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.

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.

A showcase of a band who have learned lessons and improved upon them, quietly getting better and better until something really special emerges.

Daedelus does with electronic and Latin music here what he and others have already done with experimental hip-hop: boiling genre to an essence and re-imagining it with novel or illuminating instrumentation.

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.

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

Although Punk summarizes Fatlip's traumatic post-Pharcyde life, the record is buoyant with character.

Their classic albums all had filler, but The Last Sucker has none. Each song is instantly identifiable. Riffs are huge, driving, and upfront. Songs maneuver crisply through choruses and bridges, avoiding the meandering that plagued previous efforts.

With its laptop beats and closely mic’d intimacy, White Bread, Black Beer conforms to the dictates of a creator with endless time to play all the instruments and no one to please but himself, regrettably.

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

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.

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

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

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

What really makes Hawley stand out from just about every other contemporary solo artist is his modernization of the classic, silky pop sound and his adjustment of it to fit into today’s world.

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.

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.

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

Good Arrows is still a series of beautiful songs for that part of us all that just wants to stay in bed all day.

A Drink And A Quick Decision is a pill every bit as sweet as its predecessor, mining similar terrain to achieve equally sexy results.

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