The songs are not as strong overall as on her previous albums, and the tempo neither flags nor picks up over the course of the album.

The slower numbers (“Ha Ha High Babe,” “Shade of Blue”) rely less on showy atmosphere and more on loose guitar accents, which makes the whole affair earthier, rawer, more real.

The song selection is choice, and his band handles the solo material well enough (especially on “I Have Forgiven Jesus” and a showstopping “You Know I Couldn’t Last”), but a smattering of Smiths oldies doesn't help.

To their vast credit, even if the songs resemble a greatest hits package of indie rock, each guitar break, each bridge comes alive with experimental toughness.

The three- guitarist approach brings back the spark and rush of their 1988-'94 peak.

A prototypical Damien Jurado album, this is a quietly excellent, straightforward collection of songs performed without much muss or fuss but with great empathy and feeling.

The imperfections in Farrar's singing can be distracting at times, but the implacable force of his delivery trumps wobbly pitch every time.

Like all great garage rock, it all sounds the same, but that doesn’t matter.

Introduces a delectable bit of shoegazery energy and distortion to sharpen up the lulling Ivy groove.

The French Kicks have changed dramatically and not always for the better.

This is The Coral at its best: tight and stimulating, earthy and radiant.

An album’s worth of excellent songs performed with gusto.

Unfortunately, his lyrics don't measure up; he writes songs that repeat a phrase or two in lieu of any sort of finished thought.

Every song is compelling.

Architecture in Helsinki's penchant for simple, driven melodies and gentle, nurturing jam sessions underscore one essential truth about this type of glossy, polyrhythmic music: the thin, bittersweet textures are always anchored to a syncopated bass line.

If Hayes had let her disparate styles duke it out a little more, some of the material that tends to run together might have been thrown into sharper relief and become more memorable for it.

Some of the bridges still get hazy, and a few songs sound like each other, but for the most part, the guitars revel in their unleashed electricity and the rhythms are layered, propulsive and paradoxically so anchored they seem free.

MGMT's first long-player may have included catchier singles, but Congratulations is the better album, trading Oracular's deceptive superficiality for psychedelic grandeur. Of course, like all psychedelic things, that grandeur is pretty deceptive, too.

This is no passive listen -- it is Trace rendered impressionistically -- but it has many rewards among difficult and unsettling stretches.

Even for a debut album, it’s too tentative and timid for its own good.

A stunning return to form.

When it pays off -- which is more often than not -- BRMC's fuzzed- out angry shoegazer stance reaches levels of sonic brilliance unmatched by any of their peers.

X&Y is well crafted and enjoyable, but it’s bloodless and distant. It feels manufactured, a piece of product in the march to become the Biggest Band in the World.

Black Cherry strips away almost all of the film score drama of Felt Mountain. This would be a bigger disappointment than it is if the album's dance-oriented, neo-new wave were less successful than it is.

Clicks in all the places his failures did not.

Parts of the album feel overly familiar, but it’s good to have the band back in circulation.

The instrumental "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners" showcases Grohl's acoustic guitar chops, while the piano-driven "Home" provides a lovely ending to an excellent album.

The band's attempts to diversify the tone are not always successful.

Like its predecessor, 21st Century Breakdown delivers less than it promises; it’s more successful as a rock album than as a rock opera.

A likable, cogent album of adult punk-pop that matches Dando's easygoing voice to genial fuzz-rock.

While not as edgy as The Process of Belief, it is more complex and better produced.

The further they veer from the course (like the misshapen slide guitar and honking harmonica in the stupendous single "Ain’t No Easy Way"), the more memorable the sound.

Some of the songs are immediately engrossing... Others mostly carry the story forward while allowing Mann to indulge her career-long taste for vintage keyboard orchestration, coolly elegant pop arrangements and displays of tart wordplay.

Unfortunately, attempts to abandon [their] formula offer little evidence that they can excel at anything else.

The dolorous and enervated West reins in some (not all) of Williams' willful stylistic misadventures while holding fast to her golden triumvirate of death, love and longing.

Dylanesque is a winner, succeeding both for its incongruity and its sympathy.

Although the record shows scant evidence that over a decade of rock music has passed, the band doesn't sound anachronistic or out of touch alongside its younger competition.

Solid and diverse if slightly lacking the gorgeous full- bodied melodies of its predecessor.

Begins the band's slide into sonic monotony and lyrical malaise.

Hints at future sonic depths: swirling patterns, impressive musicianship and ambitious ideologies.

A greater focus on club anthems and straightforward songwriting broadens the band’s appeal but sacrifices originality in the process.

A shambolic, blues-based record that will repel purists of the 12-bar form but delight anyone who brings a six-pack and a cockeyed sense of humor to the party.

There are problems. For one thing, some of these songs have been done to death. More important, their voices don't blend all that harmoniously, and not all the arrangements do the tunes justice.

Despite the frigid bore of the album's latter half, the initial grandiosity of the songwriting and vocals make it possible that the Killers can avoid the bleak fate shared by other new wave gimmick acts.

By the end of this brief guilty pleasure, the verdict rings clear: The Killers may have made better singles, but The Bravery made the better album.

Noel provides the best songs on Dig Out Your Soul, although his bandmates certainly can’t be accused of slacking in their efforts. The problem with this one is that it’s front-loaded with Noel’s songs, which makes the proceedings start to drag a bit.

She takes a slower, more folk-rock approach to much of the material.

The Beekeeper meanders too much to be riveting in the way Scarlet's Walk is.

Rise to Your Knees doesn't sound exactly like either previous incarnation. Those expecting a return to form will find this one decidedly mellow.

A solid enough set from the Around the Sun tour but not particularly revelatory, it’s exactly what one would expect from a late-period R.E.M. live album, with no surprises in performance or setlist.

A stunning flop, a failure on almost every conceivable level -- conceptual, artistic, commercial.

Perhaps those who regard the Northwesterners' compositional skills with awe will find this a fascinating prism of strong creative angles, but as a follow-up to an extraordinarily gorgeous web of noise and delicacy, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Less punkish than its predecessor, the Liars’ second effort, although marred by Wagnerian excess, lyrical inanity and overlong atmospherics, is still a record of non-commercialized large beats and immense technical skill.

Weezer (red album), co-produced by Rick Rubin and Jacknife Lee (who has worked in the studio with Snow Patrol and R.E.M. and was a guitarist in Compulsion), is slight and flimsy (10 songs, 42 minutes), but finally returns the band to its peak entertainment level.

These songs are buoyant and polished, but the lyrics range from bewildering to lame and an afternoon of Schlitz’s voice gets tiresome.

An extremely catchy collection of solidly crafted pop songs in the familiar New Order idiom.

Made in China is a raw, angry album that is difficult to endure at points due to the emotionally naked lyrics, but the lo-fi, almost punky, music is a perfect fit.

A little blood and dirt and humor might have catapulted this album into greatness.

The album glistens with supple melodies, chameleon-like stances towards the history of rock and orderly, accomplished instrumental prowess.

Producer David Bottrill (King Crimson, Tool, Muse) gives Battle for the Sun a lean, sharp sound, stripping away a lot of the synthetic weight that bulked up the group's last few albums.

The Best Little Secrets Are Kept is a blast, from the past and otherwise.

Throughout, the joyfulness and invention, a marvel of pop craft, make Here We Stand hit the spot.

Pleasant but alternately catchy and bland.

The type of banal, greeting-card rubbish that even Diane Warren would probably find trite.

Devil's Playground makes like it's 1983 all over again.

The songs left over from the original, non-Matrix album form the emotional core of Liz Phair and make it worth hearing.