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.

Transparent Things, then, sounds less the work of three programmers and more like a band that plays together and stays together—like Hot Chip holding it a little closer to the vest, maybe.

Review 1: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1514" TARGET="_blank">She&#146;s done it again, and the fact that we&#146;re not surprised shows just how valuable and talented she is.</A> [Score=91] Review 2: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1515" TARGET="_blank">The new Missy album is terrific! Maybe even more terrific than her last one, and almost certainly better than the one before that.</A> [Score=84]

One of the most deafening blasts of mediocrity to be heard this year.

There&#146;s a bit too much flab on No Cities Left for it to be the truly great album it aspires to be.

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

Despite [some] fine moments, occasionally Van Occupanther can feel a little too slick and one-note.

This is a goofy record of bubblegum punk, with Queen lapping at its edges and enough good tracks to justify the smattering of empty screamfests.

The quality of the music here, whether you agree that some of the session versions match or improve upon their originals or not, make this a collection worth picking up for sheer song quality alone.

So the form of vaguely electroclash pop delivered with frighteningly robotic efficiency has been mastered, but the content itself is the problem.

This collection actually betters the previous one in terms of diversity, but unfortunately it also gives you the sense that you’ve heard it all before.

A one-paced affair, enamoured with drawn-out ambient intros, crystalline guitars layered with reverb, four-note rumbles for basslines, choruses that go on forever and occasional, half-hearted stabs at “groove”. Meaning that it sounds EXACTLY as you would expect U2 to sound.

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

It has a beautiful simplicity that belies its sophistication.

All the songs sound almost exactly the same. I don&#146;t care! It doesn&#146;t matter! Just dance!

Beckett references numerous stylistic signposts across the multifaceted recording&#146;s thirteen tracks--Merzbow, Chain Reaction, Fennesz, Techno, Pole--but manages to personalize his music too by infusing its cool, abstract minimalism with a sensual warmth and melodic pop sensibility.

So ignore the Doris-Day-meets-Eminem descriptions you&#146;re seeing; this is more like Kate Bush meets Phil Ochs.

It is music that sits at the crossroads of Neil Young and Captain Beefheart, a reverence for its rustic background balanced by a playful desire to fuck shit up.

Quality is a very conflicted album. On one hand, many of the tracks are close to the level mind blowing, production and rhyme wise. On the other hand, some of the tracks are just plain boring and muddy.

I hate to say it, but she might have finally overextended her ambition, resulting in an uneven, discomfiting album.

A subtle improvement on the band’s debut.

As eccentric as it is beautiful.

What really makes Wincing the Night Away succeed is how the Shins’ moneymaker templates evolve into more complex tapestries. In a manner similar to the New Pornos, the third album becomes the most successful due to an implied heft that comes from a concerted effort to sound like a band rather than a singer-songwriter vehicle.

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

An endlessly enjoyable sophisticated pop album.

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

A complacent, inoffensive set of songs that belie the talent and vision of their creators.

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

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

A full realization of a band at the top of their game, filled with intricate guitar pop of the highest order.

This is the type of album impressionable teenagers fall in love with, crammed with melody and variety and thrill.

A record of flippant, tossed-off, uninspired, only sporadically involving chamber pop that feels, dare I say, half-hearted.

Easily the most satisfying album of his decade-plus solo career, Illumination marks the first time in ages that Weller has sounded at ease in his own skin: mellow, upbeat, yet aggressive and gritty in all the right places.

Stoltz's musicianship and songwriting are engaging and technically inspired while remaining loose and comfortable. It's just there are too many obvious references.

It’s not about reinterpretations of songs or giving the fans something to listen to until the next record comes out. It’s a definitive marker, a turning point for one of our finest songwriters.

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.

Supper is a fine accomplishment, a record of sad grace and folky simplicity that outdoes its predecessors and hints at a very worthwhile future.

This is a dismal failure.

While Psapp clearly echoes its precursors in myriad ways, its sound is ultimately unique and its album far more accomplished than the conventional debut.

Pick a Bigger Weapon would’ve made a truly killer party album, but two factors hold it back--no one cares about Riley’s politics, and he’s not nearly as clever as he thinks.

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

Sure, there are flashes of undeniable brilliance, but most certainly not the full wattage of the awakening sun as advertised--far from the record Chasny's capable of making.

Every song is a savage burst of raw anger, taking Pink Flag&#146;s sarcastic punk and updating it for the new millennium with cleaner production and even more minimalist arrangements.

Quite simply, Sunshine Hits Me is fantastic.

One of those singular albums that is so richly dense, so unabashedly whimsical and so damned polished.

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.

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

The musical missteps wouldn’t be so bad if Broder’s voice didn’t often betray him.

Certainly Want Two is the weaker and less tuneful of the siblings, strings, horns, pipes and choirs distracting attention from the occasionally dirgey and indulgent (but still grandiose) melodies.

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.

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

There’s an attention to detail and storytelling nous built up by those previous concept albums that makes further listening and exploration of Happy Hollow that much more rewarding.

