It's one of the few Europop albums that not only deserves worldwide domination, but also has a really good chance of achieving it.

If The Unfairground doesn’t quite qualify as a "stunning" return to form--"stunning" never really being Ayers’ stock in trade--it certainly represents the delightful and unexpected renaissance of a perennially undervalued artist, whose quiet but significant influence is long overdue for re-assessment.

Vernon’s music is stripped-down, uniformly quiet, and confessional, his clipped, cracked, Will Oldham-inspired lyrics not evidence of cabin delirium, but the work of an artist warmed by a creative glow that only pure isolation (read: freedom) can fully render.

What Hey Venus! ultimately is, is a good record of classy pop/rock songs, arranged and produced well, shot through with a degree of personality and skill, and almost completely lacking in the inspired, eclectic madness which made "Radiator and Guerilla" so damn good.

At first listen, N.B. sounds creepy. But ignore the lyrics, surrender yourself to the joys of pop songwriting and N.B. seems to approach perfection.

Nash keeps herself resolutely in the background of her songs, revealing precious little of her own personality or emotion, and it’s this reservation that makes her fail as a popstar, at least right now.

Parades, both restrained and wildly dramatic, gently touching and warmly enveloping, is not a record that sits comfortably with convenient labels.

45:33 works both as exercise-soundtrack and discopunk-odyssey because James Murphy understands how to make people move on a basic, physical level. [Review of UK release]

Load Blown does more than enough to keep "very" and "awfully," respectively, in the mix.

All of their typical sentiments are there, but where their prior releases used spacey interludes and bridges as a recess from the hopelessness, the group employs these moments more sparingly.

Prefuse 73 sounds freer, and yet more deliberately formal--most of the songs break down like classic hip-hop does, two-thirds of the way toward the end.

It's not a complete disaster--the songs are still there, shining proud and (far too) loud--but each listen brings a constant, aggravating reminder of the sloppy production.

Right now, it's an album I'm unlikely to play all that much now that I'm done reviewing it.

For all its tasteful craft, aesthetic unity and knowing winks to its makers’ history, it’s simply not very interesting

While the commercial potential of her new album may be up for debate, as a showcase for Rosin Murphy’s talent, Overpowered is an enormous success.

In Rainbows, then, is Radiohead as straight and lean as they’ve ever sounded.

The debut album was good, but this is better. Much, much better; the kind of record I will happily and willingly return to long after this review is dead and buried.

An astonishing act of rejuvenation and reclamation, the album may just be the group’s best to date, and solidly reestablishes Eleanor and Matthew as progenitors of brilliantly exciting, mind-scrambling pop.

If you’re already among the converted, Random Spirit Lover is a second straight masterpiece from arguably the most talented songwriter of this generation.

You can write off some of Cease to Begin’s bland regionalisms as lacking in spice. But if, come midnight, Marry Song's' serpentine gospel finds home in your head, you better get up and read.

This is a pretty great album, filler and all.

Hera Ma Nono improves on "Ok-Oyot System" in almost every way: the guitar sounds are more vibrant (padded with reverbs, phasers, and other bubbly what-have-you’s); the songs hang together better as a record; the slide between Swahili, English, and Luo is as effortless and colorful as good pidgin; and, most importantly, it usually gets at--or at least hints at--African music’s most cherished balance: unhurriedness with a pulse.

They’ve evolved into a tightly wound and grotesquely attuned power trio; and nowhere is that more evident than on the hyper-bpms of Grass Geysers.

Outwardly, We Are the Pipettes is fun, sweet, and attractive. If you hang around, it starts to feel brittle, frigid, bitchy, and weird.

The moments of "hey, that sounds a bit like ..." are few, but notable; and perhaps unavoidable with such a distinctive vocal presence. In any case, these are welcome echoes from the past, not a weary retracing of footsteps.

Little on Magic outright falters, which is why it's hard at first to explain how unappealing it is.

The only song worth a second listen is 'Smithereens.'

Carrabba’s keening grandiloquence may have lost some of its most explicitly cathartic qualities, but The Shade of Poison Trees remains his best work in years.

The group synthesizes pretty much anything you could lump under a general Americana label--bluegrass, country, alt-country, folk rock--to create an idiosyncratic sound more West Coast than Nashville.

Jones simply feels more involved in the music on 100 Days.

Good Arrows is still a series of beautiful songs for that part of us all that just wants to stay in bed all day.

Over the course of eleven songs of grim predestination, virtually no modernizing or even identifying signposts are allowed to disturb the terrain.

