Citrus is an outstanding record because it doesn't fixate on what makes great shoegazer music but what makes great pop music.

One of the biggest surprises of the year.

taTu, somehow, miraculously, still matter.

It sounds as if a bunch of no-bullshit straight-edgers have been cooped up in an underground drug den for a week with only Pink Floyd records for company, and then released blinking into the daylight and shuttled immediately into the recording studio.

That’s why there’s no cacophony and very little white noise: the finished product is essentially of a common mind.

It’s hard to imagine The French Kicks making a great album, given their limited changes so far. That doesn’t change the fact that Two Thousand is a very good one.

The restraint the whole band shows, on this, their most finished and instantly effective album, becomes something more than respectable: the Clientele’s commitment to their own sound has crystallized into something almost wonderful.

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.

A remarkably notable debut.

It offers in personality and atmosphere what it lacks in originality.

A record that positively teems with gleeful personality.

It’s both business as usual and their most complex set of ideas to date.

Beach House’s debut is consistently candlelit, worn at its lacy edges, and at once vertiginous and embracing, somehow residing both at the hearth and on an icy precipice.

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.

Whether it’s the end of an era, the beginning of a new one, or just a lucky break in what looks to be a still-incessant deluge of output, From a Compound Eye bypasses the earlier seven LPs-plus released in his name to mark the emergence of Robert Pollard as a solo artist proper.

Musique Automatique captures both the vibrant spirit of Europe as well as the feel of modern pop to create a wonderful album.

It's a bit of Michigan redux, which works because it's so uniquely Stevens and so uniquely beautiful.

Sing ‘Other People’ leaves behind much of the violence of Gira’s approach but retains the same soul-plunging ambitions, both allying him effortlessly with the druggy expressivity that characterizes practitioners of newer psychedelic music and belatedly identifying him as an influence and antecedent.

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

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

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.

The impeccably crafted Different Days is at its best when it exploits the vocal strengths of Anderson and Costa.

Even the lesser tracks here endear themselves upon multiple listens, and the best stuff is uniquely exciting given their context of departure from a well-loved sound.

The best numbers show Hart gaining subtle confidence as a composer without feeling the need to break the mold completely.

There’s a cohesion and a simplicity to this collection that makes it a must for any fan of the label.

Lots of handclaps, woo woo backing vocals, and laughs amid funny observations about contemporary urban hipster life reveal an assured and charming debut.

Discover A Lovelier You is as good an album as any in Joe Pernice’s discography.

Of the album’s 13 tracks, not one feels like filler.

Criticising this album because you’re not a teenager is like criticising inhalers just because you don’t have asthma. This may not be for you, but when it hits stride it’s impossible not to get caught up in it.

Orphans may not have something for everyone, but what’s missing says more about the listener than the record.

One of the strongest albums of 2005, Beanie Sigel stands among the greatest of the Roc-A-Fella catalogue with technical ability and an emotional severity worth experiencing.

It’s a classic first album: A band unpretentiously tangling various genres they--or even listeners--thought would never sound so brilliant together.

Make no mistake about it, I Phantom is a fantastic record.

Much like Aaliyah’s sophomore effort One In A Million a decade ago, Ciara: The Evolution is the sound of a babydiva starting to really find her voice.

For longtime fans, there’s little reason not to buy this. For newcomers, Peel Sessions might not be a logical starting point, but you’ll still walk away understanding why Galaxie 500 are still revered.

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.

The album moves in gasps and groans, with a steady flow to its twelve songs that weaves together like a symphony.

The slight progression of the group here is discernible with a better understanding of balancing the musical peaks and troughs.

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.

The experimental, lo-fi branding of his oeuvre is gone, but the originality of his sound continues to trump the nostalgic demons in his head.

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

All in all, The Needle Was Travelling is probably the most “human” post-rock record to come out of Berlin.

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.

Witch manage to do a lot more in forty minutes with little more than a bunch of badass riffs and a decent rhythm section than most metal bands these days can do with seventy minutes.

If you’re so inclined toward this type of music, you’ll assuredly love Precious Memories. But if you think you’re not, you may be surprised.

I wouldn't want to call it a "return to form" because Lil' Beethoven was actually pretty good, but it certainly perfects that album's aesthetic and infuses it with some of the giddy energy of the earlier Sparks stuff.

As beguiling as much of Under the Skin is, these songs would benefit from the Mac’s supple, still-underrated rhythm section.

At this point, Wilson looks like the most important new artist to hit country music since the Dixie Chicks.

