Lambchop show glimmers of invention, and if these were pursued more and the quality control was stricter, one very good album could be the result. [combined review of both discs]

The elusive details in the songs here are what bring me back, haunted.

Get Color is exactly what a sophomore release should be: a deepening of and expansion upon the promise laid out by the band’s first record.

So come now fans of insidious and wily (yet cerebral) rock, Liars have delivered just what you need... even if you don't realize it yet.

There is just something so appealing about such guileless, honest music, music that sounds like it was easily made, and that makes it look so easy to do.

Despite having moments that tip it toward being his most “challenging” album lyrically (if being challenging has anything to do with being serious), This Old Dog might be his least interesting instrumentally and musically.

With Sarah Davachi’s baroque venture on Pale Bloom into the sensuous folds of light blooming into light, one can hear unfolding this always light and lightness.

The more populist material that makes up All the Way is stripped of any comfort such familiarity may provide by Galás’s jarring reinventions.

The Alternative To Love to be a quality rock album that covers several genres in influence and doesn't deserve to be punished for not being as good as its predecessor.

Fuck Death will blow your mind.

They’ve left the cutting edge musically, which can have valuable results, but here it feels ambivalent and a little tidy.

The Wild Hunt is a very good record, but it's not perfect. The album's second half, though unarguably beautiful, runs together like an extended 60s folk mix.

A collection of overzealous pop songs consisting largely of recycled ideas.

One can’t declare Autumn of the Seraphs, Pinback’s fourth full-length, any better than their first, second, or third album.

Not everything on Shape Shift With Me fits like “333,” which fits plenty, and hits hearts. Some of the hyper-syllabic loose-lyric delivery of “Norse Truth” drags baggy, some of the mixed political/personal imagery of “Suicide Bomber” bogs down what the song wants. Like want and love and bodies, songs won’t always feel good.

Sad music has never sounded so uplifting.

A painful disappointment.

If Melnyk’s technique hasn’t changed, he is breaking new conceptual ground.

Imagine my surprise to discover that Teflon Don is not only not atrocious, but it may also actually be one of the better rap albums of 2010.

The faithful will be rewarded with this immaculately recorded set of live versions, while the release could provide a solid introduction to those who've yet to discover the virtues of having heavy, emotional music that still manages to let you fill in the blanks.

It’s not so easily classifiable as “country,” but easily classifiable as really great pop music.

There is something martial, something insistent, to Compassion. True to his aims, Barnes has created something that denies passivity.

Dedicated isn’t a perfect album--it’s overlong and occasionally concedes too much to chart tastes to be interesting. But by the time Jepsen takes a bow following bonus track “Party For One,” you’re reminded once again of her generosity, of all the space she’s cleared for strength and weakness, for personal epiphanies and communal release.

Frustrated fanboy headscratching aside, the point is simple: All Day is a misstep of the worst kind, wherein Gillis' craft devolves from transformative to parasitic.

At 35 hefty minutes, Dedication is Zomby's most complete statement to date. But, much like the man, it offers a number of details in one hand while obscuring other crucial signs with the other.

An almost abstract series of daubs, here, there. Melodies submerged in machinery.

As a whole, Limbo, Panto’s uniqueness translates to something remarkably special and substantial rather than mere luster.

There are sounds, but are they melodies? Yes and no. We hear these sounds and get awed by how Lord Raja manages to suspend the belief that they, the sounds, are somehow working to form a whole. Snares and pads and synths. The same formula, a slightly different approach.