But no matter how much I sit here listening to Broken Social Scene, and no matter how special most of these tracks are, they lack the cohesiveness that made You Forgot it in People, and even Feel Good Lost, something to get ecstatic about.

The Visitor seems especially appropriate in this age of additive excess. It’s less a demonstration of O’Rourke’s ego than of his conceptual vision, which has always been relayed with an innate sense of purpose--a rarity these days.

It is a delicate alchemy of tight metronomic grooves and carefully parsed instrumental interplay, to the point where nothing steals the show.

Black Holes and Revelations is probably the least restrained album of 2006, which for some is a blessing, for others a pretentious annoyance. It is, however, a focused album.

Neither a remix nor a remodel, even less a tribute to an inspiration, these songs sound the same yearning breathed in different breaths.

Within the extravagant walls of Versailles, this cosmic, spacious work must have been transfixing. Coming through a humble set of headphones, it’s still pretty enchanting.

Something Dirty has something of the reliability and surprise of rediscovering a trusty, well-trod paperback on the shelves of a particularly high-quality, secondhand but not-to-be-outdone bookstore.

Suspending cynicism for a moment, this is their strongest release to date.

Thee Oh Sees are keen students of both the restrictions and liberations of rock music, and therefore continue to thrive with the glad clutter that is reinforcement over renovation of their sound.

Fabulous Muscles contains some of the band's best songs since Knife Play.

AlunaGeorge have built a happy marriage out of the slick and the smart, and with Body Music, they just might manage the trick of making everyone else--from old fans to new ones; from critics to their record labels--happy too.

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.

At times, the record is just classically Surreal, a bucolic unheimlich provoking a fleeting confrontation with the unconscious. What remains most alluring about this experiment’s broken logic is the sense that you’re furtively occupying someone else’s dream.

A tightly-controlled, affectively capacious accumulation of sound that communicates beyond speech. In its collection of styles, histories, and genres, it weaves a mesh for the listener to inhabit.

Rather than attempt to recruit other players and resume business as usual, Broadcast subsumes House’s spectral compositions within a framework that suits every one of the duo’s strengths. If there’s anything scary about this at all, it’s the ease with which they’ve made the corpse of pop songcraft climb from its grave and walk anew.

For anyone with ears tired of the sirens, the red herrings, surfing the more visible peaks of the endless ocean in search of something worth combing over, you'll find this spacebound lighthouse a good place to put your feet up; and get up on your feet, if so inclined. Thoroughly recommended.

Now seven full-lengths into their career, Xiu Xiu have hit a milestone with Dear God, I Hate Myself. Over 12 songs, they condense the best aspects of all their previous albums to craft what may prove to be their finest hour.

This is music for that, a form of attention, a voice answering a voice.

Yet another charming balance of winsome melody, subtle studio twinkle, frolicking rock, and tinges of country meshed against traditional song structures.

There may not be clear answers to the riddles of identity and agency posed on My Woman, but even in all of its knotty uncertainty, to be caught in Olsen’s web is such a sweet place to be.

Like Plowing Into The Field Of Love, this album is rich and complex.

It’s certainly a strange pairing at first glance, but it’s a testament to both Prudhomme’s versatility and Lopatin’s curation that Remembrance is a perfect fit for the typically hi-def, post-internet sounds of Software.

Swift hasn’t put out a bad record yet, but The Atlantic Ocean is his most solid effort yet, his best attempt at managing the dark-lit record store in his head.

Gamel is OOIOO remembering themselves and what they do best, which sounds like something they’ve never done before.

Drawing from the rock pantheon as well as personal experience and fascination, Chris Forsyth presents a guitarist’s record that is decidedly group music, and Solar Motel should whet appetites and blow minds of shredders and weirdos alike.

Lullabies is one of the strongest albums of 2005 thus far, from beginning to end.

Blues Control are one of the most intriguingly unclassifiable outfits in contemporary music, putting forth music that is clear and refined while also being absolutely incomparable.

The Boris of New Album never hesitate and seldom falter, realizing the potential they've left untapped for years.