The disc's effectiveness comes from the subtlety of the theme as much as its pervasiveness.

Power is only a slight variation on its predecessors, yet sounds more vibrant and alive than almost anything in the band's canon.

Haunting, gorgeously inward-looking, yet laced with memorable melodies, Feathers is Dead Meadow's strongest work ever and an early contender for one of 2005's best records.

Vanderslice's stories differ from those on earlier albums largely in setting, but Pixel Revolt's musical elements have taken an astonishing leap from their predecessors.

Hefner are at their best when they stick to their primary theme, which is love that's been confused, bruised and downright disappointed.

Though marred by a few missteps, it's mostly enjoyable, if unchallenging.

While not as thrillingly consistent as its predecessor, Man Mountain is another beautiful synthesis of man-made ingenuity and machine-generated textures.

It is unsettling, starkly beautiful, intricate and minimalist all at once, and if it lacks the immediate impact of Fugazi, its aura lingers long after it's over.

A few missteps into the mainstream aside, Log 22 shows Bettie Serveert entering their second decade of recording with grace and winning humility.

Compared to similar but more extroverted acts like Capitol K and Manitoba, Clue to Kalo lacks the jagged pop edges that stick in the listener's memory.

There's still plenty of grating screaming and yelling on From the Desk of Mr. Lady, underscored by a strong punk ethos.

She Loves You's real triumph is the fact that it sounds like a Twilight Singers record first and a covers collection second.

Unabashedly mellow and reflective, Burn the Maps may not hook mainstream music fans who've been conditioned to expect a tidily rhyming chorus ever thirty seconds.

If you can imagine Gary Numan, Prince and William Orbit teaming up to write and produce a record for Donna Summer, little on Black Cherry will surprise you.

AmAnSet gives us dance music that's perfect to sit down and listen to, opening an imaginary club in our heads.

Twitchy, insistent and more kinetic than a dancefloor covered with electric eels, Anxiety Always should establish Adult. as the anti-Fischerspooner -- an '80s-inflected duo whose garish stylistic flourishes are far outweighed by their extensive resonant merits.

Unfortunately, it seems that the only thing he really learned was how to write a Pavement tune, and he's having a little trouble trying to figure out what to do with himself now that Pavement is no more.

A rich, varied and emotionally resonant album that eschews AOR sugar fixes for smart, graceful songwriting and soulful but unshowy performances.

Despite his gray hairs, Moz's approach to You Are the Quarry is youthful and energetic -- perhaps even punk.

This is a disc that springs to life under closer inspection but also serves quite capably as background music -- the kind that draws in casual listeners and gets them asking questions.

It's almost as though, by writing what can be experienced as one long, explosive track with pauses, they have created a different way of hearing small variations. While this trick has been used to good effect in any number of electronic albums over the years, it has rarely worked this well in a rock context.

It remains to be seen whether this is the record for which American Analog Set's fans have been waiting a decade, but Set Free is definitely one of the most consistent, mature albums they've made to date.

Hotel Morgen doesn't change a thing, and really, with results this consistent, it shouldn't have to.

The resultant songs encapsulate the pop-rock aesthetic that made The Strokes' debut so much fun; every tune is tailor-made for dancing.

Shifting from light and airy to a sort of mild bossa-nova groove on a few tracks, Kings of Convenience throw in just enough variation to keep things interesting, without snapping the listener out of the dreamy daze they've induced.

Heart Like A River is a full-throated and diverse expression of the songwriting talents of Daniel Littleton and Elizabeth Mitchell, though bassist Karla Schickele's two contributions are nothing to sneeze at, either.

Their fizzy confections still bristle with the same unfettered enthusiasm for retro kitsch, only now they come wrapped in a timeless pop sheen and confetti-sprinkled sharpness that's as inscrutable as it is enchanting.

This is not a happy album, but it might be a great one, taking the Western swagger of Dog in the Sand into bleak and stunning territory.

Honeycomb isn't a great album -- it's too tentative and self-restrained for that -- but it's quite a good one.

Push the Button isn't wall-to-wall brilliant; it has its share of lulls and, for want of a better term, dubious inspirations. However, when it works, it's so on that you won't want to turn it off.

