The songwriting isn’t bad, by any means... But Heumann’s big-picture lyrics—faith, truth, etc.—are as ceaselessly heavy-handed as his guitar work, giving the whole of Rites an overwrought feel, one that can border on comical depending on your mood.

The weak point of the disc... is the songwriting.... But if you’re in it for pure sonic pleasure, you’re in the right place.

Anyone expecting direction changes and unpredictability may not find this band particularly exciting, but anyone who is a sucker for catchy, contagious pop tunes will revel in Life On Other Planets.

Thickfreakness is an unrelentingly dour record - perhaps this music was best left in the past.

Rarely does an album ingratiate itself so immediately and so quickly wear out its welcome.

A work far more potent and lasting than their debut.

Perhaps due to their prominence, Can Cladders works best when the strings are actually ditched.

I’d argue, though, that being an expert on the group’s verbose and ragged past wouldn’t help all that much. This is a different sounding band with pretty much the exact same lyrical concerns.

Planet of Ice's cerebrally structured songs pull in too many directions to pack a proper punch.

Her adventurous and, yes, massive, persona is allowed to wander wherever it wants on The Cookbook, be it avant or common.

The restless Broder can’t see the problem with shredding flavours as disparate as folk, rock, post-rock, the avant-garde, hip hop, electronica into a powerful, sometimes jarring, sometimes bewitching pulp, and neither should any music fan. Listen and free your mind from convention.

Ultravisitor appears to be the first album when jazz can completely mesh with Squarepusher’s canonized style.

Review 1: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1936&PHPSESSID=c34e5fbb0933de1389469828674b499e" TARGET="_blank">It&#146;s unfortunate that this band is so unsure of themselves, least of all lyrically.</A> [score=50]; Review 2: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1937" TARGET="_blank">Heroes To Zeros strikes a balance between enervation, subtlety and creativity.</A> [score=80]

Pieces of the People We Love is a great funky dance record with guitars, and not much more. Luckily, it doesn’t need to be.

Ben Kweller may not sum up Kweller, but it’s a worthy personal statement from a popster whose chops keep getting better.

But despite better production and the unbeatable chemistry of Coomes and Weiss, When the Going Gets Dark just doesn’t have as many memorable songs, nor does it spark the same kind of curious sympathy their best micro-miseries have.

A wonderful album stuffed full of sentiment, emotion and melody--and traverses the bridge between teenagerdom and adulthood with a moving and thrilling honesty.

Where Jerusalem was all reaction, humanely riddled with helplessness and incomprehension, The Revolution Starts...Now is the well-honed response, a focused act of civil disobedience.

None Shall Pass may or may not be the best album in Aesop Rock’s discography, but it might be the most fun to listen to. Call it his San Francisco Renaissance.

Less sparse than open, the songs resist the build-and-release structure that most other Montreal acts utilize, and they also refuse to ride a groove or play with distracting orchestration.

This increased humanism lends Fleischmann’s compositions an evolutionary sense of dynamism, thawing out his stern soundscapes.

For fans of indie-rock with a poppy slant, Stars of CCTV is an absolute necessity.

To completely dismiss Camera Obscura for their willingness to partake in this musical grand theft or K-Tel like attitude toward repackaging former eras of music would be unfair; free of the burden of meliorating an individual sound, they’ve been able to craft a consistently enjoyable collection of pop songs that inhabit the passion and style of the music they so clearly love.

While Ancient Melodies worked boring, repetitive structures into Martsch&#146;s typically simple song structures, Now You Know brings new life to them. Unfortunately, this album is nowhere near as good as Built to Spill&#146;s previous works.

Freeway is great on guest appearances, but it seems that he can&#146;t string together an entire song by himself.

It&#146;s solid, but it has no power over me.

Too many songs are caught between the band’s fading post-punk tension and their more professional desires.

A particularly dour, unsatisfying way to end such an intriguing career.