The Power Out's most impressive feature is the musicianship and songwriting skill on display.

Although its quality and creativity never falter, as Fugu 1 goes on it becomes a little redundant.

They've traded amped-up aggression for seething sexuality without losing any of their muscular bite.

So infectiously content are the Oranges that they can make even the most jaded listener bop his/her head or tap his/her foot to their power pop structures -- but this is also their downfall.

The music is fantastic, but the sinking suspicion that there's something else going on that you can't possibly fathom becomes pervasive by album's end.

Sure, they meld muscular riffs with smoky organ meditations, folky landscapes, pompous orchestration and the occasional IDM skitter, but not without losing the transcendent detail that makes each of these genres worth savoring and holding on to.

Radian boasts a sound far deeper and richer than most of their push-button contemporaries.

Tyrannosaurus Hives has hit garage rock's heart like a huge syringe of adrenaline, and even if it doesn't awaken the hibernating beast, its furious tempest is a blinding final gasp for a genre that has repeatedly rewarded mediocrity.

Where Stellastarr's debut hits the jackpot is in their gutsy decision to wipe the slate clean by declaring the years 1981 to 1996 a single era, synthesizing the sounds of that fifteen year stretch by playing every band on the soundtrack to a mid-eighties John Hughes gem with the knowledge of the nineties college rock boom.

A Healthy Distrust is impressively fluid; Francis fuses his experimental leanings and newer mainstream hip-hop allowances with ease.

Even taking into account his work with the Replacements, this is the album on which every song is truly worth hearing.

If you're fifteen years old, female, and want to rebel, So Stylistic probably makes a lot more sense than a Bright Eyes record. If you're any older, it'll probably just make you feel dirty.

The jazz leanings and fascination with electronic music remain, and are sometimes imprudently indulged, but in general the band seems to have a renewed awareness of the needs of the people on the other side of the speakers.

The first thing that really jumps out at you about Two Way Monologue is that it lacks its predecessor's exuberant, puddle-jumping panache. But when you stop and look at things closely, you realize that the progressions Lerche has made on the songwriting front more than atone for any zeal he's trimmed off the back end.

The intimacy is startling. The introspection is as charming as it is insightful.

The group creates an ornately atmospheric resonance throughout Ambulance Ltd., but their light-weight compositions place the album at serious risk of floating away.

There's a feeling of constant evolution over the course of any given track; subtle changes in swing, intonation and attack let you in on the secret that this is no automaton, but a living, breathing entity that's being brought into existence.

When the formula works, the results are quite impressive, but at other times the songs simply fall flat, victims of their own overly simplistic and repetitive arrangements

Titles & Idols' songs solve the same acoustic guitars + electronica beats equation as do the songs of Beth Orton and Everything But the Girl, adding up to adult pop with just enough jitter to give it a tinge of hipness.

One of the year's best knock-down-drag-out rock 'n' roll records.

It's classy, but also honest. Not a single emotion seems overplayed or exaggerated; you'll dance and sway to it because each song feels as organic as life, and the life it documents is nicely lit.

One hell of a good album.... [It] retains the intelligence of Prewitt's Sea and Cake work and melds it to rock and roll songcraft.

Bold, adventurous, whimsical and witty, this debut offering from Circulatory System proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are still signs of life to be found in the Elephant 6 collective.

A meticulously crafted pop album that's as well suited for curling up on a bleak winter night as it is for driving with the top down on a bright summer day.

It's as important to women in hip-hop as Joni Mitchell, Madonna and Sleater-Kinney were to their respective genres.

Effortlessly charming and strangely compelling, despite moments of complete and utter unlistenability.

Instead of embracing the angularity of the self-conscious Britpop and New Wave scenes of yore, Field Music embrace the sugary pop-rock that defined the first British Invasion.

A charged and melodic album full of anthemic choruses, hummable verses, and passionate rock.