Even though Mississauga Goddamn isn't completely without flaw -- some of Gibb's lyrical and compositional choices are pretty obvious, for one thing -- it allows you, for a little while, at least, to escape from the everyday world.

If your tastes favor frenzied, rabid or berserk rock, grab yourself a copy of Black Eyes and tie it up tight.

This is utterly original, honest, intelligent music that sounds like nothing you'll hear elsewhere. It's not an easy listen, but it's well worth the time it takes to get to know it.

The album certainly isn't a waste of your money if you aren't already a fan. This is one band that clearly doesn't save their lesser material for obscure release. Lost Marbles and Exploding Evidence functions very, very well as a weird little LP.

Knitting Needles and Bicycle Bells is the sort of album you put on when you're in the mood for a particular sound -- and the sound in question is echoing and catchy, yet depressive.

Though A Colores is rather uneven, it's a compelling-- and more than competent-- effort.

One of the best instrumental albums you are likely to hear this year.

Warren too often undercuts his successes by trying to impress us with his strangeness.

It's a remarkable album.

Although Sound-Dust's revisionist zeal is mostly exhausted by the thirty minute mark, its spirit is alive and well in the album's streamlined production aesthetic. Rarely, if ever, are these songs muddied by an obvious surplus of musical ideas.

Zoomer has a warmth and spirit that makes the work endearing as actual songs rather than chunks of carefully manipulated data.

It is infectious in the best and most viral sense of the word -- the songs get under your skin and thrash around.

What could have been an awkward marriage of incompatible styles turned into a vibrant, invigorating blast of musical enthusiasm, free of restrictive genre definitions.

The songs here are resolutely pop, almost bubblegum, and though they're sometimes buoyant, hyperkinetic, even fun, they have almost no depth or resonance to them.

Kidnapped By Neptune is one of those rare albums that's both sexy and dirty, and isn't guilty of trying to be either.

There are no sweeping creative revelations -- are there ever, on eighth albums? -- but nothing here sullies the group's legacy either.

Wherever I Am, I Am What's Missing remains grounded in electronic composition, but the subtle distinctions between spacy trip-hop epics (see "Diamonds and Stones) and booty-shaking dance-floor numbers help to keep the band's dynamic fresh, even after ten years.

Summer Make Good blurs the distinctions of digital and analog to the point of opening new categories.

There's a shimmering sense of otherworldly grandeur at work here that captures the spirit of exotica better than any of the other so-called "revivalists".

Metric take rock 'n' roll to a smarter, more sophisticated place than do most of today's American bands.

A gorgeous work of art.

I so want to hate this album.... If only the album flat-out sucked, I'd be on much firmer ground. Too bad it doesn't.

A cracked masterpiece.... it rewards your attention with dreamy, surreal vistas, skewed poetry and flights of unadulterated musical madness.

With Teeth's biggest surprise is how immediately gratifying the majority of its songs are.

Write good songs. Record them simply. Don't preach. There's a concept that works.

Full of solid songwriting and catchy melodies that do not pander to the cliches so often found in mainstream pop/rock albums.

Unlike Leona Naess the musician, Leona Naess the album is nearly forgettable, such is the perfection of its production and cardboard cut-out lyrical and musical themes.

Everyone Deserves Music excels beyond simple good intentions because Franti and Spearhead are also at peace with their musical influences.

Despite the obviously electronic origins of most of the sounds, there are clearly thinking, imagining humans behind the scenes; this is about as un-clinical as electronic music gets.

While many rock and electronic groups amble pleasantly along without a musical thought in their heads, country's combination of tradition and musicianship just keeps producing albums, like Chinatown, of a really tremendous caliber.

This is a welcome addition to the Giant Sand corpus, and an impressive demonstration of the continuing relevance of the band, more than two decades into its existence.

The last thing you'd expect from a roster of 27 is breathing room, but Son of Evil Reindeer is full of it; I've found a lot of unexpected touches in the short time I've had the disc.

Although the group's previous outings routinely got bogged down in forced experimentalism, Broken Ear Record at least keeps the pace sufficiently frantic, which allows us to excuse some (if not all) of its more self-indulgent moments.

You won't necessarily encounter anything substantially removed from their prior work, but you will witness the duo allowing new voices to assume a greater role in rocketing each song to some bright red futon in a distant region of the cosmos.

