What she undoubtedly is, is a pro--she sells these subdued glitzy productions, she makes boring songs interesting, she remains a forceful, tangible presence.

Amoral or not, this album serves as a reminder that the superficial can still sound pretty super.

The artifice outweighs the substance throughout Rock n Roll.

In many ways, the Cambridge, MA, trio is like a Toad the Wet Sprocket for the 21st century.

A definitive work of sorts since he's at the top of his game as both a craftsman and conman.

"Annie I Owe You a Dance" has too many strings, and the poignant, "37405," a narrative about a country singer turned convict, could have been leaner. But these are small complaints on a solid and ambitious recording. On Two Lanes of Freedom, McGraw proves he is indeed the artist that Curb never let him be.

Melodic and heartfelt, Austin surprises at nearly every turn, whether that's by an unexpected sonic detour or the simple fact that Post Malone has never sounded this fearless.

As a whole, End of the Day taps into the stillness that's flowed through Tell Me How You Really Feel and Things Take Time, Take Time, a melancholy that's as restorative as it is depressive. That feeling when not married to singing and lyrics winds up offering some measure of comfort. Free of melody, hooks or other organizing themes, this music merely floats, a soothing sound to those who share its wavelength.

It's all done with skill and to great effect, and the album is good for mood-setting background or forefront reflection, or for some combination of the two.

Anjulie is quite impressive as an opening salvo from a talented musical collagist whose minor flurry of hype is well-warranted.

With a somewhat re-jiggered lineup, they pick up the thread of that release with the follow-up, Light a Candle.

A Kiss Before You Go has its fingers in so many pies that it's unlikely to be appreciated entirely by many, but listened to in small portions, it's difficult not to be enamored by its inventiveness and inherent avant-garde charm.

The Remixes is as well balanced as it is eclectic, finding room for tracks that clearly bear the stamp of their remixers.

It makes for a big and a bit cumbersome listen, but K-Os is best when he's true to his moniker, offering the listener an unpredictable and unclassifiable blitzkrieg of ideas that range from clever to brilliant.

As a whole, this album might be less coherent than Native To, where Is Tropical spent their time delivering variations on one sound. Track for track, however, I'm Leaving is the more interesting and promising set of songs.

Semi Detached is sincere in its distrust, distaste, and ire, and by the time "Bloody Hell Fire" underlines it all as a dour closer, the album winds up a worthy companion for bad days or chucking it all.

Like its predecessor, Who Me? is a showcase for Wauters' quirky, likeable personality, and balances introspective lyrics with laid-back instrumentation.

Warren has talked in interviews about the healing nature of music, both on the songwriting end and the listening end; some listeners will likely connect on that level with Numun and, amid its airiness, its substance.

Collected, the songs are simultaneously familiar and surprising -- a blend that always was among the chief attractions in Cornell's work -- and while there are echoes of the original recordings here, he shapes each tune to fit his voice and contemplative bent. The inherent power in Cornell's voice can still be heard, but what lasts is the passion and intelligence, emotions that make this a bracing if bittersweet experience.

demon time unfortunately turns out to be underwhelming.

If it was pared down to its best tracks, Winchester Cathedral would make a solid EP. As it stands, it's far from bad, but it's a little boring, which is worse than bad from a band that has sounded so unique in the past.

Her most fully realized album yet and a highlight in a career dotted with really good pop records.

Piss in the Wind is fairly depressing at times, offering just a few short moments to perk up the 21-track runtime, which shouldn't surprise longtime fans of Joji's wounded, narcotic beauty.

With Beast Moans, Swan Lake has married the talent and off-kilter intelligence of all three of its members with something more abstract, more visceral, something that sets it apart from all of their individual work.

It's a Business Doing Pleasure with You bristles with Kroeger's barely veiled, unwitting hostility, something that the big-hearted McGraw doesn't wear well--not in the least, because it sounds like a boneheaded swipe at his jetsetting wife Faith Hill--and it's something he wisely side-steps on the rest of the record, choosing to mine a sentimental, meditative vein, musing on major changes in his life and wondering what will happen after he's gone.

Everywhere at Once is reminiscent of what's already been done, either by the rapper himself or by another artist, almost derivative of itself, and as a whole, altogether disappointing.

One iffy joke don't stop no show, so take White Women as fun, frivolous, and floor-filling stuff where that slick '80s flair is gloriously bolstered by that modern dancefloor punch.

It's his easy charm that turns Easy Does It into an effective piece of country-pop product.

It's hard not to wish Fool's Gold had figured out how to develop and expand their approach without compromising so much of what made their debut so delightfully unique.

World of Joy's second half isn't quite as cohesive as its first.

Callus is the most challenging, confrontational Gonjasufi record yet, and it's also his most daring work.

Offering a combination of Christmas classics and songs like the winter-themed "Sweater Weather," originally by pop group the Neighbourhood, and "When You Believe" from The Prince of Egypt, high-profile guests include Maren Morris and Kelly Clarkson.

By foregrounding her lyrical intent and offering no room for interpretation, Morris winds up with songs that feel less imaginative than their execution, a flaw that is by no means fatal but does mean that Girl plays on a smaller scale than intended.

Love & Evol is an uneven whole. Some of it sounds more tinkered with, more assembled than played. While there is plenty of imagination woven into these tracks, one wishes for more organic cohesion between the set's independent halves.

