If the arrangements were given as much attention as the astonishing, rich, in-the-same-room production: 9.1

There’s plenty to recommend this album, but rarely do Shipp and Antipop ever really come together.

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.

Feast of Wire is a startlingly diverse album.

Sleep and Release is both an exceptional release and an unfortunate release, and even when it’s at its best and at its worst, it remains both of these- its emotional and musical scope help the album succeed and cause it to fail.

They rock hard and fast and damn the stylistic similarities, because they have as much energy and explosive tendencies that even the Stooges themselves showed back in their heyday.

A polished, carefully crafted set of beautiful, intense songs that lay bare the singer’s heart as honestly and effectively as anything she’s attempted before.

Another fine batch of eloquent, classic sounding pop songs, with a little bit of mustard added to it as well.

The naysayers do not understand. Their expectations hamstring them.... Like the glass sculptures featured in the artwork it is precise, transparent, dangerously fragile, and ominously lit. 100th Window is a masterpiece of its kind.

The cover of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” is pretty inventive.... Unfortunately for the group, the album doesn’t approach these moments of sublimity nearly enough.

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.

There is flatness where once there was majesty; there is garbage where once there was gold.

The variety and talent this album offers is enough to recommend it to almost any rap fan.

This record is Weezer-lite, emo-lite, corporate radio, MOR rock junk.

While the record is surely Tweedy’s most experimental to date, it’s also, amazingly enough, his most lighthearted. In the end, this is both the gift and curse of Loose Fur, in band and album form.

But for all of the good things that can be said about the first half of the record, the second half misses the very things that made both of the previous two records such conflicted masterpieces.

It's an album that is filled with plenty of big hooks, ample rock crunch and a loving attention to detail.

Quite simply, Sunshine Hits Me is fantastic.

It’s all quite beautiful and inoffensive, and that in itself may be an admirable goal. But what it lacks is the experimental--or at least, improvisatory--bent of Tortoise, as well as lacking a lot of what made the last Brokeback record so great.

Bachmann’s transition from indie curmudgeon to singer-songwriter is complete: his arrangements are now horn- and string-fattened creations of grand sophistication; his songs now contain hope and broken spirit simultaneously; but the most significant growth displayed on Red Devil Dawn, and the reason this album is Bachmann’s finest moment since his Barry Black days, is that you can now see Eric Bachmann as the subject of most of his songs.

The record is very innocent on the surface, but it’s in the lyrics (again) of Alun Woodward and Emma Pollack that make it cold and dark, even though their vocals seem to make it all sound safe.

A complacent, inoffensive set of songs that belie the talent and vision of their creators.

Elvrum’s tightest song cycle yet, truly focusing and clarifying the themes and ideas he’s explored on all his albums.

Suffers from a distinct lack of vision.

Easily the most satisfying album of his decade-plus solo career, Illumination marks the first time in ages that Weller has sounded at ease in his own skin: mellow, upbeat, yet aggressive and gritty in all the right places.

The nice thing about God’s Son, although it isn’t fantastic or at the level of Stillmatic, is that it honestly doesn’t feel rushed. Nas is responsible for the lyrical content of the album, and it, like his previous releases, is nearly flawless.

So, is this genius or is this madness? As enjoyable as it is on occasion, I’m inclined to side with the latter.

Not quite the apocalyptic inverse Screamadelica that XTRMNTR was, it’s still a damn site more radical, experimental and dangerous than anything produced by any other mainstream rock band this year.