Youth Novels serves as an entertaining, but ultimately inadequate introduction to Lykke Li.

Essentially, the band only seems to have bit off a little more than could be chewed, and Outside Love feels like a slight misstep.

Per the majority of The Sea and Cake catalog, Butterfly is roundly solid: not great, but very good, with frequent moments of luminosity.

An über-catchy collection of short, diverse songs laden with a playfully channeled anger and wit that are hard to forget.

Hope in Dirt City presents some of Pemberton's most complex material to date. Most of the songs still bear the characteristically breakneck rhythms that garnered a nod from the Polaris Music Prize committee back in 2006, but unlike Breaking Kayfabe and Afterparty Babies, this album is swathed with layers of full-bodied instrumentation.

Their distinct blend of shoegaze and Americana sounds more natural than it should, while remaining, at most, vaguely reminiscent of other bands. Once the clarity of their songwriting matches their musical vision, there won’t be any need to keep peppering praise with regret.

Goat devotees should be most satisfied with this addition to the collection, and the uninitiated could find worse places to start.

The album’s strongest cuts reveal an undeniable energy and excitement on the behalf of its creators, but those moments are much too sparse to draw in many from outside of Putnam’s cult of true believers.

Bibio aims to express an exquisitely blurry mind-state; instead, his lack of focus conjures only a musty shadow of the varied, sportive electro-pop album he strains to create.

They’re a thrilling pair Richard Bishop and Ben Chasny], giving each other space to stretch out but staying close to cohere. Corsano matches the energy of each with an enviable malleability, staying closer to Bishop than a shadow, then turning around to throw cars, houses, and oil tankers into Chasny’s twisters.

Love Yes flings the sound skyward and waits to hear what bounces back. The pop haze of In Limbo, the bounce and blip of The Way and Color are rebroadcast as a symphony for synths and hi-hat.

While it may be the most unfamiliar work of Herren’s discography, it’s still one of the year’s first great albums.

The caveat is that this is primarily dance music, and doesn't make for a super-compelling listen on a full attention basis.

This ambiguity ends up being what separates this effort from the sort of average indie pop twinkies that were so abundant at the midpoint of the aughts.

Bitchitronics may not be bold or experimental, but that’s irrelevant to Bitchin Bajas’ concerns--that being the craft of pure sound, as Eno put it, “ignorable as it is interesting.”

If $ucessor is the finality of the final, then Tahoe is the beginning that begins. Tahoe is a voice that emerges after the rupture, the voice that creates itself anew, settling into itself as into a home.

If Belle and Sebastian appear to be repeating themselves here, maybe that just means there's another minor reinvention coming somewhere down the line.

I’d rather be listening to Magnificent Fiend’s antecedents.

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.

Apocalypse is keenly observed, distinctly humane, and predictably idiosyncratic; it is yet another minor triumph from an artist who, despite his constant self-deprecation, seems incapable of offering up less than his best.

(k)no(w)here is a really good, enjoyable record that this band has already made twice before, if a little more unevenly in the past.

Molina and Johnson manages to sound as good as the backstory: two friends crossing paths in winter, making an album that reflects the contemplative spirit of the season.

Sea Lion is a delight.

Even his lyrics, a mix of front-porch reflections and impressionistic images, are more sound than sense, the stuff of ambitious art-rock, not folk.

Expo 86 puts up a good showing. The best songs are catchy as hell but complex enough to stay sharp even after repeated listening.

Everything that Happens Will Happen Today is the product of one of the better collaborations that modern music has known.

P.O.S. is good. Real good.

Craftsmanship sets him apart, and allows Insides to be as incredibly moving as it is and always will be. It will easily be one of the best electronic albums of 2009.