Do You Like Rock Music?
British Sea Power return with their third and finest full-length. Here they reintegrate the rock with a slew of blistering guitars and unpredictable studio noisemaking worthy of their visceral live performances. Witness fist-pumpers like "No Lucifer" or the Bonzo-styled drumbeat ... | 
Vampire Weekend
It would take a lot for Vampire Weekend's debut to rise above the stench of privileged hype that surrounds it. A bunch of kids who formed the band in their Columbia dorm room borrow wholesale from Afrobeat and angular '80s stuff, and they quickly become an online buzz band before... | 
Cease to Begin
Band of Horses now rest in the hands of South Carolina tenant Ben Bridwell following the departure of his right-hand man Mat Brooke, who bolted to form Grand Archives following the 2006 inauguration Everything All the Time, and the impassioned Bridwell validates out of the blocks... | 
In Rainbows
On the deliriously satisfying In Rainbows, Radiohead returns to a more straight-ahead (though subdued) rock sound. Much hubbub has been made about this record's innovative release. Radiohead allowed fans to pay what they wished to download fairly low-resolution tracks from the ba... | 
Hvarf/Heim
In Icelandic, the word "hvarf" means "disappeared," and the first five tracks of Sigur Rós's double CD set nearly did disappear, having remained unreleased until this collection. Fans will love new opportunities to enjoy the band's precious style--precious save for "I Gaer," whi... |
Third
Portishead's Third has been a long time coming, the result of a lengthy creative torpor following 1997's dark, distinctly underrated album Portishead. Importantly, though, they've shaken it. While the core trio of Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow, and Adrian Utley remains, this is quit... | 
Oracular Spectacular
The term Oracular Spectacular might not mean much, if anything, at all--it's essentially nonsensical--but that doesn't stop it feeling exactlyright. Here is a band that treats dizzy cross-eyed awe and a vast bounding sense of sonic weightlessness as their yardstick, jostling to s... | 
The Seldom Seen Kid
There are few things in life quite so liberating as the opening track on an Elbow album--they're like airlocks between the plainness of the outside world and the elaborate melancholic heave-ho that you are likely about to submerge yourself in. Following predecessors "Any Day Now"... | 
Boxer
With Boxer, the National have reached four albums into their increasingly lauded career, never hurrying the tempo, never over-reaching in volume or instrumental density. Instead, the quintet's balanced on a pin, emotionally austere, if not utterly downhearted, finding brilliantly... | 
Narrow Stairs
Narrow Stairs might be the first album recorded by Death Cab for Cutie since Ben Gibbard's former solo project went unexpectedly stratospheric, but Gibbard hasn't let it go to his head. Oh, OK, maybe a little: lead-off single "I Will Possess Your Heart" is an eight minute jam tha... |
