They ape New Order's "Movement," surely that combo's most static and dullest album. Dengler and rather good drummer Sam Fogarino don't get many chances to shine, letting guitarist Daniel Kessler create the kind of textures that often get mistaken for progress.

1997's "I Could See the Dude" was abrupt, intriguing, emotive, and obtuse - these have always been within Spoon’s grasp, but rarely have they felt as unified as they do now, a baby’s first word burped up five times.

Cross is a big party record with a few exciting beats, as well as one of the few examples of desirable audio clipping.

There's a sustained tone to Time on Earth that Finn's rarely mastered, and that alone comes closer than you might have thought possible to making the record an unqualified success.

The Else is their best whole album since, because it’s also the most melodic.

Goodbye contains both the best and the worst of Schnauss’ output until now.

This is more like their "Give ‘em Enough Rope," a perfectly fine extension of that first energy burst, one that deserved to be milked a bit.

I’d argue, though, that being an expert on the group’s verbose and ragged past wouldn’t help all that much. This is a different sounding band with pretty much the exact same lyrical concerns.

What Marry Me may lack in innovation, it makes up for in attitude and execution.

New Young Pony Club claim they can give us what we want, but they haven’t got a clue what we need.

Skills most often attributed to premiere MC’s like deft wordplay, vivid storytelling, emotional resonance, salient talking points? These are few and far between on T.I. vs. T.I.P., even if the man remains an impressive technician who sounds at home on any beat you can give him.

A couple of times on Uncle Dysfunktional the Mondays break out of their past and attempt to come to grips with more contemporary forms, but it’s less than convincing.

Other than a few cliched song titles and lyrics (this is rock 'n' roll after all), Twilight of the Innocents actually demonstrates a refreshing maturity and breadth; sure it rocks, but never in a clumsy or callous manner.

Easy Tiger sounds like the kind of album Adams could churn out every 18 months for the rest of his life.

The Mix-Up doesn’t present anything innovative, nor is it any sort of triumphant career coda; it just sounds good.

My December isn’t the kind of earth-shattering fuck-you accomplishment that would make this story too good to be true. However, it’s not nearly as bereft of good songs and great moments as some folks would have you believe either.

Desire’s successes stem chiefly from Pharoahe’s unimpeachably brilliant rhyme skills.

Astronomy sometimes sounds like a British invasion LP given the remaster and remix treatment: dance-ready, fit for a plush couch and extra-plush headspace, and oddly misfiled in time.

The Spree remain a vital, relevant artist only for Volkswagen advertising execs and anyone who takes the last five minutes of “Scrubs” episodes too seriously.

I suspect those left cold by Satan will find Icky Thump a welcome reheating.

It would be difficult to convince yourself that The Sun is anything but meandering and listless.

It takes a couple of good close listens to appreciate Herren’s languid songwriting; a casual listener will likely enjoy listening to only a track or two before turning off.

The big difference behind the two albums’ superficial sonic similarities lies in the direction of this one’s gaze: panoramic, rather than immediately ahead. Whereas Bang Bang Rock and Roll was drunk, It’s a Bit Complicated is sober enough to think about being drunk.

Idealism has some fun with memorable new electro (“The Pulse,” “Home Zone,” “Idealistic”) and nu-rave cuts (“I Want I Want,” “Pogo”). But these guys can’t possibly think fans will believe this fifteen-track behemoth, mostly lacking in subtlety and invention, is the big party they half-seriously claim it to be, over and over and over again.

Era Vulgaris gets better with each listen, and that’s mostly due to the fact that the melodies take time to sink in.

Version has its share of undeniable clunkers, but its successes are so immediate and so animated that no reasonable listener could possibly begrudge Ronson for forcing them to rely on their track-skip button.

Riot! is immediately appealing because it focuses on sounds that have been neglected by the genre’s frontrunners. This is an uncomplicated album comprising of strikingly uncomplicated music, entirely lacking in 15 word song titles, Jay-Z guest appearances, and theatrical meta-concepts about performing in a rock band.

The majority of these upbeat songs have howling vocals, scything guitar and, unusually for a current Brit group, a rhythm section that manages to be danceable without having to go out of its way to prove it--but it’s the slower tracks that end each side that turn the album into something cohesive.

Memory Almost Full is as good as an album as this devotee of frivolity can make in his mid-sixties.

MoM, for their part, sound more and more comfortable with a vocalist in front of them.

Predictably, the Orchestra works considerably better as a symphony band than an orchestral accompaniment.

