I've listened to this album more than anything else released this year, and I still don't feel like I've fully explored its depths.

A terrific and thoroughly enjoyable effort.

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.

In some ways is a step backwards towards their rockist, meat-and-potatoes roots, and in other ways is a quantum leap into the unknown.

Completely forgettable.

Edan has lowered his tone, beefed up his content, mastered an independent, creative production style and crafted a concise album that makes a strong stab for early album of the year bids.

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 swaggering, spitting, utterly contemporary album of politically dissident, sexually forthright Anglo-Sri Lankan dubstep bhangra hip-pop IDM in which M.I.A. stars as protagonist, antagonist, chanteuse, MC, exotic schoolgirl tease, graphic artist, chastiser of the immoral, and fun-loving London-living party girl. And all in under 40 minutes, too. It’s special. We’ve not heard it’s like before.

There are thirteen tracks here spread over 50 minutes, but not once does the quality or pace dip below thrilling. Every track is bursting with ideas and inspired moments.

“I am a writer, writer of fictions,” Meloy claims on “Engine Driver,” and that’s exactly what he does, but it’s what everyone else does too, the only real difference being Meloy hits the thesaurus and maritime literature a bit harder than most.

His music has lost a large degree of the vitality that it once held.

Out Hud’s shift to house-pop may not be the group ‘coming into its own,’ but it does throw aside the burden of influences that S.T.R.E.E.T. D.A.D. had attached to it.

Overall, it’s a story of too many ideas.

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

It's not too hard to hear amid the swamp bass and prickly guitars, that this group seriously brings the funk.

Where Chesnutt has long been thought of as the banjo-on-his-knee godfather of freak-folk, this record shows his skewed vision is beginning to radiate far from its nearly-naked, southern gothic roots.

It’s the sound of two very talented musicians getting their proverbial creative ya-ya’s out, temporarily sullying their good name to lay ground for something potentially even more exciting.

The album’s stagnant celebrity worship stifles their ironic, so-dumb-its-addictive intentions.

A much smoother ride and more cohesive entity.

The only perfect choice here was to make an album full of ballads. It could have been a violent reworking of age-old texts. Unfortunately, there’s not enough violence here to fully rend and flay, just enough to bruise.

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

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

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.

The Fallen Leaf Pages starts strong and tails off, but even that would be more forgivable if Putnam’s writing was as distinctive as it used to be.

This debut will not be the record of their career and leaves me wanting more already, but it is the right record at the right time and a stupidly profound and convincing debut that is up there with the best releases of the year thus far.

Portraying the state of pop as a series of predictable formulae long since exhausted by corporate superstructure, Human After All more than lives up to its name, rendering a metaphor for failure on the grandest yet simultaneously most personal of terms.

This is the kind of post punk that loves The Specials and XTC rather than Wire and Joy Division.

As an album, WIW seems to have sprung fully-formed from a single night’s restlessness; often more organic than much of his debut, but still with a steady electro-backed pulse, its pacing and sequencing flow like water beneath a frozen creek, barely seen and mostly imagined.

The Evens’ self-titled debut does sound curiously like hardcoreless moments of The Argument polished and lengthened into full-fledged songs.

Ultimately, Meltdown isn’t as dramatic a failure as its title seems to be begging me to pronounce it--in fact it isn’t really a failure at all. It’s just a crucial dip in momentum.

Approaching this album, I was skeptical. I was convinced it would be one of those albums with three good songs (the singles) and a load of filler. But it’s actually a solid, quality album with a smattering of great tunes and loads of shuffly beats that will make you lose control of your feet.

It’ll be interesting to see where he goes from here. But until then, Blue Eyed in the Red Room is one to skip.

It’s not that the male-female duo vocals make it or even the moments where the group channels the Delgados in their sublime use of strings and horns; it’s more that Stars has gotten tighter since their last outing.

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

Hurricane Bar is totally contrived: too much “That Thing You Do” and not enough shot-from-below-the-hip bacchanalia to keep the fire stoked.

Carter’s an artist clearly capable of making a great album. The Story of My Life isn’t it, but it’s a start.

The pandering that characterizes the first half of the album leaves no hint of the hidden gems that follow.

Doves’ strength lies in their careful sculpting of the sonic and the emotional, and here they’ve restrained their palette and scope so much that the result is grey.

Whereas the somewhat timid and searching De-Loused in the Comatorium was all about surprising audience, critic, and probably the band itself, Frances the Mute is a self-assured organic animal that should come as no surprise to anyone.

This is called showing the kids how it's done--and doing it.

Live From Rome is fairly lyrically sound. In this case, “lyrically sound” should be taken with exactly two grains of salt. One grain would represent the ranting political nature of the content.... Grain #2 simply exclaims, “Dude! Rhyme!”

Solarized is unlikely to win or lose Brown many fans, but the world of music would certainly be a duller place without him.

Apart from Caleb Followill’s distinctive, growly vocals--half-man half-grizzly--this could be a completely different band. A much better band. It’s quite an incredible transformation--and I’ll say this upfront: it doesn’t matter what you thought of their debut, you should listen to this album.

His pieces match open, lovely music with lyrics depicting people in struggle.... Individual songs take on various moods, but the album never dips fully to the bleak.

The realisation is obvious: a happy, contented, motherly Tori Amos is as irrelevant, sterile, and airbrushed as her face is on the cover of this album. Tori: it’s over.

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

Simply put, either you’ll love this album or not “get” it. It’s too good an album for you to not like if you understand it.

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

It's not bad; it just feels like a stopgap to hold fans over until Enon has recorded enough material for a new release.

It doesn’t always work, and the record has a scattered second half that undercuts the sonic unity of the first, but the best moments here are as starkly affecting as any of Garnier’s past work.

