LP3 is a rewarding listen, and you’ll have a taste for it if you enjoyed the less powerful moments of "Classics" or Evan Mast’s previous textural work as E*Vax. Just don’t expect to find yourself headbanging and air-guitaring alone in your room.

Beyond all else, perhaps, think of this zero as the massive bedazzled orifice out of which our heroine has spawned a new era of popular culture.

I guess whether or not Elevator is worth picking up for you depends on just what you want from Hot Hot Heat. If you liked Make Up the Breakdown, still like it, and want more of the Hot Hot Heat you've come to know and love, then knock that rating up another .5 or so and walk briskly to the nearest record store to buy it.

EDD are probably too traditional a band to ever record a straight-up punk record. But it would have been nice to hear an entire album powering through with the intensity of the more rocking half of Riot Now!.

For now, The Redeemer’s many tangles make even some of the most personal music this year sound tedious.

Even ignoring the tectonic shifts in music over the past decade, this is by no means a novel or inventive album.

Dimensional People wants to be a major rap album, complete with cameos stacked way high, all epic and prodigal. But it’s just not all there.

There's nothing supremely bad about this record, but there are no surprises either. It's just--well, there.

In cynical marketing terms, an 'indispensible' sticker has been slapped on this effort through these moves, so that no wallflower's music library would be complete without a shy Fading Parade.

Kweli still has an ear for beats, and despite some particular low points here, his lyrics were always overshadowed by his flow, which is as sharp as ever.

Remember Your Black Day has some great moments--the eight-minute title track, with its hyper-pulse percussion and somber synth strains, is a solid incarnation of what made Vatican Shadow so compelling in the first place--but it’s surrounded by a mixed bag of tunes that either attempts some agoraphobic tightrope walk before falling flat or wrestles with contrasting ideas that weaken the project’s potency as opposed to crystallizing it.

Musically, End Times approaches Everett’s best work yet, but due to its narrow focus and exhausting reliance on theme, it falls just short of it.

Royal City don't have the arresting lyrics or delivery of the best Palace songs, nor is Little Heart's Ease the equal of genre-champ Magnolia Electric Company, but, as Riches might put it, there's some sparkles in the rough.

If you've enjoyed Gomez's musical direction in the last six years, you're sure to take pleasure in listening to Split The Difference.

An amazing accomplishment and a pleasure to listen to.

Tracer glimmers with the CD-ROM gleam of early-90s intelligent techno.

While enduring a few accidents, the group’s fresh folk approach shows promise.

Total Nite still feels to me like lateral growth, neither distinctly worse but certainly not better than what preceded it.

Secret House Against The World is a fun-filled affair that only reinforces Buck 65's stature as one of "hip-hop's" more versatile "emcees."

The duo has never abandoned the cool reserve of music nerds, but their sound on this tribute has a different sort of ease and confidence; they've learned something from studying their pop music history books.

After awhile, the monotony becomes wearing. Television Man is a disappointment in the sense that it’s a lot of the same, save for the two instrumental tracks, based on keyboards, that sound like attempts at making warped VHS soundtrack music.

Why Bother? may not have quite the same sonic guitar depth as Gimme Trouble, but the mechanical, industrial-punk synth work, inching closer to perfection with each release, does an admirable job of filling in the aural gaps.

An architecture of mediated sound is being built here, flecked with the indelible traces of the locations, communities, and forms of feeling contained in the music. And, importantly, the process of this construction is suffused with joy, with the afterglow of countless nights remembered and forgotten.

With Love’s desire to obscure any traces of the artistic hand that made it is both its most compelling trait and what ultimately prevents it from ascending to the aesthetic nirvana it imagines.

For every song that I replay, there’s another that I skip.

The sound design of the album is conventionally breathtaking.

Content (pronounced like the noun, not the adjective) is, in many ways, a return to form for the group.

Internal Logic is a well-constructed album, more punk than post-, stronger in its ideas, and a welcome departure from so-called "love" songs prevalent in modern bands inspired by the early 60s. It's a strong statement from the band and a treat for those who revel in such influences.

I haven't heard, read, or seen anything that portrays or recalls the state [Montana] as beautifully as Dept. of Disappearance.

With them, hip-hop's fun again.

The lyrics on To The 5 Boroughs are, with a few exceptions, a dismal failure.

This isn't an edgy, experimental record. It instead explores human nature through conventional tonality and flow, delicately combining melancholy, detachment, and exhilaration.