His career for the last decade is basically that of a chicken with its head lopped off, running around the coop unawares whilst coughing up a never-ending stream of blood. If you couldn’t guess, Eat Me, Drink Me is where the fowl finally falls over and collapses in a pile of its fellow poultry’s fecal matter.

The price of diversity is cohesion and there are points where Maths + English veers wildly off track.

Dear’s third album proves a wealth of open-window micro pop fit for summer gusts and unexpected flints of lightning.

Can’t Wait Another Day is another album of what Ladybug Transistor does best: distilled pop and folk from another era, part doppelganger, part contemporary sheen—an indie rock album in its Sunday best.

It’s the most consistently entertaining and lasting of R. Kelly’s albums yet.

Boxer is a National album through and through but blessed with a restraint and self-assuredness of a band on top of its game, resulting in a startling masterpiece on par with Turn on the Bright Lights, Bows & Arrows, or any other austere tribute to urban alienation you care to name.

Battles unite process and expression, making playing that’s as quantized and mechanical as Kraftwerk sound as wild and urgent as Albert Ayler.

Voxtrot remains a compelling enough statement to justify the inordinate amounts of excitement thrown around the band, yet nowhere near a fulfillment of the enormous potential they’ve shown.

There are dozens of bands that do this kind of stuff better, including Wheat themselves.

Were the album as sleek and steely as “Makes Me Wonder,” we would be crowning and mitering Maroon 5 as master purveyors of white-boy funk.

Lies for the Liars is a funny, befuddling, and altogether unexpectedly enjoyable record.

Plague Park shows him mostly nailing the fine bristle of “Modern World” and “Same Ghost Every Night.”

Van Pelt teases enough sonic frontiers and has enough madcap charisma to mildly triumph where others would have failed.

The Horrors aren’t horrifying and Strange House is nowhere near strange enough.

The results are often wonderful.

Just about everything on Sky Blue Sky, even soft-shoe skiffles like the title track, will likely sound better live.

It isn’t the sort of artistic statement that promises to change anyone’s life, but it’s no less a great work of escapist art, the sort of essential record I’d pick for any hypothetical list of desert island necessities.

The downside of the Brakes development is the loss of the raw power that accompanied some of their more demented moments.

Maxïmo Park haven't just avoided the sophomore slump, they've made a follow-up that suggests that those who threw their lot in with the band instead of, say, the Futureheads made the right choice. Almost as exciting as the music on Our Earthly Pleasures is the potential.

As with much of her past work, it’s almost embarrassingly human, sometimes sounding too close to you to believe it’s not your own.

For a band who has struggled to make themselves heard and understood, God Save the Clientele may just be the Clientele casting some burdens to the wind, channeling all their adoration for Love and the Television Personalities with clear eyes, clear minds, and louder voices than they ever have before.

No Shouts, No Calls isn’t just their most song-based work, it’s also their most romantic.

I’m tired of being simply “satisfied” by the Sea and Cake.

[It] continues with the middle-of-the-road, ambient pop approach that marked his last few efforts.

You’d hardly expect songs as strong as these to be in anyone’s wastebasket, but with only a few exceptions the material assembled here is just as, if not more, intimate and honest as anything on those proper albums.

It is an energetic, powerful, and enjoyable album where occasionally pretty invention is marred by the suspicion that a hit-making producer is on deck.

The boys deliver the same sort of agreeable Britpop they've made their name on, wisely realizing that ambition's really not for everyone.

PROG, like all their recordings, is another collection of professionally played and well-produced tunes that present themselves to a potential mass audience with hectic grace, sober whimsy, fluent navigation of chaos and without the slightest shred of pomposity.

A wild and beautiful ride.

Adding a set of young female characters to this drab mix only accentuates that a concept is needed to bolster the actual music.

Despite Beyond’s tendency to feel like a career retrospective in spots, it contains plenty of songs that rival Mascis’s best work.

The Reminder is rarely exciting or thrilling, and never revolutionary.

It is simultaneously the most resplendent, accomplished record the band has made, with all kinds of songs... that retain the worst, most self-indulgent aspects of one of underground rock’s most consistently imperfect bands.

Because of You mostly reminds us of the Ne-Yo Problem. He wants to be bad, but chickens out at the last minute.

Miranda Lambert is at a very rarified place right now, turning her songs into vehicles for a persona that transcends background narrative and personal history. This is Jagger, Bowie, Debbie Harry, and early MJ territory.

While I’ll stop short of saying that [co-producer Neil Michael] Hagerty ruined this record, I can definitively say that I’d love to hear what it would have sounded like before he got his hands on it.

