Murphy muddles through the workmanlike art-rock of openers "Velocity Bird" and "See Saw Sway" before hitting confident stride on "I Spit Roses" And "Never Fall out." [Aug 2011, p.94]

For this fifth album, she changes tack again, gaining in clarity what she loses in originality. [Aug 2011, p.94]

Ritual Union makes it three alums without a remotely duff--or dull--moment. [Aug 2011, p.93]

Production-wise, his hallmark arrhythmic snares are now sounding a little rote nearly a decade after their inception. [Aug 2011, p.104]

Guitarist Dave W and company gather up Krautrock, Loop, Acid Mothers Temple, Cul De Sac and a host of other materials with radioactive long life to create a fusion intended as toxic blowback in the faces of right-wing America. It's a face-melting combination. [Aug 2011, p.104]

Africa's new axe hero marches on. [Aug 2011, p.104]

Jeremy Earl's endearing falsetto and excellent songwriting holds it all together. Aug 2011, p.107]

Virtually every song repeats the same trick, as the fervent but tuneless bark of singer Ellery Robert begins to grate. {Aug 2011, p.107]

Youngs' atonal yelpings and the bizarre tangents his big guitar shapes take won't be to the tastes of those who like their music a tad less askew--but acclimatise yourself to Young's off-kilter take and there are some rewards here. [Aug 2011, p.107]

His tools may be blunt, and too many tracks sound like unfinished sketches, but Zomby manages to summon a uniquely unsettling atmosphere. [Aug 2011, p.107]

R.E.M. were already walking head and shoulders taller than most by now, but Life's Rich Pageant was nevertheless a startlingly great leap forward. [Aug 2011, p.102]

Hawk's followup hints at a talent that will outlive hipster buzz, drawing not just from hazy '80s nostalgia, but from the artists who populated his own youth. [Aug 2011, p.93]

Fun, if inessential. [Aug 2011, p.93]

Arcade Fire producer Craig Silvey and a slick session band sculpt an impressively spacey sound, but LaVere's self-conscious, bored voice strangles everything at birth. [Aug 2011, p.93]

Much of it is a coffee-table approximation of the producer duo's more irreverent work. [Aug 2011, p.89]

Within And Without charts a familiar shimmery beachscape between Julee Cruise and Lynchpop, early OMD and Slowdive. A couple tracks emerge from the haze. [Aug 2011, p.89]

Pressure & Time is short enough to fit on two sides of vinyl and, quaintly, leaves you wanting much more. [Aug 2011, p.89]

Pretty electro-pop with jagged edges, and a lingering mood of sumptuous disorientation. [Aug 2011, p.87]

That old adage about the quiet ones hold true for Elanor, whose debut capitalizes on I'm Going Away's fleeting ease. [Aug 2011, p.87]

It's far from original, but nonetheless highly effective, and the sweaty, lad-friendly nature of the title betrays its inherent good humour. [Aug 2011, p.82]

[Guy Berryman's] radio-friendly approach adds depth without sacrificing detail. [Jun 2011, p.93]

Mick Barr's guitar work is hugely impressive, apparently concerned with documenting an infinite number of riffs, but the length of the compositions--often around 12 minutes--rather test the limits of endurance. [Aug 2011, p.90]

The tracka are overlong and the ubiquitous fuzz pedal makes "Sedatives" and "King Of Kings" sound like a narcoleptic Screwdriver, but it's hard to knock Jesu's dedication to the sad, slow and contemplative. [Aug 2011, p.90]

Here, the 35-year -old is once again joined by co-producer/multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily, who provides settings that ate mostly empty, the better to allow Holland's mystical persona to fully inhabit them, as she sings in an elongated East Texas Drawl that curls like smoke rings. [Aug 2011, p.90]

For all their poppy ambition, the highlights are probably "Chemtrails," a wicked fuzz of gospel narco-bliss, and "Sunday Morning," a smacked-up take on "Penny Lane." [Aug 2011, p.89]

"Ishadlak Ya Khey," featuring Doueh's son Hamdan Bamaar on full drum kit, and pops busting out some flange-soaked solos, is a pleasingly noisy, impolite fusion. [Aug 2011, p.87]

The characters we meet in many of the album's other fine songs are just as vividly rendered. [Aug 2011, p.86]

Finn seems more at home with the melancholy Paul Simon-isms of "Little Words" than with "The Struggle," a strained attempt to get weird and wired. [Aug 2011, p.84]