Never once during the course of the album’s ten songs, do its creators even graze the surface of mediocrity, instead settling in the sunny middle ground that Gibbard so often inhabits.

Saint Etienne have regained their touch.

No longer does he sound on the verge of breakdown with every aching syllable, no more pent-up jadedness---this is pure, cheerful post-orgasmic clarity.

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

His lyrics may be doggedly unspecific, but ear-worming hooks and top-shelf instrumentation largely rectify that shortcoming.

Bitter Tea is probably my favorite Fiery Furnaces album to date, but it isn’t without snags.

Version has its share of undeniable clunkers, but its successes are so immediate and so animated that no reasonable listener could possibly begrudge Ronson for forcing them to rely on their track-skip button.

This album comes in a neat package: well-guarded and wry, artists competently displaying their hard-earned skill. It's all very professional, but no more meaningful than the titular appellations, the smile of a persona.

My December isn’t the kind of earth-shattering fuck-you accomplishment that would make this story too good to be true. However, it’s not nearly as bereft of good songs and great moments as some folks would have you believe either.

The album has a smooth flow, using careful production and consistent guitar tones to blend the different musical influences and varied performances into a piece.

By peppering in just enough new tricks to keep things interesting and stepping up the songwriting this time out, Visitations succeeds where Winchester Cathedral failed.

Chavez Ravine drags occasionally, the result of too many serious narratives, but the stories that do work are jaw-droppingly simple and painfully familiar.

The results are often wonderful.

Absolute Garbage makes a fine reminiscence, a gift from a party that was fun for its time but left a nasty hangover.

Playtime Is Over is exactly what we've come to expect from the garage sound of grime. It isn't trying to be anything it's not.

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

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.

This is a pretty great album, filler and all.

It’s enormous, senseless, superficial, selfish, and cocky past the point of absurdity, but it’s never wrong.

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

This is not a ‘return to form’—how could it ever be? A band of this age have some many peaks and troughs in form as to render that kind of phraseology practically meaningless. Just as Porcupine should, just as Ocean Rain should, Siberia too should be taken in isolation.

Where the debut sounded like a drunken nihilist romp, Castle sounds like an artistic presentation of a drunken nihilist romp.

A work far more potent and lasting than their debut.

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

Kicking Television is consistent, professional, and unapologetically inclusive. It’s also a uniformly strong testament from one of rock’s most endearing acts, capable of producing both heady noise jams and shameless lighter-wavers.

Just Like the Fambly Cat, even more than Grandaddy's past works, carries the weight of death.

Although this LP is sequenced into tiny fragments of varying speeds of mood, the LP feels like one super-caffeine express fairground ride.

The Boss’ most lively release since Born in the USA.