Remember that concept album Tori Amos did that was supposed to reclaim all those male-oriented anthems from their blowhard XY carriers? Smith paints over Amos’ tedious version and executes the idea so much better, without even bragging that she’s doing it.

Favourite Worst Nightmare, a demonstrative record of small deviations, may pale before its predecessor but is better.

It’s a little disjointed, more enigmatic, and more confounding than its predecessors: a gentle, mysterious giant of an album that could only have been created by a father.

Pullhair Rubeye isn’t awful, but it could’ve been great.

There are no great songs to speak of on Dumb Luck, and in fact there are just a few that I would hesitatingly call “good,” or more important, “memorable.”

While the music is all over the place the vocals feel pinned down and flat.

This record is the first time the Fucking Champs have actually managed to capture the actual emotional colors of their own banality, rather than trying to piss a whole two-minute solo all over the place.

It’s a loud and cacophonous affair—where previous efforts doled out their noise in judicious restraint, Breaks responds to their need to unhinge their fractured pop.

It’s enormous, senseless, superficial, selfish, and cocky past the point of absurdity, but it’s never wrong.

Let’s Just Be is as poppy and willfully idiosyncratic as Arthur’s older work, but is both more conventionally arranged and more loose-limbed than ever before.

This is one of the most forward-thinking “rock” albums to come down the pike in some time, playing with the genre in both form and function while showing off Reznor’s ridiculous resevoir of ideas in fine fashion.

It’s mostly top-flight crudity, though admittedly the album’s intensity wanes over its second half.

Cassadaga falters in the same way I’m Wide Awake did: by trying to present his views as universal, it just exposes how Conor Oberst can’t handle the Truth.

The squeaky-clean production of Misery Is a Butterfly has been smudged, sanded, and weathered.

The clear, crisp production and epic atmospheres are a huge departure from the sisters’ previous two albums... But otherwise things are ridiculously the same.

You might not agree with him the entire way, but the gale force of Ali’s convictions and talent will leave you willing to believe most of his truth.

On the older albums, the Rosebuds’ synthesizers could sound like reinforcements parachuted in to cover for inadequate guitars or weak songs, but no longer. The front-and-center synths of Night of the Furies sound like a band hitting its stride.

The listener who comes away from the two-hour experience of …And Their Refinement of Decline without becoming a bit misty at least once is too hardened for my friendship.

An interesting, good album: more inventive, heavy, meaningful, and memorable than the Veils’ first.

Jarvis is strong enough, smart enough, and at home enough with its ancient rock-star concerns and unembellished songcraft, for "Running the World" to remain a bonus track. This album doesn't need rescuing.

Despite being four years in the making, Traffic and Weather finds Fountains Of Wayne offering more of the same and yet decidedly less, working your nerves to the point where you’ll wonder whether you ever truly liked them in the first place.

Because of the Times validates the theory that the Kings of Leon are merely the Eagles in wolf’s clothing (or the Strokes in overalls), being that the album’s collection of tales, focusing solely on hard-living and harder women, are but hokey pulp fictions disguised with mellowed sincerity, played out on mythical dirt roads and overgrown farmhouses.

A worthy addition to the catalog.

From Here We Go Sublime may not be an evolution for Willner, but it’s a singular distillation of his talents into one album. Mixing gauzy shoegaze, slippery ambient loops, and two-cheeks-on-the-floor bass drum bounce, the Field offers an idyllic work of startling novelty, and perhaps ‘techno’’s most widely appreciable offering in years.

Betke hasn’t merely licked his wounds and retreated into familiar territory, but fused some lessons learned from his own back catalog to create a shiny new beast, at once identifiable as his work and yet something tangibly different.

Shock Value has a disturbing amount of chemistry-set mishaps.

It’s hard not to notice that the best songs on Fourteen Autumns were already featured on last year’s EP.

This clearly isn’t rave, or even a reinvention of rave. They’re an indie band with a half-decent gimmick.

It’s not a classic, nor is it an embarrassment. It’s a disc which says: we’re the Fall, we’re still going and, frankly, you should bloody well be pleased about that. A statement with which I’m inclined to agree.

There’s simply no charm or subtlety on show here, and not even any cheeky, bona fide pop thrills in the vein of “Everyday I Love You Less & Less.”

Mika makes music that sounds like vegetables with all the flavour boiled out of them. Blandness born out of a fear of doing anything new, interesting, or provocative. Blandness born from a fear of alienating a single person with a single piece of conviction in your music.