Masterpiece never quite improves on this impressive opening run, though the profoundly un-country guitar pretzels of “Interstate” and “Humans” give Speedy Ortiz a run for their money, and the former even ends with one of Saddle Creek’s signature found recordings, just like one of those eight-minute Conor Oberst intros.

On their 16th(!) full-length, True North, the group's highly evolved savoir-faire proves their greatest asset.

Alpinisms' sweeping, ethereal pop owes a stylistic debt to My Bloody Valentine and the Cocteau Twins, but the debut album by former Secret Machines guitarist Ben Curtis' new project reveals a range of influences and a sophisticated approach to arrangement that sets the trio well apart from less imaginative latter-day shoegazers.

With little more than tense bass, wiry guitar, and that signature uh-AH-uh-uh-AH percussion, the songs (recorded on the quick in Daniel's house) crackle with the freshness of rough-cut demos.

Tucker and Tividad have discovered their indie-pop Neverland, and a fanciful, free-flowing sound to suit it.

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.

Dylan's voice does the same things it does for so many of his own songs: pries open unfamiliar seams of feeling inside phrases long abandoned to cliché. It helps that this may be the best-produced album of his career.

Torrini's much more engaging, though, when cooing Me and Armini's less flamboyant folk pop. [Nov 2008, p.102]

Don't Stop boasts gleaming dance-pop production from first-album collaborators Richard X and Timo Kaukolampi, plus Bloc Party/Kate Nash producer Paul Epworth and Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos.

Since 2004's Last Exit, Junior Boys' main man Jeremy Greenspan has couched his plaintive voice in various strains of modern electronic music, flitting between 2-step and synth-pop, with diminishing returns.

Maybe not what they originally had in mind when they used to call it “Electronic body music,” but a stunning reinterpretation nonetheless.

Ignore (or embrace) the similarities [to Spoon] and there’s plenty to love about songs as lightly brooding and likably grabby as these.

A pleasant surprise.

It's crate-digging redefined for the chill age.

Collett achieves both scope and cohesion on these tenderly twanging tunes, making his way assuredly through slow-burning swoons ("Henry's Song"), nimble boogies ("Charlyn, Angel of Kensington"), and back-porch laments ("No Redemption Song").

Hart continues to experiment, ensuring that his wide smile never gets tiresome.

Throughout the album, she shifts from restrained cool to soaring sentimentalism in mere seconds; this dynamic is something that Civilian possessed, but Shriek masters.

her band's seedy synth pop more often recalls Kate Bush's dramatic art songs and the Knife's ghostly techno-pop (and more specifically, the soured vowels of frontwoman Karin Andersson).

If you gauge artistic success by innovation, you can just filter the best of Culture, a very decent group of Migos songs, into a playlist. But if you appreciate Migos and the sound they ushered into contemporary rap as being one of the genre’s most basic, essential natural resources, it will be easier to let the whole album--a drama of perseverance--ride out.

Equally comfortable with dance grooves ("When I'm Alone"), country-tinged laments ("Everywhere I Go"), and epic pop dramas ("Loosen the Knot"), Illinois-bred, California-based Elisabeth Maurus is a promising work in progress on this smoothly produced debut.

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

The band's latest is sublimely elegant and more maturely conceived.

It's Dillinger's willingness to constantly incorporate new sounds--even commercial ones-- that makes Ire Works an experimental-rock touchstone. [Dec 2007, p.126]

This hybrid group -- two American indie vets and two Kenyan benga musicians--twist rock and African riffs into drum-head-tight grooves on their third album, a feast for multiethnic guitar nerds but also a lively mix that anyone can dance to.

It's familiar, sure, but Kingdom of Rust has a welcome warmth.

Sounds terrible, yet these guys attack tracks like "Sell Yourself" with so much pent-up energy that Shultz ends up selling his crackpot ideas.

As a sequel, Blackout 2 fails to move things forward; but as a revival, it’s a welcome blast.

On this debut full-length, already a U.K. No. 1, she glides through blippy anthems ("Starry Eyed"), pumping disco ("Animal"), and delicate grooves ("Lights") with a pixie-ish voice that's one notch sweeter than Metric's Emily Haines.

No doubt this will all slay live, but there are parts on For Those Who Stay where Saulnier's obvious talents and ambitions never quite get three dimensional, though it's obviously not for a lack of effort on his behalf, as this is one band no one would ever accuse of not trying hard enough.

On album three, Keane trick out their pretty piano melodies with tasty synths ('The Lovers Are Losing'), booming rap beats ('Spiralling'), and fuzzy new-wave guitars ('You Haven’t Told Me Anything').

