...influences which range from CSN&Y folk harmonies and Carole King's rootsy portraiture to Prince's sex-drenched pop... as well as the obvious Allman Brothers southern jams for which they are most easily recognized. [Added Nov 6]

...electric blues duo extraordinaire have found success playing in a pretty small sandbox... This time around they invite producer Danger Mouse in to play, and as one might expect [he] brings his own toys. [Added Apr 10]

indie space prog and droning, circular atmospherics... flecked occasionally with... noise-chants and hints of hysteria... [Added Apr 10]

Beautifully haunted and heartbreaking... [Added Mar 27]

...over time it has proved to be infinitely listenable and rewarding throughout. [Added Mar 18]

Radiohead proves itself to be a real band made of real men capable of making real songs with regular instruments, and to be able to do it quite well. [Added Mar 17]

White and weightless as sheets hung out to dry on a summer's day, the album comes well stocked... [Added Mar 16]

Buddy Holly would be proud. [Added Mar 15]

The album is able to reconcile, even at times relish the way life can simultaneously offer beauty and a beating while in the end leaving you wanting another shot. [Added Mar 13]

...truly fine electronic pop mined from the rich and often tapped Daft Punk vein. [Added Nov 7]

...their most varied and accessible album yet... rather than returning to their Brooklyn punk roots they're digging them up and transplanting them... [Added Sep 5]

Battles are the high school jocks who quietly aced Calculus. [Added Sep 4]

Not with a bang but a whimper goes this stadium sized incarnation of smart and sexy New York emo-gloom. [Added Aug 26]

Maybe their most Dad Rock album yet, Wilco sounds relaxed, focused and in sync... [Added May 31]

...improved maturity, balance, precision, greater scale - oh, and fun! [Added May 7]

...sepia toned portraits of the way friends used to - and thankfully still do - make music. [Added Mar 27]

...unexciting, overly verbose and lost in its own philosophy... [Added Mar 25]

A must have rocker with brains, brawn, heart and soul to spare. [Added Mar 22]

It's like Simon & Garfunkle ate The Sugarcubes... [Added Mar 14]

Dance. Rock. Sex. Repeat. [Added Mar 14]

While the rest of Montreal worked on its David Bowie impression Arcade Fire has been listening to a lot of Bruce Springsteen and NPR... [Added Feb 28]

Wincing seems like a consciously reached half-way point between the roomy guitar and vocal atmosphere of their Oh, Inverted World debut and the hyper literate song craft of Chutes Too Narrow. [Added Jan 22]

...well worth repeated listening for its intensity, novel construction and wholly original sound. [Added Jan 17]

If Moby hadn't already cashed in Play and lost himself in the world of designer tea bags he'd probably be knocking on Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo's door looking for royalties. Nothing new here and certainly nothing interesting enough to launch... [Added Nov 3]

Think Liars interpreting Oliver Twist at the Moulin Rouge. [Added Oct 30]

Daniel Smith sings the kind of songs and has the kind of voice that makes passive and interested listeners alike shrug and write it off to drugs and/or mental illness. His is the serious, wide eyed, jubilant mayhem that would... [Added Oct 30]

The Information falls just short of earning an alternate title Deja Vu, retreading the already retread turf of last year's Guero but without the latter's touch of Mission District flava. Which is not to say it falls short as an... [Added Oct 30]

Boys and Girls in America isn't the crank it up, windows down rocker it wants you to think it is. It's more complicated, less comfortable - and better - than that. Which makes The Hold Steady's newest outing a great... [Added Oct 24]

On Curses the band falls under [Dave] Grohl's production spell, tightening rhythms and racing them to the brink, doubling guitars and harmonizing shredded vocals... [Added Sep 25]

Liars have been holed up in Deutschland digging deeper in search of musical bedrock, the kind of primal experience linked directly to the seeds of human creativity... simultaneously stripping itself down to its conceptual bare bones while building a mythology of origin complete with astral seas of crystal, a place called Mt. Heart Attack and a hero appropriately named Drum... [Added Apr 27]

...This trio races through a pretty tight set of twenties-something drunken regret party rockers with precision and passion. Why they aren't more popular with artsy high school rockers or indierock frat boys I don't know... [Added Apr 12]

The Believer is Miller's disappointing second solo effort following up The Instigator, a glib and wholey unecessary little album still littering a dollar bin near you. As frontman for the consistently good Old 97's Miller is the pretty face of... [Added Apr 5]

...In that case, Arctic Monkeys suck and they'll be probably be around forever. [Added Feb 1]

