Turn the Light Out scales everything back—the drums, the guitars, the vocals—leaving us with a clean-cut, grown-up Ponys, trying to get comfortable in their own skin when they were just fine in someone else’s.

A richly executed and textural record—one of the best guitar-based albums of 2007 thus far.

There is an immediacy and zest to the Rakes’ latest effort that is commendable, but it’s not that memorable.

The Fratellis are beyond infectious.

The musicianship on this album retains a professional, waxed sheen, and that’s part of the problem: Hammond sticks to the basics, employing pedestrian rock setups whether he’s punking along with gusto or putzing around on the beach.

If Louden Up Now was the sound of !!! trying to integrate their fusion of conflicting ideas and failing admirably, Myth Takes is the band not giving a damn and succeeding improbably at something even more interesting.

This is the band’s most listless, amelodic effort to date.

While they’ve enlarged their presence on record, they’ve also peopled their songs with themes and accusations more resonant than Funeral’s mournfulness.

National Anthem, is monochrome and even somewhat sterile, characteristics often overcome by Whiteman’s increasingly excellent craftsmanship.

The Weirdness comes off as another solid yet daffy Iggy Pop solo album. The performances are energetic, but Watt is a virtual non-factor.

RJD2 has made an record that simply doesn’t play to his strengths.

The explorations of Security aren’t exactly shattering, but they’re refreshing.

A showcase of a band who have learned lessons and improved upon them, quietly getting better and better until something really special emerges.

There is a contingent of hip-hop fans who have been impatiently waiting at least since Madvillainy for a record rooted in tradition that offers something just a bit more skewed and challenging. Abandoned Language is that album.

For an album about all the bad things that can happen to us, it sounds pretty damn good.

Their music though—and probably the reason they’re used to such great effect in “Friday Night Lights”—actually feels more compelling as an accompaniment to visual drama, in part because the internal drama of the songs themselves are really specific and their presentation is a little tired.

[Levi] has an impeccable ear for a hook and packs his album full of them.

The Cost is bleached of any sort of lifeblood, stumbling out of the gate and moping towards the finish line.

Like Trans Am’s late-90s material, this album is enjoyable without being astonishing.

So sure, yet another band of bombast, largesse, room-sound gone cathedral, but either way the Besnard Lakes have mastered their songcraft with this psychedelic oddity, which fits all too well with other wintry early-year indie releases.

Perhaps due to their prominence, Can Cladders works best when the strings are actually ditched.

Few albums made in recent memory sound this harrowing or this painful, yet even fewer have such a true sense of catharsis.

Most of it... feels as weighty and emotive as Sleater Kinney, or as seductive as Mary Timony in the mid-90s: fully-formed, feminine indie rock.

This is an album not entirely worthy of the patience it requires to be appreciated track by track.

A shame an NPR market supercilious of the mercenary likes of Sheryl Crow has forced her to record songs that Crow herself would consider models of autumnal acuity.

While not entirely mainstream, Tones of Town is also not all that interesting.

Those disappointed with Velocity’s, raw, live sound, will see this album as a return to form. Those that dug its easily digestible garage rock will, in turn, view New Magnetic Wonder as a step forward.

The second half of the album falls into a malaise as tempos slow and arrangements become more orthodox, placing Bloc Party closer to Coldplay than one would have thought possible two years ago.