There's enough strong material on The Story of My Life to score Carter time on CMT and get her in good with the Borders crowd, cementing her cross-genre appeal.

Skimskitta is a beautiful album. It is warm and enveloping. It is full of shadows but flashes with brilliance. It is oblique, yet often familiar. It is intelligent, inventive and inspiring. And it is very hard to put into words.

Überzone's constant changeups in style and tempo breathe fresh life into a stale genre.

Although the Cooper Temple Clause pack plenty of celestial firepower and darkwave ambiance into their six-minute movements, by the time they unveil the epic "Written Apology", the sheer compositional weight is too much for a mortal listener to handle.

He barely sings above conversational volume -- a little bit raspy, rife with emotion and completely convincing. It's a perfect fit for his songs, and for the half-broken but lovely and endearing production style with which he has realized them.

Last Night is a perfectly serviceable mellow slow-jam R&B record -- and that's a damned shame.

Sleeping on Roads is both more subdued and more universally poppy than anything Mojave 3 has released to date.

A gleefully cohesive miasma of sound.

The problem is, it all feels a bit contrived.

Their music is interesting, intelligent and exciting, and it'll make you smile really, really big.

If you peel away the pretense, there's actually a fascinating album at work here.

They've mostly dropped the songs that traded entirely on their sexuality, replacing them with tunes full of nuance and subtlety.

There wouldn't be a problem at all if Buzzkunst wasn't such a maddeningly forgettable record.

Like Tindersticks without the strings, and with a better sense of vocal clarity, L'Altra is the kind of band whose releases would be best sold with some cheap red wine and a carton of cigarettes for those long, lonely nights in.

No, it's not the new White Stripes record -- it's something infinitely better.

Though Faded Seaside Glamour proudly wears the jacket of its influences for all to see, the band stitch it up so well that you could never accuse it of being a knockoff.

Team Boo is Mates of State's best album to date.

Mercifully, Frusciante has toned down the screechy howl that made his earlier work almost unbearable, and while his songs aren't quite diamond-sharp, they have evolved into soft-focus pop tunes that display a keen melodic intuition and gift for beautiful torment.

I'm used to hearing more layers in this type of music, and the simplicity here is surprising -- not necessarily in a good way.

As with anything, some listeners will already have sickened of seeing the words "dance" and "punk" next to one another -- but for the rest of us, this is an excellent new chapter in one of the young century's most interesting musical trends.

Since We've Become Translucent does an almost unimaginably good job of adding heft, weight and, god I hate to say it, maturity to the garage idiom.

The more I listen to The Sword of God, the more I appreciate Quasi’s ability to create smoothly flowing, catchy songs without sacrificing their trademark complexity. My only problem with this album is that the whole package is just so drenched in irony...

There's probably nothing here you haven't heard before, but it's all wrapped up in a particularly appetizing package and garnished with lots of artful discord.

It's definitely a departure from their earlier albums -- or, more precisely, an evolution -- but in no way did they drop the ball. Instead, they may now be playing a different game.

Though it isn't the staggering atom bomb that was Turn on the Bright Lights, Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid is intermittently brilliant and wholly accomplished, establishing Elefant as more than a flash in the pan.

A novelty act, a misfire and a waste of time.

Few electronic artists working today have the balls or the skills to pull off an album as unconventional and uncompromising as Go Plastic...

As ordered as it is wild, as gorgeous as it is gruesome, Lay of the Land is indeed a ballsy record.

This is one of the breeziest, catchiest discs I've heard in a while.

Telepopmusik has all of the innovative approaches of their countrymen, and their attention to lyrics and prominent place for vocal styles means that their album is both accessible and deeply interesting.

This is a big, sprawling, difficult but rewarding album, from a band whose reach exceeds its grasp, but only by a little.

It's filthy, low-budget fun that's still plenty fucked up, whether you're a first-timer or a hardcore Peaches fanatic.

He's at the height of his powers here, as vital and relevant as ever.

Unless you're fifteen and were raised with a mouse constantly in hand, the Mae Shi can get overwhelming... but their saving graces (lots of genuine energy, naming their songs things like "Hieronymus Bosch is a Dead Man") charm you into liking them.