A much more serious, often less danceable, instrumental effort.

There is some great interplay on the George W. Bush track and the epic of John Wayne. Other than that, not too much is memorable here.

A beautiful concept that's been beautifully executed.

While the lyrics at times retain the smarts and wicked humor that we've come to both revel in and expect, the romantic ballads more than flirt with cliché.

Except for the admittedly awesome surf-rock instrumental 'Reflecting,' there’s nothing done on Circular Sounds that you can’t find done better on old vinyl, battered mixtapes, and (shudder) Counting Crows albums.

It’s gimmicky on some level, and maybe formally confined, but the absurdity of these songs can’t mask their joy and evident catharsis.

It's very long and the songs don't really relate to one another, despite the band's description as "a subconscious concept album about the sorry state of rock n' roll." But Let It Beard certainly seems like a strong statement about something.

Although one of PE’s three focal points, Terminator X, is gone, Chuck D and Flavor-mother-fucking-Flav still have vitality pumping through their veins, enough to elevate a two-decades-old rap institution above the level most hip-hoppers reach once they hit middle-age.

It remains first and foremost a very fun album.

I don't know if this is one of the bravest or boldest albums of the year, but its definitely one of the neatest.

This is a rare combination of talent, vision and sound.

Harry Fraud’s production ensures that the EP is still enjoyable in a purely instrumental, non-lyrical dimension; I just wish that Action had stepped up and delivered rhymes on a level that these beats deserve.

A can't-miss effort.

Just to Feel Anything never quite seems to justify itself in the way that Does it Look Like I'm Here did, to compel you to pay attention in spite of its apparent familiarity, by whatever method. And as a result, it just feels like a lot of wasted energy.

While it does have moments where the listener is reminded of why they love power-pop, Together ends up sounding too vocally divided as an album and at times too top-heavy with orchestral arrangements.

jj struck a subtle and surprising balance with their debut, but this time around, they've withdrawn, letting their techniques dangle in the air, starving for justification. The effort is weaker for it.

The righteous Southern revival swagger of these electrified riffs collect over Jago’s drums to rain down the real rawk people have mistakenly praised Kings Of Leon for providing, absolutely destroying them at their own game.

Part rumination on engaging with the pop icon and part deep end even after eating the meal, Reputation keeps the ball in the air, argues for moving forward, even if it’s herky jerky.

Arm’s Way is a detailed, richly-rewarding album. These are undeniably melodramatic AOR songs--but they’re nuanced in form, graced with melody, and any obvious tropes are usually subverted.

Come With Me If You Want to Live never relents under the weight of its side-project status, nor does it pale significantly in comparison to more “serious” metal acts, nor is it in any way a piss-take.

This album does nothing to disrupt their two-decade streak of psychedelic, cosmic, post-rock transcendence.

Filching from the foundations of dub music to create a stridulous yet wholesome panache is something Vladislav Delay has been doing for many years, and despite purveying a rather ambivalent shrug with regards to its inception, he has fashioned on Kuopio an album that stands equally as tall as its predecessors.

Despite the mystifying veil that has been draped over the album, it’s an insightful journey that has our West Country enigma plotting past projections of the future with mesmerizing ease.

The subject matter on the indistinguishably titled Love, Angel, Music, Baby is painfully mainstream throughout.

Yeasayer soar with sublime choruses that are everything that pop has been trying to realize: high-art dionysian bliss contained in three- to four-minute bursts.

Cherish the Light Years is a breathless, versatile record from front to back, always oscillating between extreme shades of dark and light.

The Sea and Cake continue to be champions for the weary and resolute alike, being both the soothing reassurance of beauty and the wistful resolve that the most dogged absolute is the very impermanence of everything. It’s a deceptively tricky feat and one that they continue to thrive on.

What places Ropechain, Grampall’s second release for Sufjan Stevens’ Asthmatic Kitty label, above its emotionally vacant peers is a willingness to trade drugged-out euphoric rambling with tangible anxiety.

As Moon Duo have become sunnier and rockier - a trend evident on 2011's Mazes and continuing on Circles - their vision seems less distinctively their own.

Harlem Shakes are in their early days and still sound like they are trying a little too hard; it’s an absolutely excusable quality in a young band, if not always endearing. Harlem Shakes have plenty to be proud of; they’ve also got even more to prove the next time around.

Warm Slime; it's just solid, thick as a brick.

The goal here is a noise-dance album, and they succeed admirably.