What makes Trust Not Those In Whom Without Some Touch Of Madness a career highlight for Zedek is how she avoids misery while continuing to confront emotional storminess.

Ward’s only failure in his bid to create a paean to another era is Transistor Radio’s length.

The language barrier and discord makes the record incomprehensible, but nearly everything is still as intoxicating and entertaining as hell.

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

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.

Bows and Arrows is an album of grandiose pleasures, the sound of a band not just making good on the promise of their debut, but expanding every which way at once, merging distinctive songcraft with decadent theatrics, and tethering themselves to a confidence that they, unlike others, will survive the sea-change of a deflating scene.

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

Sounding (at best, mind you) like an uninspired Afghan Whigs tribute band, it recycles motifs, melody lines, production tricks, and lyrics from the back catalog. Part of the problem lies in the production--it's far too muddled, loud, and flat--but even the most gifted producer would have trouble making a good album out of the Dulli-by-numbers on display here.

Those who have loved Ladytron’s move toward a mix of harsher electro and lighter pop elements will find this a welcome progression, and seemingly a natural one, too.

Jesse Lacey... still conjures up arresting images but they rarely add up to coherent songs—and nothing consistently cuts to the bone like Deja Entendu’s highlights.

Here are nine really communicative almost-pop songs, subdued but no less ambitious follow-ups to similar tendencies on 2005’s The Runners Four.

Human Animal comes off as a less directly brutal assault than its predecessor. It sounds a hell of a lot better cranked to ten, though, its contours more explicit, the sounds sharpened to a steely point.

Despite the increased emphasis on production, like Blonde Redhead's entire catalogue, the chirping, child-like cords of lead vocalists Amedeo Pace and Kazu Makino act as the essential ingredient to the bands avant-garde concoction.

Earle's strongest release in some time.

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.

Ultimately your reaction to the first album will define your reaction here. I can foresee a long cult career for Andrew W.K., devoted acolytes swearing he is the best thing ever, and everybody else ignoring him because they don&#146;t know how to do anything else.

Those disappointed with Velocity’s, raw, live sound, will see this album as a return to form. Those that dug its easily digestible garage rock will, in turn, view New Magnetic Wonder as a step forward.

An album of rich country, folk, and gospel music.

A retreat from overt tale-telling makes these songs less immediate and localized but potentially more personal, both for Jim and his listeners, as he strips away the surreality and specificity and renders his murky ruminations more universally resonant.

With the Fiery Furnaces bringing indie-prog rigmarole back in fashion, Face The Truth might get a little more love than Pig Lib did, despite being the same album with a few more fart sounds.

It's not as much a progress as DCW, but it's easily its equal.

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.

Contemplative and comforting, this is inoffensive Americana for the brainy set.

A semi-bizarre and semi-wonderful example of twisted, melted country-blues-psyche-pop oddballness.

Musically there&#146;s not enough variation to keep things interesting throughout.</A>[Note: Score listed is an average of two separate reviews: a <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/musicreviews/grandaddy-sumday2.shtml" TARGET="_blank">61</A> and an <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/musicreviews/grandaddy-sumday1.shtml" TARGET="_blank">85</A>]

Little new or exciting is added to the mix that can&#146;t be found in different forms on their previous two albums. Instead, the album works as a consolidation of strengths from earlier works.

By capturing moments of ancient past, Gerrard and Cassidy have somehow created something timeless through set-in-stone permanence.

The Hold Steady, then, is not yet an outstanding band, but unlike its New York contemporaries, shows the sort of distinctive talent that suggests that one day, it might be.

It&#146;s not mush, it&#146;s just not quite as gleefully obvious as Mclusky Do Dallas was. But, by the same token, they&#146;re not just treading the same ground.

On Collisions, Calla don't flee from their influences; instead, they turn inward on themselves, pushing out at their songs' edges.

Even if Hypnotize is full of missteps, its existence as a separate entity is what makes Mezmerize nearly perfect.

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

The album is one of the few anti-industry freakouts that have appealed to me on both a conceptual and musical level, so whether or not you are familiar with Busdriver’s skittering flow or innovative song structure, it’s worth the time to see why he’s so damn mad after all.

Every moment screams to be played a little bit louder and a little bit longer; because Playing the Angel is just that good.

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

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

His brand of subtlety yields far greater rewards and makes for a surfeit of future discoveries upon repeated listens.

OK, it all gets a bit samey in the middle section. But Jake Kelly adds some nice instrumental flourishes, and Dawson once again proves winning and convincing as a simple troubadour who’s not a simpleton.

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 Double has a high ambition of making outré textures pop, but their obliqueness can walk a fine line between compelling and evasively wussy.

A tremendous step forward, an emotional, melodic smorgasbord of pop bliss.

It is when Adams veers from the hook-orientated path that the record suffers.

There are gimmicks, but there’s musical merit, and genuine feeling to match the calculated charm.

Unlike its Fridmann-produced predecessor Dreamt For Light Years employs a stripped-down approach more akin to its debut.

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.

Right now Elbow are hitting an emotional pitch no one else is managing; one more personal and more potent than those that might be considered their competition.