Takk... resembles the movie The Aristocrats: a narrow selection of material given killer performances.

It's like everything that has always been great about the Red House Painters made a notch or two more exciting in the studio.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is worthy of the attention, as it reveals a band of great ability and confidence brimming with ideas.

The album navigates effortlessly from peak to peak.

Brimming with confidence and good humor, Don’t Do Anything is another high point in a career that threatens to become overstuffed with them.

A calm triumph.

The gap between expectations and delivery, the contrast of emotions that go into real life as opposed to pop fantasy, makes this brief but satisfying album a pointed delight.

Mostly acoustic, with flecks of jaunty snares and loping bass work, his singing is the best so far -- confessional, inspired and bracingly touching.

Cathartic and essential.

The group's masterpiece.

Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not manages to celebrate and mock its cultural milieu simultaneously with genuine affection and sarcasm balanced so well that the scale never tips too far either way.

Favourite Worst Nightmare is a surprisingly significant improvement on an excellent debut.

This mainstream update to the unvarnished directness of Sweet Old World starts slow and flirts with blandness but sparks to life about halfway through.

Bloc Party may not have arrived first in the retro-'80’s sweepstakes, but this great album stakes their belated claim to it.

Hawley emerges as a fine manipulator of studio-driven baroque pop.

Not everything clicks on Get Behind Me Satan -- sometimes it’s too timid and freaky -- but enough of it is so unique, even within the Stripes' own canon, that it succeeds regardless of its faults.

While nothing here fails the consistent artistry of his work, neither does any of it make the direct connection to a soul and heart.

You in Reverse is a tremendous record -- engaging, enveloping, engrossing.

Wildly experimental and unique, Melody A.M. belongs in the collections of fans of lush keyboard instrumentation, '70s soul, new age and Boards of Canada-style strangeness alike.

What may be the most confident and cohesive Silver Jews album yet is shot through with urgency and gravitas, but tempered, of course, with liberal doses of dark humor.

Often irresistible yet occasionally irritating.

A Ghost Is Born is a textbook example of an album created to fulfill expectations the band doesn't necessarily share.

Jaunty, rambunctious, and youthful.

This fine album contains several striking songs (notably “The Dark Is Rising” and “Nite and Fog”), but it suffers in comparison to the artistic breakthrough of its immediate predecessor.

AwCmon is the stronger of the two, with a trio of outstanding instrumentals acting as the backbone for a suite of typically moody songs.

Cedars is a keeper.

A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure is many things: inevitable, insane and their finest album.

Has muddied sound in spots but careful, detailed and varied playing.