The signs are there, but they just haven’t come together in a way that makes significant impact--at least not yet.

An intriguing and mesmerizing compilation of songs that underscores any love you already had for Broken Social Scene.

Our Love To Admire isn’t even a contractual obligation to push off without care. But boy does it sound like one; a band phoning it in, out of steam, and running on a few lingering fumes and smoldering coals.

Good Sad Happy Bad is ultimately an optimistic record; it tries to bring out the positive in some of the most negative sounds around.

If we're ripe for an introduction of post-grunge sounds into the retro mélange - and given that the moment in question is now 15 years ago, no doubt we are - then we have here one among the early contenders.

Listening to World Waits, you get the feeling that it would be a more enjoyable record if Enigk didn't execute every single note with such immense, ridiculous fervor.

With any luck, Stereolab's hiatus will prove to be temporary, but if Not Music is the epitaph of their career, it is a suitably dignified (if not emphatic) one.

They know that a sound so anathema to many rock and soul fans as anti-human or soulless may have been created on machines, but it was the left-field creativity and forward-thinking imagination of a few of his city's citizens that helped to change the sound of popular music.

Even though A Constant Sea is arguably somewhat conservative in its regurgitation of established tropes and forms, the execution of its inherited framework predominantly unfurls with confidence and clout.

Though Langhorne Slim has its delights, one would be remiss not to note its flyover country.

This is pure, unadulterated pop music, and while its individual musical elements sometimes don’t quite add up to the full potential inherent within Dent’s ever-stunning vocal melodies, there’s always something going on that’s guaranteed to endear this music to the listener.

Strangers is a fundamentally passable album.

An album in which a majority of the heavy lifting is performed by the extra-textual aspects of the project, providing undeserved depth to a series of obsessive repetitions of the banal.

Autechre present a uniquely realistic vision of our present-future: always problematic, limited by human nature and other complications, yet driven forward by incredible optimism, perpetually fixing itself and, adapting to new contexts, engaged in a constant state of becoming.

There isn't a weak track on the album.

Temple and co. have obviously taken a big left turn that at the very least indicates a commitment to motion over stagnation; they're pushing themselves and their listeners somewhere.

Parish is good at what he does, but I suspect he'll have a hard time finding an audience with patience to watch him do it.

Canopy Glow sees the band returning to a more straightforward pop format--as straightforward as a band with a penchant for the theatrical may ever get--with successful results.

Transistor Rhythm is an album with a thin atmosphere. There is little reverberation, just repetition, vocal samples repeating without degrading.

Despite longer tracks, this album is a more accessible work. The compositions are less fragmented, and the songwriting has also improved.

Although still a strong album, YACHT would do well to better marry its aesthetic with the famous DFA beat factory, instead of giving it such clearly separate airtime.

Telepathe may not be superstars yet, but with Dance Mother--an album short in length but simmering over with ambition--they are certainly on the right track.

With Ume’s sweet, soft melodies mixed so gracefully with their bone-crushing riffs, any notion of contradiction between the two are dispelled.

Burned Mind contains some of the heaviest moments on record that I've ever heard.

Soundgarden's best material conjures a dense atmosphere of gloom that renders Cornell's angsty lyrics portentous and significant. But few of the songs on King Animal evoke much of anything in the way of feeling.

Perhaps direction is lacking on moments in ESTOILE NAIANT, but for the most part, patten has harnessed the objects of previous releases and refined them.

Every strong point is matched by a weaker one, but there is never an extremity of either.

After a great start, Faded Seaside Glamour loses its way and ultimately fails to inspire.

Coming in at over an hour in length, the album drags at times and begins to wear near the last part of the tracklisting.

Hauschka has shown much promise in the past, but Foreign Landscapes buries its own experimental leanings under layers of charm and cliche: childish sentiments, cute sounds, and easy references.

There is a currentless drift to these nine doggypaddlers, what with the sloppy rhythms, plain-as-dirt vocals, and obligatory wah solos - but it's all so satisfying in its way.

His style, somewhere between Leonard Cohen and The Velvet Underground, offers little in terms of originality, and often the sappy and stoically emotional quality of the lyrics comes off as snarky.

This album is a must for Decemberists’ fans and even a fairly pleasant diversion for casuals, but Colin Meloy Sings Live! is exactly that and nothing more: a few interesting veers among a bunch of Decemberists songs stripped of their playful pretentiousness.

With The Trip, she's split the difference, crafting a modestly arranged work that showcases a variety of strengths we already knew she had.