A masterful record.

It’s an album that leaves you both soothed and disturbed, lulled and shaken by the group’s masterful blend of the comforting and the uncanny, slightly dazed as if returning from time travel or a knock on the head.

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.

Whilst the songs on No You C’Mon don’t flow together as smoothly as those on Aw C’Mon, a number of them are of a similar ilk; lush, concise modern country that only Lambchop can do, the sound of a band from Nashville rather than a Nashville band.

If Cut Chemist can recreate the effortless fusion of the album's second half, perhaps someday he can make an album worth listening to from beginning to end.

A manically strange, darkly and violently beautiful, and deliriously pop album.

The result is in some ways immensely pleasing (at its best the quality here is easily the equal of the songs from the proper album), but at seventeen songs and a full hour in length Oh You're So Silent Jens suffers a bit, predictably, from too much of a good thing.

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.

The fact that Hot Chip can take all these conflicting moods, string them together, and make of them a satisfying whole is testament to their understanding of the classic rubric of the pop album—an identifiable, unique sound that has enough room to allow for variety and enough consistency to keep the listener's attention.

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.

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.