“Carousel Waltz” is oddly sweet and sweetly odd. It lives in a space between the revelatory and the insular, lyrically balancing worldly if gentle proclamations and private musings in the artist’s unique short hand... [Added Jan 1]

...Generally speaking the album balances the paradoxical ambitions at work in the greater project. On one hand [Stevens] expands his sound to celebrate the ubiquity of an entire state... On the other hand he is presenting what seems like a collection of significant and specific personal experiences informed by and located in a place... [Added Dec 1]

“Twin Cinema” continues their upward trajectory through the heady world of intelligent, high-energy pop while raising the creative stakes and calling on a few ghosts of rock-n-roll's past... [Added Nov 1]

...they make up for fewer dynamic shifts and a more narrow dramatic range with consistently controlled cacophony and lyrical hints of wide-eyed weirdness. Definitely recommended for fans of the Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse, Neutral Milk Hotel, etc. Like these artists Wolf Parade came to shake and move listeners both literally and figuratively, just don't expect to be completely swept away. [Added Oct 18]

You could appropriately add an "overly" to anything used to describe their breakout 2003 album "You Forgot it in People" and be pretty spot-on here... [Added Oct 18]

“If we were feckless we’d be fine…” or so they say on “What You Meant.” Franz Ferdinand might like you to believe that this is all simply meant to be a bigger brand of fun, but the guys are hardly without feck... [Added Oct 18]

As the name implies, Bear vs. Shark is muscular and aggressive. However, while metal and punk can sometimes be all about faster, louder, harder, meaner Bear vs. Shark do not loose their sense of musicality, dynamism and harmony in pursuit of eviscerating their listeners - entirely... [Added Oct 11]

For those looking to get into The Books, this is less like Cliff's Notes and more like the critically acclaimed film adaptation by a kinder, gentler Prefuse 73. [Added Oct 11]

...one man's freak is another man's (insert adjective here). Banhart is decidedly a freak of the smelly self-taught hippie throwback variety, and if this is the man who would be king then let "Cripple Crow" stand as his Declaration of New Bohemianess. [Added Oct 5]

Songs evoke a bitter-sweet nostalgia for the deep south - humid nights, Jesus, scuffed cowboy boots and love lost for liquor... [Added Oct 5]

Hail Social plays a more rockist version of the danceable guitar pop that's been buttering MTV 2's bread for the last few years. They've got the four-on-the-floor beats and prominently snakey bassline melodies to get toes tapping, plus loud chattery guitars to add texture and keep harmony. [Added Oct 5]

This isn't a rock revival, it's simply and seriously Rock done right... [Added May 27]

... this is the post Whiskeytown Ryan Adams everyone expected to hear then promptly forgot about after falling for the aching beauty of “Heartbreaker.” [Added May 27]

...Listening to The Books is like hearing someone think. [Added May 9]

I heard this and immediately recommended it to a friend as "Dave Matthews for people who hate Dave Matthews." This friend then confessed that he doesn't hate Dave Matthews as much as he knows he should... [Added May 5]

With improved vocals this album shoots up to a solid 8 in my book. It's got all the hallmarks of today's digitally tinged indie rock done right; emotive guitars, lots of energy from the drum kit, inventive breaks and musical swells with smart sounding lyrics... just no one to deliver them in a convincing manner. [Added May 3]

"Guero" plays almost like a Beck on Beck with hints at several directions, each interesting but hardly sustained. Optimistically it's Beck taking stock creatively and seeing that, in the memorable words of God, "It is Good..." [Added May 3]

No matter which super-indie you sit it next to or what kind of haircut you give it this is still not cool... [Added May 2]

It's like a scary movie with a high concept to production values ratio. And like said scary movie it can suck you in and make you watch inspite of yourself. Not your starter noise album, or even a representative Liars disc, but it is sure to be a colorful asterisk in the career of the rising NYC band... [Added Apr 13]

This is pretty descent odd-ball pop with an emphasis on Johns' vocal performance... [Added Apr 13]

Background hiss of DIY production has been replaced by the low warm buzz of electric guitars and an expertly chaffed fiddle. Beam appears to be setting his own course with clear-eyed determination, as if he's seen the bigger picture and it's just starting to get good... [Added Mar 18]

[Conor Oberst] has managed to write a few instantly familiar, charming and hum-able tunes, the kind you think you already know a few bars in even though you’ve never heard it before... [Added Mar 1]

