Burn Piano Island, Burn was something approaching a masterpiece and Crimes doesn’t live up to its lofty standard.

Yes, this may well be the best of the Eels, his greatest achievement to date, because he reaches so far on nearly every track, and yet still finds something to grab on to.

Listening to these four discs, you can really picture an entire nation of college students and twenty-somethings promoting their own gigs, designing their radio station playlists and folding their own record sleeves while staying up late to watch 120 Minutes.

Nastasia’s pen has sharpened greatly since The Blackened Air. No more does she scratch out mental images and feelings into terse songs, but builds upon those images and experiences -- placing the listener in her worn, ragged shoes -- instead of in our Gucci’s, 20 feet away, behind a chained link fence.

With about twenty killer lines or couplets per song, unexpected hooks coming from everywhere and one of the most ingenious track sequences of the year, it’s not really so hard to imagine what The Wrens have been doing all this time.

THS’s move toward a purer aping of classic rock is mostly welcome and largely successful; the fallout is the loss of the band’s snaky, blunt riffing, their wit dissipating into a pool of honest rocking.

While Ys is ridiculously overwritten, over-performed and self-contained, her fables always sublimate into the hot fog of real emotions just before they calcify.

Review 1:<A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1413" TARGET="_blank">Kish Kash suffers from a surfeit of ideas and sounds; quite simply there is too much going on here.</A> [score=70] Review 2:<A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1412" TARGET="_blank">It is simply how dance music--natch, pop music--should be done. </A> [score=90]

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.

By taking the visceral punch of Dig Me Out and The Hot Rock, blending that with the pop sensibilities of All Hands on the Bad One, and throwing in a few bonuses, Sleater-Kinney have crafted their best album yet.

This is a quietly pulsing release, alive with simple pleasures and celebrating events like hanging out and running into people you know.

The album swells with beauty, but an intimate, unapologetic beauty drained of gravity or mystery that invites and comforts in one stroke, stronger than the gravest clock and gentler than a stray sigh.

Capable punk rock with a slightly skuzzy, yet unmistakably pop edge.

Uninhibited and hushed in all the right places, it&#146;s safe to say that Comets on Fire have hit their stride.

To me, Medulla is an experiment in transforming the primal power of the human voice into a 21st century context. It's an amazing effort, and it's one of the best albums of the year.

It's like a medicinal tonic cleansing your system of the toxic effects of 10+ years of boring, bloated rap full-lengths.

Has a laid-back, gleeful quality to it, one that gives the listener the sense that its musicians are making things up as they go along, unable to hide their excitement at the fact that it all sounds so unexpectedly awesome.

Though this album may not change the minds of the numerous naysayers, it does show an interesting development in the group&#146;s all-around craftsmanship.

Beam seems to have smoothed over some of his rough-hewn ruralist poetics in favor of undeveloped blandishments and sentimental homilies.

The Books have toned down the weird, smoothed down the edges, and created their most homogenous record yet. Lucky for us, the homogenous version of The Books is still probably ten times more interesting than your favorite band at their most creative.

Maybe if this album had been released in the mid-eighties I&#146;d be falling all over myself to praise it, but these days there&#146;s just too much stuff around that&#146;s surpassed the music here in originality, drive and smarts.

Each song glows with infinitesimal joys, tiny pointillist production flourishes noticeable only under close scrutiny. But in rounding out their sound, they brought the viewer close enough to see the brushstrokes and the smudges.

Feels is a near-stunning album a notable amount of the time.

Cash takes time to recapture these relationships through simple, detailed moments; at times with grief, and other times with the joy of their memory.

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.

I always felt as if those moments of triumph in the band’s music were the focal points, the “good stuff” you waited for and wanted to arrive and then stay forever. This time around though, they appear to have taken a backseat to the band’s darker impulses, and staggeringly, Takk sounds all the better for it.

Disappointing, but still a worthy purchase.

Review 1: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1468" TARGET="_blank">The Black Album&#146;s failings fall upon Jay-Z&#146;s shoulders as much as his producers.</A> [Score=64] Review 2: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1469" TARGET="_blank">The majority of the beats here are mediocre.</A> [Score=38]

There’s a lingering sense that the product at the center of all the hubbub remains something less than its lofty reputation.

Tempting as it may be to assume that beefing up their sound would have automatically made the Decemberists markedly better, the truth is that these strides may have at least partially come at the expense of the things that always made the band so singularly compelling.

