Like all Nickelback releases before it, All The Right Reasons was made for all the wrong ones and follows all the formulas and clichés you should be bored to death of by now.

It's a mix that works just as well on the dance floor as the bedroom.

As with most Adams records, the fact that some of the songs made the cut is perplexing.

Is it possible that Gab and Xcel could have improved and surpassed Blazing Arrow's success? The Craft simply says yes.

Road to Rouen isn't going to blow away any fan new to Supergrass, nor is any old fan going to go ga-ga over what they're hearing, but it's good to know the band isn't sitting on their laurels fantasizing about killing their commercial appeal.

Wolf Parade do what they do better than anyone in recent memory.

They still get a thumbs up in the sonic department, and their songwriting is certainly to my liking; but that quality of elusiveness that made their prior albums a journey of discovery seems to be missing.

I simply cannot imagine what it would be like to see these guys live, but follow up that New Order at your next dance party with some Congotronics and people will be bouncing off the walls.

Never ratcheted up over a pleasantly throbbing pulse, this is music as anti-depressant, mood enhancer, and muscle relaxant.

Many tracks sound like they're simply missing a piece.

Even if it is a bit less adventurous, many of the tunes are right up there with anything the band has done.

Clue to Kalo may give acts like Postal Service and Her Space Holiday a run for their money.

Cripple Crow finds Banhart doing what many didn't want him to do or thought he couldn't do: make a pretty lackluster album.

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

The best parts of Iron & Wine songs are almost always the bridges between chorus and verse or the outros, the spaces void of singing where Beam adds subtle riffs on top of the normal progression... They are the sharpest hooks, and, unfortunately, Calexico pretty much cuts out the effect of these bridges on In the Reins, replacing them with dull saxophones, harmonicas, trumpets, and ill-defined electric guitar parts.

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.

Sigur Rós are still significant, but Takk sounds safe.

It's just another above average release from another indie band.

With twice as much content as usual and Numbers working out their heaviest dose of lo-fi drone rock, this is their best release to date.

Rosie Thomas is just a little too ordinary.

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

There is nothing like Transatlaticism's "Sound of Settling" here to offset the never-ending stream of ballads and down-tempo songs.

The biggest problem with Late Registration though is Kanye's verses; he's not a great MC, but he doesn't know it.

Menos el Oso takes the act of melodizing the banal to dizzyingly silly new heights.

The songs on Twin Cinema are simply of a higher caliber than anything the Pornos' individual members can create by themselves or had created together before.

Portastatic is exactly as advertised: catchy, sometimes dumb, occasionally rockin', but always at least competent pop.

Poppy and breezy to the point of being nauseating.

Maybe it's the squeaky-cleanness of the sound and singing both that keeps me at a distance; a band like Okkervil River, both sonically and thematically similar to Vanderslice, succeed partially because they don't mind screaming and getting clumsy.