It has all the enjoyable little quirks of New Found Glory's earliest material, and most of the songs have the potential to stay lodged in your brain for days.

And it does seem that way here[on this album], that Gold Panda has made some kind of discovery that will be looked back on in a few years time as a defining statement to the turning tides of dance music extravagance.

It’s as if Metallica decided to try and court the 16 year old post-mall goth crowd with a bunch of inane Black Veil Bride like lyrics, while adding in a bit of Avenged Sevenfold-lite songwriting.

There's pure pop gold to be found here, but also envelope-pushing alchemy that turns these songs into unforgettable aural expressions of joy.

Even if a few songs don’t quite leave a lasting impression, Dreams of Being Dust on the whole does.

More often than not (and this is the kicker, ladies and gentlemen), Pretty. Odd. is just pretty dull.

The album is still very much a tale of two cities: for every half-baked wobbly anthem that the rooster-haired cockney thug has in his pocket he still manages to surprise with an occasional outburst of borderline genius.

Dense, satisfying, and fun--this deserves to go down as one of the peaks of baroque pop in recent years.

Get Awkward, as an album, is a step up, and it certainly has highs and lows, but what I’m really missing here are things like "Bicycle Bicycle, You Are My Bicycle" or even “October, First Account,” songs that really stick out.

Overall, this is unmistakably a Banks album, so if you've liked anything she's done so far, this is definitely worth checking out. Despite some of the shifts described above, her darkness is still there, and it is still equal parts inviting and off-putting.

At its core, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here is a rock solid record that sees Alice In Chains settling in the confines of their own style.

Liturgy of Death is still a decent slab of black metal, but for a band that has released so many classic albums full of banger riffs, hellish drum performances and demonic vocals, this album just doesn't measure up.

The new outing from the Nordic rockers may not be as essential as Sister Faith in the long run, but it certainly makes for a highly pleasurable listen.

Clear Heart Full Eyes is entirely at ease with itself, rarely forcing the issue beyond the gently affecting, but affecting is definitely the right word.

Everett has stated that Tomorrow Morning is an album of redemption, and being so it beams with a warm and understated jovial jaunt that never outlives its welcome and is omnipresent throughout the album.

Dream pop, goth, shoegaze--call it what you want, but what School of Seven Bells have ended up with is a genuinely gorgeous record by any standard.

It is a hodgepodge of stupid ideas that one will either find brilliant or, well, stupid. However, it is hard to deny that it is a pop album of massive ambition and yet, suffers from none of the pretentiousness that plagues most of the Killers contemporaries in that aspect.

The flow of Times of Grace's debut is so jagged and stop-start.

The better they’ve gotten at refining their craft, at writing the perfect chorus and combining them seamlessly with organic, vivid sonics, the further away they’ve gotten from the wounded empathy that drove their earlier records. At least ice burns. Optica too often feels like nothing at all.

Ultimately, this is the best album The Artist Formerly Known As Squiggle could possibly have hoped to make in 2006.

Intimacy, as an album, is hit-or-miss.

The problem with MU.ZZ.LE is that, as a self-produced effort, it blatantly lacks the restraint that might otherwise have seen this become something truly extraordinary.

All in all, Scurrilous succeeds at all levels. It takes the tediousness out of technicality, and injects more hooks than a tackle box into the Protest the Hero formula.

As it stands, we have Neighborhoods, large and vapid, every bit an inconsistent mess as it is a guilty pleasure.

Culture II sounds like a satire of every other rap album released by a major label these days, catering to the lowest common denominator of casual music listener. As a business decision, it’s genius; as a piece of music, it’s little more than an elaborate consumer scam.

There are just a few riffs and grating melodies that spoil what could have been an album that was at least as strong as its predecessor.

One can't help but feel that Avary's grasp on quality control is waning, with too many of these--admittedly solid and likable--twelve tracks delivering predictable and forgettable results that fail to reach any great heights.

The primary drawback here is that even though the album does occasionally ascend to great heights, it spends at least the same amount of time strolling through monotonous buildups that never really reach their destinations.