A disjointed mess- brilliant songs gone so awry that I find myself no longer excited by the prospect of listening to the album through, but disappointed.

The main, fundamental problem with this album is that as good as the melodies are, it really does fall flat in trying to get you to feel anything.

More rounded and less determinedly schizo than Fantasma, Point is a great album of delicious odd-pop made by a whimsically modest genius.

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.

A wild and beautiful ride.

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

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.

The National are able to pack as much power into the songs on Alligator as any of the more heralded indie-rock bands working right now, only The National have taken the common influences and grafted them into something altogether fresh and remarkable.

It all sounds nice enough to start with, but as you hear it more and more you love it more and more, the simple charms showing themselves to be more and more complicated but no less delightful.

La Forêt has the sort of courage-minus-contrivance that is exceedingly (and ironically) rare in music of its dramatic and thematic ilk.

One of the best debut albums of the last five years.

This is their radio-rock record, and it's not a tribute, it's as close to the real thing as they've come since they actually had a chance at radio play back in the '90s.

Jarvis is strong enough, smart enough, and at home enough with its ancient rock-star concerns and unembellished songcraft, for "Running the World" to remain a bonus track. This album doesn't need rescuing.

Fennesz makes Boards Of Canada sound like Daft Punk and My Bloody Valentine sound like Oasis.

Haha Sound’s music is always competent, and often worthy of Broadcast’s debut album, but it’s disconcerting to see a band repeat a simple formula with such devotion.

Allow me to offer some parting advice: just because a record expresses emotion doesn’t make it bad.

The net result is an amazing pileup of discount psychedelia and stoner rock grind, with ample doses of ecstatic amplifier brutality thrown in to explode any ham-fisted accusations of classic rock necrophilia.

It is simultaneously the most resplendent, accomplished record the band has made, with all kinds of songs... that retain the worst, most self-indulgent aspects of one of underground rock’s most consistently imperfect bands.

Aerial isn’t perfect, but it is magnificent.

It’s a passionate and at times painful aural experience as a whole, but it’s one that has to be taken from start to finish.

The finest album of the White Stripes’ career.

Abandoned in the spotlight, Doom appears to falter, though again I think it’s just because we’ve grown so accustomed to cherry-picking his lyrical gems from a well-blended stoned barrage.

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

“I am a writer, writer of fictions,” Meloy claims on “Engine Driver,” and that’s exactly what he does, but it’s what everyone else does too, the only real difference being Meloy hits the thesaurus and maritime literature a bit harder than most.

A complete album of epic scale, musical significance and a highly prescient lesson in listening, participating and challenging.

So we've got pop music too lightweight to do much more than fancy up the background and a conceptual underpinning, that, due to the seamless way it's blended into these songs, is near imperceptible.

Avatar shows Comets capable of a level of sophistication and skill previously unconsidered.

Fur and Gold is admittedly not as strong and cohesive a record as "Wind in the Wires." At its finest, though, it does show off a rare talent for haunting and evocative songwriting.