As Hookworms gain more confidence and their heady rhythms are spread further afield, hopes remain that future material might be slightly less veiled.

As welcome as this debut was at the time, and as arguably relevant as its topoi of absence and alienation are to us all, there’s something very disquieting about a band that, four albums later, is obstinately continuing to mine its somber wellsprings.

Antisocialites may not be a manifest step forward for Alvvays. Quieter than its predecessor on many of the songs, the album sacrifices immediacy for Rankin’s occasionally mawkish but otherwise astute poetics. But the tradeoff is worth it.

Despite its conceptualist sonics and firmly placid surface, Nothing still winds up as Kode9’s most unsettling and miserablist release to date, as well as his most emotionally resonant and straightforward.

It’s utterly consistent, simply arranged, and scrolls through the bad ideas fast enough to make them forgivable.

Happiness In Magazines is one of the best garage rock hybrids to have been released since The Strokes hit it big.

With its blend of classic Jurado themes and a new sonic palette, Saint Bartlett serves not just as an encapsulation of Jurado's career, but as a promising indicator of where he's headed.

All of a sudden, the hooks sink deeper; the simple solos, redolent of Pavement/Malkmus to the axe-max, sound better; and, most of all, the songwriting is muscular.

Certainly, Tomboy, recorded in a dark basement in sun-soaked Lisbon, delivers its fair share of primal pleasures and sacred ecstasies.

Say Yes to Love is a potently wrought 22 minutes of febrile noise-punk that contains enough in the way of hook and subtle invention amidst its familiar battery to stand up on its own feet.

More than one track goes on about how love will eventually get us to heaven and such, and the sickly, sugary sweetness of it all just leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

There is nothing new for the listener.

The prettier recording wraps up songwriting that seems perfunctory and performances that sound tired by comparison to the psychedelic dervishes Woods first appeared as.

Here, then, are 10 more steps on the path, 10 more keys in the song of life and death.

Nigel's production and arrangements leave very little room for the songs to breathe... However, the emphasis on Thom's lyrics illuminates The Eraser's strongest asset: its content.

They are pros, the best at what they do, but this is running on empty.

Despite looking to set the world on fire with Free TC, his debut, Dolla $ign spreads himself too thin and mostly stumbles over his own lofty ambitions.

Its total lack of affectation is the album's biggest problem. It feels like it's sequenced to fit some expectation of what types of songs an album should have.

Not enough of Farmer or Poor Richard. Not enough sweat and gunpowder. They are intent on a tent shakeout, but no one’s pitching it.

At the end of the album, no stone on the topic of love and disillusionment feels unturned. Such is the strange comfort of blanket statements, but Lekman's fans may still feel the pea-like irritant of stories lanky and untold.

No Love Deep Web includes some of the group's most accessible material; "Lil Boy" and "Deep Web" are the type of glitch freak-outs over which Lil Ugly Mane acolytes and Crystal Castles fans can come together.

Beyond the Fleeting Gales is a genuine and unpretentious promise from Crying that they are here, and so are we, and together we can save the world, even if it’s just for a moment.

If Snares is complexity incarnate, Lanois is distilled modesty. These are strengths that are realized individually but create discord in tandem. Their pairing is like eating apple pie topped with cheddar cheese: some are sure to find enjoyment in the combination, but for the rest of us, these pairings are best avoided.

The LP plays at depth and synthesis while making do with simply reproducing indie electro-pop tropes.

Although Anchor feels lacking at times in terms of experimentation and exploration, its affirming energy and confidence never come off as suppressed, and it is through this lens that its true ambitions are revealed: play like you’ll never leave this place.

Sandoval and her collaborators may never modify the melancholy torch that they bear, but they keep that fire masterfully for those of us who still have a yen for patient, no-frills sounds that happen to serve as a miracle balm.

It hits just as furiously and sloppily as all the old Markers standards, no matter its label, run time, or production quality.

At nine songs in length, Go is short enough that its purposefully naive milieu never becomes rote or oppressive.

Ultimately, the listener must be contented with the reality that Parallax Error Beheads You is a record that truly speaks for itself.

It's an enjoyable record (if somewhat slight, for a full-length), but its best moments are a lot like those faded mom-and-dad photos Huntai likes to use: iconic, intriguing, but not quite his own.

Wonderland isn’t a very good album, but it more than succeeds at being a mess. Is this meant to be a Marxist critique of capitalism, or is it a maximalist celebration of the same? I’d argue that it’s both, but much like Berglund, I have too strong a sense of the fact that I do not understand what it all means.

Pretty okay.... The lyrics, typical alpha-male self-pity material, aren't all that bad, really, but they're often curdled by the delivery.