Hitchcock's second album with the Venus 3, who include R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, is less dazzling than 2006's "Ole! Tarantula," yet still pretty compelling.

Ten crisp roots-rock tunes in a mere 40 minutes, The King Is Dead finds the Decemberists in serious course-correction mode -- which is a relief, if also kind of sad.

Pretty great for mindless pop-punk, in other words.

Here’s hoping The Tree Of Forgiveness is not either an incidental or deliberate farewell. If it must be, at least it’s both a suitably goofy celebration of his career and a dignified capstone.

What remains Bruun’s strongest suit is the way she juxtaposes the extremity of her influences. She comes out of more subdued sections to use blast beats like scare tactics, drops in glacial vocal harmonies as soothing lullabies.

CHVRCHES aim for nothing less than maximum forward impact at all times. Beneath the ice-floe synths and Mayberry’s cool, collected belting is an anxious impulse to please.

Ideal for anyone who finds Cypress Hill too sober.

Omaha-based multi-instrumentalist Joe Knapp spent three years making Someone Else's Déjà Vu, and the album is another reminder that lush studio-reliant soft and prog rock of the late '70s can still offer legitimate inspiration.

Nothing here quite matches the effusive, quirky 'Montreal -40C' from 2006’s Trompe-l’oeil, but 'Luna' sounds like Animal Collective gone mainstream and 'Dragon de Glace' sambas with Air--both fine rues to traverse, oui?

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

Poised, cool, and impermeable, Trouble Will Find Me apotheosizes urban romance and its discontents, where conversations are monologues, parties are confessionals, and education and analysis are interchangeable.

Dom's '80s identikit synth-psych ditties ("Telephoned," the title track) are the most fun when he's slyly and/or drunkenly tugging your skirt. Not when he sidles up all polished and proper.

When she depletes her stock of declarative phrases, Olsen has little to say about these mercurial emotional swings except that she's feeling them. Or unprepared to commit to them. Still, the good songs on Burn Your Fire for No Witness suggest Olsen is figuring out how to sound--how to resound, actually.

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.

Ridiculously entertaining. [Jul 2007, p.98]

The crisp arrangements often overshadow his stiff, stentorian delivery, but he still manages to convey moments of both personal loss--the death of mentor/Slum Village rapper Baatin--and professional triumph.

A tastefully matured Bauhaus produce enough fractured guitar and howling melodrama to wake the undead.

While Gore is far from impenetrable, it’s still evident that Deftones are the most interesting and esoteric thing the radio-festival circuit might dare touch.

The Desired Effect is another gingerly step into the present, Flowers’ present. No one knows how he feels or what he says until you read between his lines.

Matmos have captured with discomforting vividness the sheer surrealism of the modern vanity industry, the medieval tortures people gladly endure in pursuit of physical perfection.

Ignore the mouth-breathing rock bangers, and Mockingbird is as comfortable as well-worn denim.

The melodic sense of Newman and cowriter Dan Bejar keep things from stalling out. [Sep. 2007, p.136]

General Dome's force is relentless, but about halfway through these 12 songs, things run together, with muddy, [mid-dy] waters polluting the mix.

Teens of Denial is an album that works until it doesn’t. That moment will come at a different time for every listener.

On his first solo studio album, the granny-spectacled guitar god unplugs for a set of gentle acoustic ditties.

Their debut LP for Thrill Jockey feels more tightly composed.

Reflection takes a shallow look inward and a deeper look outward than you'd expect from a nonstop party.

His weathered voice has fissured in all the right places.

LP builds a steamrolling production and piston-like percussion out of broken electronics and heaps of scrap metal.

Opener 'Another Likely Story' sets the mood, dovetailing chilly lunar textures with hushed vocal harmonies to often nap-worthy effect.

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

Episodic is a steady, ten-track affair that doesn’t overstay its welcome, and it leaves on an anxious note.

Unlike Mirrored or 2011’s underrated Gloss Drop, La Di Da Di is where Battles demonstrate their competence rather than their virtuosity; there’s never that moment of dominos falling to their death or the mutated instruments and real-time looping opening portals to parallel dimensions.

The Roots work hard and play hard on undun, but there's not enough pleasure to balance out Thought's business-like, consummately bland reading of the character who's supposed to bring the entire album to life.

Just seven of the 15 songs here break three minutes, which is smart, as Sniper turns rubbery bass lines and thin synths into goth-flavored bubblegum pop.

Confirms [Molina] as one of underground pop's most beautifully odd voices. [Jun 2006, p.83]

A few late-album glow-stick groovers abruptly shift the vibe to rave-era bliss, but until then, turn off your mind and float downstream.

Sholi deftly incorporates eerie groans, math-rock guitars, la-la sing-alongs, and frenetic drum lines.