The substantive quality of the political commentary found on Ahead of the Lions may not measure up to Rage Against the Machine’s most agitprop knee jerking, but there’s no questioning the sentiment is clearly and loudly expressed with propulsive rhythms, radio-palatable hooks and real production values.

A solid, atmospheric, singer-songwriter record.

Hissing Fauna is severely front-loaded, not necessarily because the closing songs are duds, but more because the album’s first half is nearly flawless.

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.

It improves on Mutations with sparkling variation and a depth of emotion Beck seldom seems to achieve.

She’s found the perfect collaborator to match her voracious appetite for all things pop.

While it could be asserted that More Fish is leftovers to Fishscale's ten-course spread, we're still talking about something well beyond your average table scraps.

It’s almost as good as ['Hearts & Bones'], and likely to be as undervalued, but don’t worry: give it 20 years and its cadenced ruminations and instantly dated production will get some love from the usual suspects.

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.

The songs... are as wonderful, as creative, as exquisitely saddening as ever.

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.

It’s hard to say that Andrew Bird is anything but a master-songwriter, capable of penning a song for any sort of occasion. It was the hardest challenge, however, for Bird himself to understand this power and to control it. He’s finally tamed that quivering urge and, in the process released one really long perfect moment in adult contemporary pop.

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.

It's the same McKay on Pretty Little Head. Still the same pretensions, still the same confusions, still the same ability to overcome her own self-imposed handicaps to put out an absolute killer of an album.

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.

By refocusing outside of dancefloor functionality for Suckfish, Dear invests in his material enough to give it a weight beyond the novelty of sensationalized titles set to jacking tracks.

For the most part Game sounds desperate, raw, and ravenously hungry.

If this is what treading water sounds like, I'll take it.

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

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 main draw here is in Prodigy rediscovering his way with words.

Eyes Open is composed of broad, obvious songs with broad, obvious hooks, aimed straight for the hearts of as many people as the band can manage. All of this would be bad, horrible even, if it didn't work. But it does.

There are subtle shifts at work with the band, and most allow their shady songcraft to emerge from overt experimentalism--perhaps too aware of its own inventiveness--into the realms of "art-pop."

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.

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.

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 few tracks on Show Your Bones that sound like they might have fit on Fever to Tell clearly constitute the new album’s weaker links.

Knives is a quietly simmering LP.

Pixel Revolt is the sound of a man trying to come to grips with the larger questions--the "why?" questions--and, if nothing else, the sheer attempt makes this an essential album for our troubled times.

Crucially, he shows all the sides of his personality, making this one of hip-hop’s most well-rounded albums of recent vintage.

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

It's a beautiful restatement of the group's strengths--and a consolidation of the gains made on Cold House.

All of the bands calling cards are present—they’re just scribbled down on the back of a phone bill, rather than printed out professionally then laminated.

ABO keep the music tight and enclosed to match the lyrical mood, making Derdang Derdang a succinct, purposeful statement.

[Levi] has an impeccable ear for a hook and packs his album full of them.

It’s easily the gentlest, brightest record to be associated with the Animal Collective.

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.

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

Bejar is so wound up in his own idiosyncratic mythologies, so hopelessly himself that some fans have already said it sounds like a greatest hits record; appropriate that a meta-rocker’s final frontier is his own reflection in the mirror.

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.

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.

Bright Like Neon Love may be too rock for the dance heads and too dance for the rockists, but for those without ideological hang-ups, it should be merely one of the most fun and exciting releases of the year.

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.

Beck has shed himself of Sea Change’s need to shelter himself in his songs. We have our urban craftsman back, to stir the dust in sampled record grooves and unearth for us, again and again, the new in the old and vice versa.

Man-Made is, to be sure, the least immediate record Teenage Fanclub has made since Thirteen, but at a compact and finely-tuned forty-two minutes it avoids the flaws of that under-edited and under-cooked record and nestles itself softly into the heart of every TFC fan as another low-key modern classic.

The Obliterati succeeds in proving that Mission of Burma is not only capable of a comeback and a return to form, but also has exponential potential to evolve and thrive as a working band.

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.

Gala Mill realizes rock polemicist Joe Carducci’s ideal of real-time give-and-take as fully as many of the SST releases he touts in his 1990 book Rock and the Pop Narcotic.

Feathers can be at times hypnosis-inducing. The effect of this hypnosis is that many of the unique moments on the album feel like dream states you aren’t sure actually happened.

Aside from the token bummer track, the rest of the album is as stupid fun as stupid fun gets.