A rudderless piece of work.

Somehow The Polyphonic Spree have managed to make a record that actually is simple, joyous, and spiritually uplifting.

With a snoozilicious country-rock sound that makes even the Eagles seem crisp by comparison, Kozelek appears to have temporarily mothballed his greater sonic ambitions and opted instead for a niche as a latter-day Mazzy Star for boys.

A set of saccharine sweet songs which occasionally dissolve spectacularly in a haze of whirring electronic mist.

Rarely has a band created a world-space so monolithic yet provided a listener with so many easy routes to the interior.

It&#146;s a strong and dynamic step forward for the group and deserves to bring them a level of recognition commonly accorded their more famous Montr&#233;al label-mates.

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.

If anything, it feels like Gibbard has regressed to the point where he sits in the shadow of his bandmate and producer, Chris Walla.

Multiply sounds like he picked up some ancient reel-to-reel tape from lost Holland-Dozier-Holland sessions and gave them a 2005 production spit-and-polish.

If there are complaints to lobby against this remarkable debut, they lie mostly in its sound-quality. Namely, it sounds like what it was: self-recorded and self-released.

This album is an incredible disappointment- right when Wire was beginning to build up momentum; there&#146;s not even enough new material here to fill a third EP, and the recontextualizing of the Read & Burn songs hardly makes it more worthwhile.

Cast of Thousands is a great record, beautiful and emotionally powerful as well as musically inventive... a refinement and extension of their vision that will emerge as one of the best records of the year.

Nothing too dire mars Vega’s compositions, which remain as condensed and detailed as Victorian miniatures.

An immediate and combative disc that blurries up a litany of angers over surprisingly versatile layers of pop-punk guitar thrusting, The Body, The Blood, The Machine is a focused tantrum, irresolute in its actual stances, but pissed and rambunctious enough to overcome its vagaries.

Inches succeeds, and then some, because the record simply doesn&#146;t sound like it&#146;s been collated together over a nine year period.

Such are The Clientele&#146;s gifts that its hard to believe The Violet Hour is only their debut album; few bands with more impressive vintages and prolific back-catalogues have managed to make records as touching, cohesive and deeply seeped in their own character as The Clientele have here.

It’s been years since he sounded this responsive and attentive.

Secret Wars feels like a keeper, like an album I&#146;ll pull out and play and still love ten years from now.

With Change... The Dismemberment Plan feel little need to show off with self-conscious musical ostentation and excess, instead choosing to focus themselves on making a fantastic, understated and involving record.

Underneath the surface of these grand productions lies hidden undercurrents of malice, disgust and social commentary- all things that would seem to be at odds with a beautifully constructed pop song.

A record for the creeping darkness of a hot summer night in which the night seems to last forever and the heat, the same.

Out Of Season is both a remarkable record of beautiful music, and an outstanding, awe-inspiring performance inducing near-irresistible feelings and sensations. This album is a sublime example of the art of the singer, and of the art of music.

Fiasco is actually an absolutely dazzling emcee and a genuinely nuanced personality, and both of these things are incredibly rare in hip-hop in 2006.

With Game Theory, the Roots have finally delivered on nearly every once-broken promise.

They’ve cleaned up their grungy guitar lines (thank you Sub Pop), reworked a few of the best songs from their early EPs, and the result is undoubtedly the best contender for the Arcade Fire/Broken Social Scene-helm of 2005.

Figuring out where each part is originally from will be fun for the fanatics, but isn’t necessary to enjoy the mix.

The songs here are superb, the arrangements and production nearly perfect, and Jackson’s singing is the best of his career.

They touch greatness at several points, if never truly digging their nails in and grabbing hold.

So sure, yet another band of bombast, largesse, room-sound gone cathedral, but either way the Besnard Lakes have mastered their songcraft with this psychedelic oddity, which fits all too well with other wintry early-year indie releases.

The most wildly inventive, exploratory, unafraid, surprising, nonsensical, and flat out funkiest single I&#146;ve heard all year.

Musically, Holland could be considered the more eccentric and authentic second cousin of Norah Jones.

On Sung Tongs, the group has deftly combined all the traces that ran through their earlier work into a vibrant and beautiful collage that flows as smoothly as Here Comes the Indian, with all the mood of Campfire Songs, and even more pop hooks than Spirit.