The production (from Ski Beatz, 88-Keys, others) adds florid, melodramatic choruses to jazzy boom-bap tracks, blunting the impact of Kweli's dogged street intellectualism.

Functioning adults that they are, Dillinger Escape Plan have realized that tightly wound precision left to its own devices is about as much fun as orgasm denial. Welcoming the pleasures of melody's slow release, they've retained their desire to rage and contort.

Music remains the Coup's ultimate sweetener, and here the jams hit hard like the words--from the big beat of opener "The Magic Clap" to the grimy guitar on "Land of 7 Billion Dances," departures from the smooth, soothing funk that was once this outfit's specialty.

Sidewinding bass lines and slashing guitar help pull together ballads of marital woe ('The Drifting Housewife'), epic rock­outs ('I Am the Supercargo'), and rousing takes on regret ('Your Acting's Like the End of the World').

Despite this abundance of raps about the unadulterated greatness of rapping, the Slaughterhouse four pull it off with extraordinary sincerity, and Our House avoids devolving into some tired treatise about how these guys make "real hip-hop" and other rappers don't.

He also lightens his fifth album with sweet, sincere interludes.

Nils Edenloff's passionate songwriting comes across as both raucous (“The Dethbridge in Lethbridge”) and gently sweet (the harmony-rich boy-girl cupcake “Don’t Haunt This Place”), consistently marked by a joyful sonic ingenuity.

At times, Lidell seems determined to overcrowd his genuinely soulful and lyrically strong music, whether it's with silly, pitched-down vocals ("Your Sweet Boom"), laptoppy clicks, squiggles, and washes ("She Needs Me"), or blasts of aggro rock ("You Are Walking").

Scattered predictability aside, AC/DC still sound strong and hungry 35 years on, as if they could pulverize riffs in perpetuity.

There's nothing on Trap Lord to suggest Ferg will follow A$AP Rocky onto the pop charts, but it's a rewardingly dark and grounded listen.

Big GRRRL Small World sounds like the work of someone too tireless to limit herself to genre lines or defined boxes, and it’s hard work resisting rap’s numerous pigeonholes.

ScHoolboy Q comes off like the dude who gives in to all the peer pressure, constantly on the verge of betraying his talents and smarts just to fit in and be one of the bros. The weirder he gets, the better.

The Pickups also pile on the sophomore-album enhancements here, deepening a sound that scarcely wanted for depth beforehand.

The brighter moments of the second half can be interesting, but never as achingly perfect as that opening stretch.

This dichotomy between the album’s two bandleaders makes the album an authentically interesting listen instead of a throwaway reunion effort.

Even without the manic singer actually up in your face, the band’s gleefully knuckle-dragging first full-length is a thrilling throwdown.

It's not that Chromeo's run out of ideas--they've been a one-idea band all along. But now they've got more of the world singing along, so their brand of fun suddenly means a little bit more.

With guitars that ring and roar and percussion that gushes and thunders, they finally turn theirlyrical perculiarities into a legitimate churn of ideas, rather than a posturing diversion. [Feb 2008, p.92]

My Morning Jacket sound right at home on "Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas," while Rivers Cuomo and Hayley Williams conjure some bizarro odd-couple energy in "The Rainbow Connection."

Pearl may have studied Karen O's textbook, but when her bandmates rev up a proper garage-rock racket, she dives in like she was born with her own irresistible rock-star sneer. [Jul 2006, p.82]

Akron/Family provide consistent backing, but it's Gira's array of violins, "krautabilly" electric guitar, accordion, and choral vocals that turn the tunes inside out.

[Franz Ferdinand's] Alex Kapranos... owes JK crooner Paul Haig a pint. [Dec 2006, p.103]

Should these two musicians choose to continue their professional reengagement (and here's hoping they do), jettisoning the vocalists and second-rate John Cooper Clarke monologues in favor of the noisy anti-pop skank they helped invent might yet yield wondrous results. Less talk, more skronk.

A ponderous chain-gang stomp and some misty lyrics outline his limitations, but once again, Perkins' loss is our gain.

This Montreal orchestral rock combo's previous efforts were lush and woozy, like a half-remembered dream, but Roaring Night is the stuff of nightmares.

Cheetah is warm, rudimentary (lotsa 808s), and demurely catchy--making it the poppiest record of this career phase by default.

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

For a band named after a benchmark of mediocrity, it's fitting that they bow out consumed by matters so ordinary. [Sep 2007, p.134]

Arcology is very much an extension of that pulsing amalgamation of sounds, while filling out an expanded universe of technological touchstones.

That Daft Punk's Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter would score Tron: Legacy seems destined.