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.

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.

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.

Nashville is chock full of weeping slide guitar work, soaring harmonies, keyboards, and Rouse’s lonely breath of a voice pushing out from the relatively lush production.

I wish I could critique them for something other than their obvious debt to Spoon. Sadly, that’s the most distinguished characteristic behind the studied, boardroom-designed pop of Robbers on High Street.

Short, blunt, and skitless, A Gun Called Tension seethes with everything post-aught genre-fucking needs.

After disappointing would-be breakthrough releases from so many of the discopunk frontlines, this is an album that’s more easily classifiable as “great” for what it isn’t, rather than what it is. It’s not inconsistent. It’s not a total deviation from what we know of the group. It’s never dull. And, most importantly--it is in no way a let down.

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

A Healthy Distrust’s production and wordplay have improved to such a large degree that it’s hard to believe that it could happen again on the next outing.

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

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.

Out of Breach isn’t without its charms, but with an opening statement as assertive, exiting, and promising as Afro Finger and Gel, it certainly feels a little disappointing.

The Others are one of the worst bands I have heard in a long, long time.

Shouldn't he be trying something a bit more ambitious by now?

Before The Poison isn’t flashy, and it’s likely to get overlooked, but it may just be the single best album Marianne Faithfull has ever put her name to.

It’s the tracks that sit closest to the old Trail of Dead that make up a majority of Worlds Apart’s uninspiring moments and also ruin any cohesion that could have otherwise been attained through the heart of the album.

Digital Ash offers enough swelling, androgynous moments to approach its hype, or at least keep up with its release partner.

Bright Eyes may well be on the verge of finally bridging the gap between his precocious talent and the maturity of an ageless songwriter.

It certainly doesn’t stand up to Dig Your Own Hole or half of Exit Planet Dust, but Push the Button is much better than I’d hoped it would be a few months ago.

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.

Before The Dawn Heals Us is a very twilight album, a very urban record. It never quite achieves the variegated subtlety of Dead Cities..., but it doesn’t reach for the same frosty rural pastures as that record either.

Wilderness is Prewitt’s most accomplished solo effort to date. He has craftily corralled the large scale orchestral sweep of White Sky, but kept the intimacy of the guitar/voice confessionalism of Gerroa Songs.

While their sounds are pleasant enough, where Lemon Jelly fall short most often is in their unimaginative arrangements.

It doesn’t feel right to be beating Will Oldham down for doing something that is so distinctly his own, even though he is doing it again and again to a greater or lesser extent.

If he cut the middle out and made it an EP, Kenny Chesney’s Be As You Are would be a classic.

Valende is really a more significant album than a lot of people seem to be giving it credit for being, and one hopes that it will be remembered as such.

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

If all you’re looking for is more Tobin material, then you’ve come to the right place. If you’re expecting anything more, you’d best look elsewhere.

All Years Leaving collects plenty of derivative (but enjoyable) music with a few bright moments of originality.

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

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.

For something so obviously and deeply grounded in marketing, it’s still an outstandingly solid and enjoyable debut.

Uncovering the strands that make up Black Mountain’s debut album helps describe what the album sounds like. What it doesn’t help describe is how well the pastiche is constructed and how enjoyable the proceedings are.

Sure, there are minor ways in which Wratten moves his brainchild away from a punishing sameness, but it’s more than fair to say that the formula that Wratten has built into a veritable cottage industry of crystal clear guitar lines, staid drumming, and a bass tuned to the key of depression is as predictable as the bombastic riffage of AC/DC.

Purple Haze is such a twisted take on gangsta that it has to be heard to be believed.

Nothing’s Lost is a more stately affair, flaunting van Petegum’s growth as a producer without losing his child-like talent for awkward emulation.

Street’s Disciple reveals Nas at a new peak, finally comfortable in the post-millennial hip-hop world.

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.

The fascinating thing about Gwen Stefani’s record is not how different it sounds from No Doubt, but how similar it sounds to the producers that she works with and how their collaborations usually fall flat because of the rehashing of tired ideas and plodding predictability of her arrangements.

There isn’t a doubt in anyone’s mind that this collection plays it way too safe to satisfy the über-devoted.

Unlike many R&B artists, Destiny's Child are actively bad at singing ballads, which mostly turn out mawkish, aimless and dull.

To understand why the album is disappointing, you must consider the different perspectives. The fresh listener sees an EP's worth of quality songs and a six-minute skit roadblock. Someone who heard the leak is confused as to why more wasn't done to circumvent the lack of newness inherent in early disclosure. Diehard MFers will retain respect in spite of reused beats, but won't be able to avoid comparing it to the solid-but-sparse King Geedorah record.

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.

His beefs have become so infinitesimal that he’s started to unconsciously parody our LiveJournal culture, a minor event or misunderstanding generating reams of dialogue, running commentary and painstaking minutiae. In short, he’s no more compelling than one of those non-famous drama queens in your life you already find insufferable, just another loser who blows up non-events, and it’s transformed the long-running Eminem Show into the most myopic, hand-wringing, self-reflexive stuck-in-the-mud soap opera of our time.

Paul and Dan, knowing that the Dating Game skits sandwiching the album were just a poor shadow of the 3 Feet High And Rising game show, had to up the Wacky Factor within the songs themselves. “More guests! More cray-zee guests!"

Neko possesses one of the most terrifically powerful voices in music today.

Even if this album perhaps only has one hope for a hit single, the album is much stronger and reflects that unlike many of her contemporaries, Carlton is moving forwards and towards something.

It’s a highly idiosyncratic album that very few will appreciate every facet of. However, even with a very minimal knowledge of the source material, there’s much to love.