsessed fan's accordion-powered rendition of the Psychedelic Furs' 'Pretty in Pink.'

Touching on elemental fears and desires, Changing of the Seasons rewards intimate listening--in the final verse of the title track, a lover’s embrace suddenly silences any thoughts of straying.

It’s far more interesting and hard-hitting, with bizarre hooks where you least expect.... Taken as a whole, The Powers That B (what a title, right?) suffers from the typical overlong-yet-undercooked double-album dilemma that makes it hard to imagine playing either side in a year that isn’t 2015.

Although the daughter of Little Feat's late leader Lowell George charms with a crisp, vibrato-less chirp that suits her airy tunes, the star here is Parks, Brian Wilson's SMiLE collaborator, who surrounds George in a florid orchestral fantasia that flickers like a luscious, precisely gardened flower bed teeming with hidden fauna.

Mostly frustrating... the spare instrumentation and samey melodies wear you down. [Oct 2006, p.96]

We Were Promised Jetpacks' second album tightens the craggy fuzz of their first, revealing twisty post-punk songs with chewy pop centers.

Favoring a bright, treble-heavy guitar attack, the group skew their arrangements in ways that feel more canny than contrived.

Kath's hooky charms ease the ferocity of singer Alice Glass' panting wails and loopy, sarcastic screams. [Apr 2008, p.94]

This record is scattered enough to alienate fans who want more consistently upbeat music. But if you’re onboard for the weirdness, the sequencing works surprisingly well.

Forever is livelier, grittier and better [than "Be."] [Aug 2007, p.101]

Kate Cooper's tales of awkward, broken love and chronic miscommunication don't seem ripe for selling sedans, but her reedy voice and zippy melodic guitar, plus drummer Damon Cox's imperfect harmonies, keep things from getting too depressing.

Apparently Citron is ready to leave the nest. When Beverly performs live she'll work with other players and Rose will be elsewhere, focusing on her solo music. That's too bad, as Careers makes a great argument for teamwork.

Although Feast comes packed with Europeans and expats (Butler currently calls Vienna home), the rhythms strike with Yankee assertiveness, the vocals now direct yet far more diverse.

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.

The most impressive thing about Moth is the way it manages to wrap a more compact frame around Chairlift’s spiraling colors without dulling the final product.

Gimmicky yet compelling, the delicate second album by Miami's Postmarks presents 11 numerically titled covers in ascending order, plus Sesame Street's cute 'Pinball Number Count.'

Though there aren't any clunkers, Tomorrow's Hits peaks when it achieves maximum speed and strives for the ecstatic repetition of eye-rolling, body-transcending gospel music.

They find a woolly warmth and loopy generosity few English art-rockers have stumbled upon since the first Beta Band record. [Dec 2004, p.124]

It's the sound of too-clever body-movers merely going through the motions.

It's not perfect--it's too long by a third, David Lee Roth often sounds like a 2 A.M. drunk doing David Lee Roth at karaoke, and a Kinks cover wouldn't have killed them. But the album clearly aspires to both be part of the canon, and, if need be, serve as an entry point.

They clearly prize improvisation and spontaneity; the songs always sound like they were written this morning, refined over lunch, and recorded in time for happy hour. [Jan 2004, p.103]

From the beginning, Franti has favored a retro, flow-through groove, and here hsi funk adds a decidedly disco flavor. [Jul 2001, p.135]

A Death Cab For Cutie album you can listen to while ironing your cape. [Apr 2004, p.94]

It’s an ambiguous ending that makes the journey all the more fascinating.

The diversity of the players is reflected in the sprawling songs, many of feel like patchworks.

Constant club-pop hooks, courtesy of executive producer Dr. Luke (with help from mentor Max Martin plus Benny Blanco, Ammo, and others) render the hypocrisy nearly irrelevant; but if they dry up, yikes.

How to write authentically about a mundane life? Smith's answer involves screwball hooks, surreal evangelizing, and drunken-troubadour gusto.