... [the] albums to which "Digital Ash" owes a heap of artistic debt, also serve to point out how conventionally analog – and maybe just plain conventional – the album really is. Emphatic title and drum machines aside this is a pretty straightforward pop album playing under the influence of electronica... [Added Mar 1]

[O.C.M.S.] are the kids who skip church to smoke cigarettes in the garage, consort with prostitutes and blues musicians on Friday nights, and tell dirty jokes at supper with their mouths full. Not to mention the drugs and fornication... [Added Feb 17]

...dance music for people who think dancing is a chore - necessary but joyless labor under swirling colored lights... [Added Feb 7]

This sounds like Elton John telling Perry Ferrell and Dave Navaro a story about how he once sang a duet with Laura Brannigan during a concert in San Diego. It was a David Bowie song during the second encore. Navaro... [Added Jan 29]

...Madvillain manage to be inventive and unique without jaring the senses like so much avante-art can do... [Added Jan 29]

... what Diz does best is back on display -- showcasing the rapper's ability to cut to the heart of a matter with blunt, honest and memorable lines free from convention or cliche... [Added Jan 29]

All in all this is a gorgeous piece of hushed singer-songwriting with dramatic nods to opera... [Added Jan 29]

Sun is a 2nd edition of Stevens' Asthmatic Kitty debut and may serve best to document where he started rather than as a tethering point for his current, more evolved and focused sound... [Added Jan 28]

...atmospheric, bright, and familiar without seeming derivitive. This is a ringing testement to the possibilities of home production... [Added Jan 28]

...Hints of Carolina twang sweeten her sound while a little Texas road gravel gives it an appealing worn-in feel. Songs blend traditional country motifs with a strong, consciously female perspective... [Added Jan 28]

...Of Montreal -- carries the [Elephant 6] standard, complete with all the hallmarks - densely instrumented production, sunny upbeat rhythms backing supposed real-life tales of the absurd, familiar stilts for influences, and of course the sound of mild halucinogens percolating in the background... [Added Jan 28]

Jack White of White Stripes glory lends his feedback friendly ear to an album of almost-instant-classics by Butcher Hollow's pride and joy... [Added Jan 28]

[Funeral] feels important and unexpected. It is beautiful and artistic without feeling over dressed. It is earnest, urgent and full but not sappy, hurried or indulgent. It is revealing but not embarrassing; cathartic but not weepy... [Added Jan 1]

...“Antics” is a slow burn, less immediate but more confident and fulfilling. The sense of urgency (!) has been replaced by a greater sense of thesis (:) - as if to say ‘now that we have your attention please have a seat, there is something you should hear...’ [Added Dec 1]

...even for the most disenfranchised and radically left or right winged among us, a full-fledged Revolution is a pretty big pill to swallow... There are so few good anthems out there so it’s not surprising he should try his hand here, but Earle is at his best when he’s telling a story, confessing a sin or simply sticking it to someone... [Added Nov 1]

...After almost 15 years with the core members of Wilco playing in my car or bedroom or front porch it’s hard for me to imagine a new album not figuring into my life somehow... [Added Oct 1]

...spare, technical roominess to their sound that conjures near-future sci-fi imagery without relying on bleeps and whirbles to do so. It's like a movie about paramilitary space-hero fugitives toppling corrupt empires while wooing jaded hearts on some distant galactic outpost... [Added Sep 1]

...The appeal of this record is its bone fide rock’n’roll swagger... songs blend earnest, straight-faced song writing, four-on-the-floor dance pop, and dueling guitar hooks... and rock with pogo-inducing rhythms and sing-along chorus’ that keep one finger glued to the replay button for another instant spin... [Added Aug 1]

Like a celebrity car crash, you can hear the band’s collective mind ping and groan as it bends to understand our shortcomings in the face of God, death, and strip malls. While it may occasionally push the band’s sound to foreign, screechy places, such a perilous vantage point can provide valuable perspective, honed crystal clear by a fear of falling into oblivion... [Added Jul 1]

What makes this album notable is its blend of brutal, youthful honesty and the mature clarity with which he comments on the hardships around him... he is a keen witness to life’s events however mundane, nuanced or outrageous they seem [and] presents himself as a plainspoken (if outspoken) man of the people trying to walk the straight line without getting caught up in preachy politics or overly defiant hip-hop attitude.. [Added Jun 1]

In the end this record overcomes it’s own smarty-pants literacy to sound fresh, thoroughly formed and memorable... [Added May 1]

The whole choir is on drugs. [Added Apr 1]