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.