Ultimately, it's that broken, half-told beauty that gives Dog its mystery, but also perhaps its feel of a record you may always like but around which you may never really feel completely comfortable.

Banhart's efforts to expand himself have left him woefully unable to play to his strengths in the rare occasions he bothers with them.

In Our Bedroom After The War is Stars' most consistent, nuanced album, and says good things for the future, but Campbell and Millan won't write a perfect record until they learn what their songs need, and abandon the inevitable few tracks on which it's refused.

The album sounds simultaneously familiar, yet alien.

Just Like You shows and proves unquestionably that Cole’s capable of some seriously rich, powerful art.

We can only parse this album as that of a brilliant group still trying desperately to reconcile its awkward youth into an identity, but only managing to hide behind a few ten-year old audio masks.

Their steadily, sturdily conventional rock and roll is more compelling and rich than most people would admit as they're busy gawking at the sight of the Amazing Lyricist and his Kinda Weak Voice.

None of these songs truly sound fully-formed, able and confident, but all of them have their "moments," and some of them do come crashing down like a tidal wave of yearbook memories

It doesn't hurt that she's accompanied by the Drive-By Truckers and a handful of old Muscle Shoals session men, but it's still her voice and interpretive skills that carry the record.

Ultimate Victory may find Chamillionaire a little confused about his strengths, but in terms of establishing him as someone whose heart's in the right place, it does its title proud.

Ultimately, The Meanest of Times stumbles when the folksy frayed stitching is torn away, exposing nothing but atrophied punk muscle.

Trying too hard to mimic his band’s tried-and-true telepathy with only karaoke-level results, it's easy to see he thinks he’s run out of ways to experiment.

Spirit If... may be the second-best record any of those associated with Broken Social Scene have issued--whether together, apart, or kind of both.

['Fantasies' and 'Missed' are] mere tasty morsels amidst a mass of mid-tempo gelatin resulting from nearly arbitrary song structure ('Own Your Own Home'), bland chord progressions ("Ghost"), or one-take studio dickery ('Phonytown') that renders the closer, 'Cheaper Than Therapy,' a five-and-a-half minute afterthought.

The music is the same. As immediate and worthy as some of these songs are, the chugging guitars and oar-bank handclaps and background HEY!s don't sound like the work of a band that really likes this music and wishes it'd been around to make it at the time and probably deserved to be, the way the Donnas' old jailbait anthems could; they sound like bad one-liners.

Love Is Simple is Akron’s most streamlined album, one that bridges their multitudes and, finally, puts forth a series of discreet songwriting ideas rather than merely splashing about in genres.

The silent partners in LSF, Butler, Haynes, and guitarist Seth Jabour, all turn in their best work, making Friends the band’s most propulsive and moving offering yet.

Their classic albums all had filler, but The Last Sucker has none. Each song is instantly identifiable. Riffs are huge, driving, and upfront. Songs maneuver crisply through choruses and bridges, avoiding the meandering that plagued previous efforts.

There isn’t an ounce of life in Curtis.

A long, exhausting listen, Strawberry Jam will occasionally satiate fans hungry for the band’s strange brilliance.

Musically, at least, it’s the most accomplished thing he’s ever done.

Proof of Youth is a satisfying sophomore effort.

Sullivan and Cox are attentive enough to make room for understated fiddler Claudia Mogel, who keeps the band’s country flame burning when they flail and strut. None of this, though, is enough to strip the album of a staleness and fatigue

A Drink And A Quick Decision is a pill every bit as sweet as its predecessor, mining similar terrain to achieve equally sexy results.

iT is the most focused art the Projectors have ever produced.

Playtime Is Over is exactly what we've come to expect from the garage sound of grime. It isn't trying to be anything it's not.

There are hooks aplenty, but they’re mushed into a production job that’s so caustically lacking in detail and depth, so over-inflated and etch-a-sketched in timbre, that it’s almost unlistenable on anything but the most rudimentary of laptop speakers.

There’s usually more than meets the ear about their aural illusions, and they’ve gotten more overt about sticking in some genuine pop missives into their lattices of clean guitars and metronomic drums.

There's no denying that Pollock has an uncanny knack for distinctive melodies, but the album's main problem is that she often misjudges the parameters of 'pop' and in doing so errs on the side of safety.

I don’t like it. I don’t hate it. And that’s the truth exactly.

Parts of Good Bad Not Evil have some fascinating sonic touches.