32 Levels is a line in the sand, rather than a high watermark, for Clams Casino and the genre as a whole; a fertile growth outward, rather than a zeitgeist-recapturing album.

Here, obsessed with his own mortality, Conor isolates himself from what stirs his best writing.

Although it remains, at its foundation, an exploration of themes that Pierce has long explored, Songs In A&E becomes more than the sum of its historical variants by directly placing emotional vulnerability at its focal point.

Walker is still ultimately a troubadour at heart, a keeper of old languages retelling us stories from years past, and Deafman Glance shows that he’s continuing to sharpen his tongue.

It’s his intensity of focus coupled with an impressive range of motion that gives this album its real strength and maturity.

It's a great introduction to the wide range that Broadcast works with, and it holds together as well as any of their albums.

It’s a trippy album, but it doesn’t trip into too many psych clichés, or perhaps it has fooled me simply by tumbling into all of them.

Dance music gets one step closer to an honest depiction of euphoria; yes, yes, you’re drooling quite heavily, but at least you’re drooling through an earnest smile.

Sacrificing none of their self-effacement in their pursuit of a more emotionally direct style, WHY? have stumbled upon something uniquely personal yet utterly commercial.

The timbres of the modular synth, in my opinion, are dull, but that doesn’t mean that Venetian Snares hasn’t created interesting music from his machines.

He's best when he's less accessible.

Their developments are nothing if not honest, even if the gruff, muffled intimations of hip-hop sound awkward or antagonistic, even if the softness of these pieces evades any conventional sense of emotional directness.

Hendy now seems to be making a bid for the sort of omnivorous, stylistically noncommittal psych-hop that's been relatively popular - marking critically acclaimed hip-hop milestones - for more than a decade now.

No one wants to see a zombie in the rear-view mirror, and nobody wants music that reeks of old trends, but both have their uses. Bands like Weekend have us looking nervously over our shoulder as we drive recklessly into the future.

Like the flatness of a reflective pool, Skip a Sinking Stone stretches out in stunning beauty, giving listeners a gorgeous reflection of soaring, spectral synesthesia. But beyond a skip along the surface, the release is hesitant to move toward anything of a prescriptive statement; though, with lightness and transience so central to its theme, maybe that’s by design.

Plastic Anniversary is unfamiliar, strange, unsettling, and wonderful.

That's what Cape Dory will be for many listeners--a toxic sugar rush full of empty calories.

Sixteen tracks make for a long album, but the set works remarkably, with the Boys’ excursions into Tex-Mex pop and blues rarely even pushing the three-minute mark.

Normally seen driving his hardware into the ground, here Ekoplekz is streamlining expanding.

The album is post-rock at its best, a monumentous achievement even by the group’s standards.

Kairos is not an album completely devoid of charm. The R&B influence gives the songs a weight they might otherwise lack.

Quixotic was one of the best albums [in] Europe last year and Anything will be one of the best here in 2004.

Glider is a fitting album for an overcast early winter day--cold and brooding, but not oppressively so.

As hard-rock takes on the shape of minimalist composition, the repeated rhythms and snatches of melody express rage and frustration long after the lyrics have ceased explicitly stating the message. It’s the kind of song that feels as appropriate today as it did 33 years ago. That kind of fervor makes ...For the Whole World to See such a blast and a defining example of the spirit that drives not just rock ‘n’ roll, but true outsider art.

While acting more like a well-constructed argument than a manifesto, Unsound shows that you can still fight into the later years.

Sound-wise, the album is gorgeous and perfectly placed, natch. Although I've spent so much space and breath on the thematic qualities of Long Slow Dance, the actual sounds might be the strongest force of the album.

Bird’s simultaneous engagement with the words and distance from the material free his delivery to keep the album feeling lighter than I’ve implied.

Slime Season 3 is as celebratory, emotionally rich, and life-affirming as a good funeral should be but never is. And this isn’t the end; it’s only the beginning of a brand new chapter.

The songs on Begone do not unfurl, nor do they climax.

Shall Noise Upon succeeds in fits and spurts, but as a whole, it lacks the continuity that is an essential ingredient for a career-defining record.

On an album that quite simply comes up lacking in spots, they provide a healthy dose of the same brilliant elegance found on "Furr."

Even though (III) is Crystal Castles' most unified album, the text of Glass' voice is still faceless and without words--empty.

Although it does falter at times with a seeming complacency ("Meridian," "Colony"), it is mostly characterized by a quiet ambition. It’s gutsy and its gutsiness pays off.

The joy of "Fur and Gold" has vanished and taken some of Khan’s potential with it. This is request for their safe return, no questions asked.

Because of its ambition and grandeur, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming might get criticized for its long runtime, for trying too hard to achieve aesthetic balance and thematic coherency.