Gone is pretty much everything they&#146;ve learned in the last eight years or so, ditching all the progress they&#146;ve made in favor of just making another Modest Mouse record. The results, needless to say, are disappointing.

So frustrating then, for such a multitalented rapper, to have his supposed magnum opus weak, stale, and far more aged than we’d expect.

Strongly, boringly decent.

True, Think Tank is flawed. There are many, many things wrong with this album.... But the record&#146;s peaks are extraordinary.

It doesn’t matter how well you can thrash or shred if it doesn’t sound good, and rarely does a section of Bang Bang Rock and Roll sound as if it wasn’t well thought-out and created with the intent to entertain.

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

You Could Have It So Much Better... is plagued by the same averseness to surrender that hamstrung their breakthrough eponymous debut.

My Morning Jacket has come into its own here, transcending underground fetishizing to become the kind of band that can make jaws drop and tears fall anywhere it damn well pleases.

The Sunset Tree is one of the most volatile, affecting and coherent records he’s made yet.

A good and often great debut.

Morph the Cat is too complacent, too enamored with its own lacquered contours.

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

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

Enjoyable rather than revelatory, and quirky rather than profound.

An album of many highlights but not much visceral or emotional impact.

More inventive song writing and a less antagonistic stance could have helped Sigur Ros create something as equally stirring as their previous album.

Put it this way: do you think "Panic (Hang the DJ)" with its unique branch of bitterness, provincialism, and notions of white pride was the Smiths' best song? You'll be like a hog in shit here, then. If not... avoid. Like the plague.

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.

Kano has spent the last several years making “grime” records, but for better or worse, Home Sweet Home isn’t one of them.

Anyone that expects the pulsating You Guys Kill Me would be better off sitting this one out, but Elliot has pulled off a tricky feat here: stripping down his sound to more orthodox "rock" instrumentation, without losing his edge.

In a year that&#146;s produced first-rate albums by OutKast and Lucinda Williams, Bubba, a self-proclaimed redneck from rural Georgia who most people pegged as a probable one-hit wonder three years ago, has beaten the odds and made both the hip-hop and country album of the year.

Pyramid is not Songs: Ohia but the musical equivalent of A Season In Hell, not something one can take in often, but which is beautiful for the fact that it was completed at all.

It could be the soundtrack to death, love, pain, strength, joy, suffering, courage, despair, and faith all at the same time.

It&#146;s the rare reunion project that actually adds something of significance to the band&#146;s catalogue.

Bachmann&#146;s transition from indie curmudgeon to singer-songwriter is complete: his arrangements are now horn- and string-fattened creations of grand sophistication; his songs now contain hope and broken spirit simultaneously; but the most significant growth displayed on Red Devil Dawn, and the reason this album is Bachmann&#146;s finest moment since his Barry Black days, is that you can now see Eric Bachmann as the subject of most of his songs.

While there is lots of good, even great music out there, not much of it even begins to touch Neko&#146;s passion.

Watch out for this guy’s next album, because I can guarantee it will contain a Top 40 hit. Go ahead and listen to him now so as to impress your friends later.

Though it loses its momentum in the final few tracks, and prevents me from giving it the downright slobbering it might otherwise deserve, Broken Social Scene, much like its release day partner, You Could Have it So Much Better..., is a cinder in the eye of all the indie-haters.

It acts as a perfect counterpart to Rejoicing in the Hands, featuring the same elements that made its successor such a valued release, while incorporating enough new ideas to make it much more than Rejoicing in the Hands: Part Deux.

A much more consistent and coherent album, equaling Gorillaz’s high points and easily besting its shortcomings.

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

Take the pop from Guns ‘N Roses, take the pomp from Van Halen and take the piss out of uber-serious nu-metal and you’ve got one of the most inventive metal outfits in recent history.

Dressy Bessy is their most forward, cohesive, and just downright pleasant release yet.

With such a pitch-perfect sonic backdrop, RJ makes it almost impossible for 'Print to fail, each track equipped with all the genetic material an emcee needs to deliver either a sage-solemn message or a quick-witted punchline.

A polished, carefully crafted set of beautiful, intense songs that lay bare the singer&#146;s heart as honestly and effectively as anything she&#146;s attempted before.

Burn, Piano Island, Burn is an album that must first be listened to twice: once to wrap your head around its peerless vigor and skull-rattling force, and again to revel in its restless creativity.