Leo's singing (showing a few traces of a soul side) has never been more confident or convincing.

Every song is compelling.

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

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.

Still quietly bombastic and still occasionally in search of an author, the spacey, haunted music bounces from the ethereal to the grounded dirt that our shoes kick away on imagined dance floors.

Cedars is a keeper.

Whereas Music Has the Right to Children's pastoral atmospherics were airy and open, Geogaddi is faintly claustrophobic and tense.

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

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.

More of an expansion than a breakthrough.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Clicks in all the places his failures did not.

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

Positive energy and enthusiasm go a long way here.

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

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

A dandy little 36-minute album of simple pop tunes with all the right moves and no real motion.

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

Where Shall You Take Me? brings Jurado back to familiar, minimalist territory.

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

The expansive palette of the debut has been shorn of its tumult and restlessness.