Taken within the context of !!!’s (and, by default, OUT HUD’s) legacy, it doesn’t feel like a step in any particular direction so much as a million ideas left to duke it out.

On Catacombs, as always, McCombs stands as an unfashionable maverick who plays on his own terms, and if that is not good enough for the mindless millions, then tough shit.

These are vignettes, quick glimpses into the melodramatic lives of individuals, and the short, abrupt musical handling matches this mode of lyric writing.

The Dropouts tend to the same dynamics and tones, and even at 30 minutes, it gets a bit tedious.

His music’s dynamic, but his voice lacks range and variety. Krug sings emotionally, but not responsively.

Kensington Heights matches up each spectacular moment with an equally mundane one.

Even when the album gets really flaccid, as in the clattering breakdown of the turgid story-song 'Hopscotch Willie,' Malkmus is still annoyingly good at writing stuck-in-your-dome-piece melodies that keep you humming the tunes you don’t like just as much as the highlights

Stuck On Nothing is a boozy, lusty hug of a record--an album so loving and large-hearted that its virtues essentially cancel out its flaws.

They really did a great job. I think their best song was 'Those Who Don’t Blink' but it is not a good song for a headache.

No Más has three-fifths as many tracks in the same amount of time [as Jamz n Jemz], and for the most part, each track outstays its welcome.

While Moore’s aesthetic interests are rangy and Chelsea Light Moving most certainly exist to make them a compelling reality, the disc’s final act seems to be the most keyed-in to his recognizably arty, bookish-punk iconoclasm.

Down There carries many of the hallmarks of c-wave in its purse like a pack of mints or set of keys, but it diverges in notable ways.

The songs are lovely and placid enough to soothe the stressed and unnerved listener, but evocative enough to instill a disconcertingly curious sensation that lingers in a blissfully unfettered fashion.

These four Kinks followers have incorporated all manner of brass and strings into turn of the millennium Top 40 rock sensibilities, with shades of early Flaming Lips indie psychedelia and classic rock songwriting.

It's the kind of music any fledgling music lover deserves to remember.

To Realize, the superb sophomore full-length from the band, finds them wholly embracing what was once merely hinted at.

Call it experimental muzak, call it cultured post-bop fueled by the internet. Either way, it’s interesting to hear Ghostface sink so smoothly into their rhythms.

These climactic moments of “High Castle,” and the others like it on the record, are a kind of triumph of Forsyth’s musical grammar, too: the efficiency of communication, the transmission of feeling via the blunt physicality of sound.

While 936's perpetual schizophrenia is noteworthy, it's Peaking Lights' songwriting that elevates 936.

Aside from these conceptual assertions that it evokes, Feed the Animals is a good record. Though it’s broken up into 14 tracks, it functions best (and as Girl Talk intends) as a single 53-minute mash-up.

It’s a clarification--leveraging an assemblage of evocation, of presentation, perhaps of curation, but one that’s built from the fragments of the most beautifully uninteresting bits of what’s contemporary.

Armed mainly with just his guitar and voice, Panda Bear creates some of the most longing and heart-rending songs you'll ever hear.

The album is consistently entertaining, but lacking in some of the really revelatory moments of his earlier records.

The songs here are each separate, lonely or transcendent, self-absorbed and distinct, without the background, café-soundtrack quality of so many modern jazz singers: fleeting, melancholy, and dangerous creatures from Borges’ imaginary bestiary.

Gate of Grief puts the band back on the map, and while it sometimes stumbles, it nevertheless continues to slink around in the shadows, cackling.

Lucifer - Latin for "morning light" or "light-bearer" - is an unabashedly blissed-out affair, composed of expansive dub grooves and enough good vibes to fill an entire summer.

This album is a consistent, expansive collection of modestly experimental pop songs (covering familiar aesthetic territory, and exploring broad and intertwining personal/familial, political, theological, and philosophical themes), and well worth repeated listens and eventual internalization.

The flesh on the 11 ghosts of Strangers is heavier than on lots of Nadler’s past work. And the sonic space mirrors the lyric meat; this is corporal, forward locomotion.

The Genius’ latest full-length Pro Tools is no different; while its power as a long-player doesn’t hold up very well, random dissection brings out tracks destined for analog and digital freaks alike (in case that title--and the sparse cover--had you worrying).

Using a combination of brilliant textures and powerful, atypical chord progressions, Mogwai paint a picture equivalent to an auto-stereogram, popularized in those Magic Eye books 15 years ago. You almost need to loose your focus to let the music really sink in.

Definitely a worthwhile buy for those new to Engine Down and certainly must hold a place in any Engine Down fan's CD book, iPod, or whatever it may be.