Their musical gifts haven’t left them... and their overwrought yet empathetic lyrics signify that their bandwagon jumping is misguided rather than crass.

While traditional rock fans may have a difficult time swallowing Cake’s meticulously produced, pop-obsessed, genre-bending concoction, fans of Moby, Beck and The Flaming Lips might make for easy converts.

The problems on the album don’t stem from creativity or intellect, but from execution.

It's crisper and clearer, but simultaneously thicker and murkier than before. The album isn't just dense, it's bloated—in the very best sense of the word.

What results is an achingly brutal intensity given to each broken phrase, scream and sigh.

Precious, effete and insubstantial.

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.

After hearing the crap people have said about this album I’m bummed that people are so quick to reject what doesn’t fit their immediate logic. It’s ironic that folks would get off on shredding an album that’s about trying to be kind and honest at the same time.

Feels like Interpol-by-numbers.

Unfortunately, while Kweli’s message is spot-on, his delivery of that message is highly flawed.

There isn’t a single mis-step on Last Exit.

Kill the instrumentals and one or two filler tracks and you've got one of the best EPs of the year.

With such a subdued and steady tone, I Dreamed We Fell Apart sometimes suffers from an overdose of languidness.

Fortunately, the good songs outnumber the bad; unfortunately, the veteran Costello has made the rookie mistaking of frontloading the disc.

This is the type of album impressionable teenagers fall in love with, crammed with melody and variety and thrill.

It acts as a perfect counterpart to Rejoicing in the Hands, featuring the same elements that made its successor such a valued release, while incorporating enough new ideas to make it much more than Rejoicing in the Hands: Part Deux.

Outta Sight/Outta Mind is not an album that you can discuss in measured tones whilst tending to your beard. It is an album that will only cause mass hysteria and blood clots and burst forth Kundalini from the base of your spine like some auto-massage chair plugged into the wrong transformer while you holler “wheeeeaaauurgh!!” and finally slump down into a wet pile of exhaustion.

What makes Trust Not Those In Whom Without Some Touch Of Madness a career highlight for Zedek is how she avoids misery while continuing to confront emotional storminess.

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.

Sweat’s the obvious keeper for those looking for the follow-up to Nellyville.

Were Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned released in 1999 when everyone else was releasing their mediocre post-big beat follow-up album, though it would still be unlistenable, it would also be excusable.

Sadly, Suit, is exactly what it purports to be: the business-side of a duo of albums. And, in the world of pop, there’s nothing worse than sounding like business as usual.

Significantly altering the sound that won him critical praise and sold a quarter of a million albums takes some nerve. And that's what Showtime is about: Dizzee's newfound confidence.

The streamlined zoom and precision of So Jealous makes their previous work seem tentative by comparison.

It’s hard to imagine many other bands talented enough to even poorly imitate this.

Might not be enough to convince disbelievers, but to fans, it’s a gratifying addition to an already impressive repertoire.

The material lacks the gauzy groove of Gotham!, replaced by techno-savvy beats and a synthetic sheen so soulless it C3PO’s all of the group’s human swagger.

More than anything else, Past, Present and Future is a record that is important because it denotes progress and the promise of far greater things.