If you can get past all the arch pretension, When the Deer Wore Blue rewards you with plenty of tunes.

A bit jumbled together and disorienting, but overall just about as rejuvenating as anything.

I Created Disco is a fun and mostly very listenable pop record which satisfies the modest ambitions it sets for itself.

The album has a smooth flow, using careful production and consistent guitar tones to blend the different musical influences and varied performances into a piece.

If Liars have reached the post-masterpiece phase of their career where they hone their craft to a needle’s point, Liars is an absolutely brilliant jump-off.

None Shall Pass may or may not be the best album in Aesop Rock’s discography, but it might be the most fun to listen to. Call it his San Francisco Renaissance.

That vocal in 'The Kill Tone Two' is unfortunate, because the rest of the album approaches some spectacular peaks.

The tenderfooted wandering of the We Are Him’s final third make it less compelling than its flagellating first half but have patience; Gira always gets there.

The little things are annoying, of course, like the “that'll do” pointless pop culture punnery namedrops that litter (“Starz in Their Eyes”/”Alicia Quays”), or the way they take up so much time with vocal samples from (old documentaries/self-help tapes) in the same way that a struggling student quotes increasingly large and irrelevant passages of text in a desperate attempt to meet a word count.

The band is still fun, successfully completing their transition from cutesy electro-Baroque to a twee-funk sensation.

In a voice that shifts from pout to growl in a beat’s time, M.I.A.'s verses and hooks are as mercurial in tone as the backing tracks.

Challengers certainly gets tastier after you’ve chewed on it for a bit.

The one thing you can't accuse Under the Blacklight of is being boring, but it abides by an either/or sort of mentality that presumes that a complete lack of substance is the only alternative to the kind of music Rilo Kiley and their pals made in 2002.

Snaith’s newest album, Andorra, merges "Milk’s" heady sense of immediacy with a clear and consumable swiftness.

Expecting two brilliant albums in a row is a lot, but when flashes of This Delicate Thing We’ve Made indicate he’s more than up to delivering, you get disappointed when there’s so much well-intentioned but patience-shredding filler between the gems.

Props for being candidly happier, but as is often the case with bands with ten-plus-years of solid material, Earlimart’s newest release serves us better as an unwitting PR campaign for the rest of their oeuvre.

The disc succeeds by merging a unity of sounds with a complex variety of emotions.

Natural is their prettiest album; in spots it's almost pastoral.

Planet of Ice's cerebrally structured songs pull in too many directions to pack a proper punch.

Hey Hey is an impressively cohesive collection of pop songs.

As it is, this record goes down really well on its own.

This album comes in a neat package: well-guarded and wry, artists competently displaying their hard-earned skill. It's all very professional, but no more meaningful than the titular appellations, the smile of a persona.

I don't have the conscience to recommend Sojourner to the uninitiated, but as a document of what Molina acolytes already suffer, it's essential.

This is a staggering debut with layers of errant, mystical roars born from man’s relationship between his guitar, a chord, and a speaker.

In the act of making himself more accessible, Common’s verbal skills have slid into disrepair.

Fur and Gold is admittedly not as strong and cohesive a record as "Wind in the Wires." At its finest, though, it does show off a rare talent for haunting and evocative songwriting.

There’s no moderation on Cookies, no inner temperate telling the lads, "Enough’s enough," whether it’s following yet another crack about getting paralytic on drugs, another glammy, mascara-running-from-the-sweat-and-effort guitar solo, or that nth attempt to be cheeky.

Planet Earth marks a slight improvement on that one ["3121"], which is progress of a sort, but incremental advances like this almost guarantee that the marketing hoo-hah will get more attention anyway.

Absolute Garbage makes a fine reminiscence, a gift from a party that was fun for its time but left a nasty hangover.

The pared-down moments of The Con seem to long for the clusterfuckedness of the album’s meatier tracks, and for the most part, rightly so.

Is Is is over in eighteen minutes, not one is wasted.

Perhaps the biggest draw of the album--its sheer fragility and unlikeliness, amidst throngs of over-arranged pseudo-chamber indie records.

The album, like most of Vanderslice’s albums, meanders along like a pleasant afternoon: it is all fair weather and blithe breezes, fairly consistent in both tone and tempo.

We Are the Night isn’t awful, but you can hear the rigidity of its formula, like the motorik title tune that burps up its eponymy every few seconds along a signless, moody highway.

A record that's so deathly serious that each of it's ten songs could be associated with its very own biblical plague.