Springtime is... the unveiling of a toothier sound that better reflects both Holland’s bloodiness and booziness.

Smith’s abrupt changes in tempo, volume, and instrumentation are alternately inspiring and disorienting.

iT is the most focused art the Projectors have ever produced.

While their recorded output has still not quite caught up to their prowess as a live band, that moment is likely right around the corner; in the meantime, this album is more than good enough to make that wait worthwhile.

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."

Soul Journey might sound downbeat and lonesome, wistful and dusty, but this is gospel music compared to what went before.

One long sugar rush.

It’s obvious that the group can write straight-ahead rock/pop songs, but only chooses to tease the listener with short glimpses of their ability in this regard.

His new album isn’t quite as good as Disposable Arts, but it’s similarly engaging--he is both confident and insecure, and this incongruity defines his music.

Most of the tracks here fit into various categories of coffee table mood music; Lerche has a great knack for melodies, but seemingly not much of an idea what to do with them once he’s got them all lined up.

The production's sanitary feel plays a large role in the album's conservative nature, as it scrubs away any potential raucousness.

A Blessing and a Curse easily qualifies as the Truckers’ most straightforward album.

A remarkably notable debut.

There's a sustained tone to Time on Earth that Finn's rarely mastered, and that alone comes closer than you might have thought possible to making the record an unqualified success.

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

The tenderfooted wandering of the We Are Him’s final third make it less compelling than its flagellating first half but have patience; Gira always gets there.

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.

Love Kraft is taken down by sludgy pacing and a paucity of ideas.

There are few of the stop-in-your-tracks lines or extended metaphors of previous works.

Few albums made in recent memory sound this harrowing or this painful, yet even fewer have such a true sense of catharsis.

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.

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

Trying too hard to mimic his band’s tried-and-true telepathy with only karaoke-level results, it's easy to see he thinks he’s run out of ways to experiment.

What Hey Venus! ultimately is, is a good record of classy pop/rock songs, arranged and produced well, shot through with a degree of personality and skill, and almost completely lacking in the inspired, eclectic madness which made "Radiator and Guerilla" so damn good.

Idols is not quite “country” enough to tackle the road to the prairies, but the headspace of the album is clearly in a place with plenty of room to breathe.

Even on the tracks with mediocre melodies and concepts, T.I. plugs away at the beat and never loses control of King.

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.

These are songs that veer to and fro, frequently sounding as if they’re nearly about to run off the rails.