The Bravery isn't sonically mind-blowing, but the new millennium new wave revival remains intriguing.

What's striking about Dig Out Your Soul is how its relentless onslaught of sound proves as enduring as the tunes.

And so even though As I Am is a flawed work--a little too poppy, a little too clichéd--it is also indicative of what Keys can and will do, and that she is someone, thanks to her curiosity, intelligence, and natural talent, who will be able to mature and grow for years to come

There may not be anything particularly revelatory about June 2009, but it's a nice batch of tunes and anyone who's new to Bundick's work will appreciate this glimpse into the early days.

While she's always been a pleasant presence on album, Krall has developed from a talented pianist who can sing nicely into an engaging, classy, and sultry vocalist with tastefully deft improvisational chops.

Rarely does an independent album sound so assured, so polished, and so agreeable.

With Stones, Gustafsson and Stetson have encountered not only one another in a magical way, but they communicate the power of beauty itself.

Nice to listen to and vaguely uplifting, but ultimately empty on the inside.

A few judicious cuts here and there and it would have been a very strong extended play instead of an uneven album that doesn't quite reach the level the duo attained on Hair. It's still worth checking out for fans either artist though, especially if their eccentric natures are their main attraction.

The Vaccines have crafted a perfectly acceptable sophomore record that neither helps nor harms them, which is probably exactly what they wanted.

Too bad it all falls apart so drastically when you factor in Cosentino's disastrous lyrics.

Too many of the songs settle into lackluster grooves, and pairing those grooves with Vermue's style-over-substance vocal affectations makes the album less than memorable.

Build with Erosion casts a wide net, but its 11 songs still cast a consistent mood, falling somewhere between pleasantly hypnotic and purposely peculiar.

Even if these songs never grace the charts, they sound like inevitable hits and prove that Lambert is a genuine pop star who has now left American Idol far behind.

Rice's sepia-tone tales of worry, wisdom, woe, and wild-at-heart love feel authentic and lived in, and while they may lack the spark needed to light a fire that's big enough to bring him out from behind Lewis' shadow, they still manage to provide enough light to warm the bones of even the weariest traveler.

This feature-filled, somewhat messy effort is a welcome surprise, focusing in on its topic and then freeing it with the greatest of ease and making the previously maverick Game sound like a natural born ringleader.

A swirling, beautiful, and warmly complex road trip of an album.

Betke wisely abandons a sound that had been developed to its full extent, yet the outcome is a set of hip-hop/dub hybrids that stumble out of the speakers with a fatigued skank.

The tracks with singing find Broken Spindles moving in one direction, and the purely instrumental pieces find them moving in another, and sometimes the contrast between the two styles just ends up as a clash of sounds.

The album lacks the visceral, immediate impact of the best beat poetry and frequently seems fueled by self-consciousness instead of stream-of-consciousness.

Although some of the tracks seem like replicas of their previous album and Dykes' voice sometimes falls flat, The Cover Up makes up for that with the attitude that non-stop dance music can save the day.

The record is rather safe, lacking an adventurousness that is only touched upon and possibly kept under wraps for the sake of not seeming like too much of a departure.

Their most accessible album to date, lacking the flights of fancy and exuberant bizarreness that have marked each of their albums.

A worthy and wonderfully engaging testament to Robinson's creative evolution.

Overall, MACHINA meanders due to a combination of amorphous songs and precisely detailed production.

The lyrics are odd throughout the album but when they're dressed up with swooning harmonies, they always seem to make enough sense.

Appropriation is the name of the game, so there are few musical surprises in the 39-year-old's veteran beats.

A meandering drag.

The opposite of a sophomore slump, Wash the Sins Not Only the Face is sleek and spectral, and finds Esben and the Witch casting their spell even more successfully.

There's an ease to this record that's not often heard on Sheryl Crow's albums and its light touch is thoroughly appealing.

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros have crafted a love letter to Laurel Canyon and all of its quasi-mystic juju that is as infuriatingly contrived and retro as it is forward-thinking and majestic.

In-fashion vocal effects, which Summer certainly does not need, detract from a handful of these tracks, but as a whole, the album won't have trouble pleasing fans who just want to hear their queen have a blast and tear it up.

Rain Machine gives Malone an appealingly mellow yet resolutely independent identity for his solo music; even if it may not be for fans of his other projects' more accessible material, it's nice to hear a full album of what he can do on his own.

Ultimately, Grouplove's Never Trust a Happy Song is a cohesive if ramshackle crowd-pleaser, full of melodic double-lead vocals, handclaps, ringing electric guitars, and staccato synth parts that tips a hat to '80s dance-rock while still retaining the band's obvious love of experimental '60s folk-rock.

Babylon introduces a likable pop sheen to the mix that both elevates and homogenizes the end product.

Despite its brevity, the songs strike with such languid, metered force they manage to slow time down, stretching an EP's worth of darkly ambient dream pop into a deceptively epic micro-journey.

At times, Between the Walls is a frustrating album, but more often than not, the risks About Group take pay off in expressive, rewarding music.

While Cynic's songwriting here is far from simple, their ability to create cohesion between the many elements at work in their music is a boon to the listener, providing the opportunity to enjoy the depth and complexity of the music without needing to spend an excessive amount of time trying to make heads or tails of it.

Overall, this is a generally charming debut with a very stylized sound and some solid material within.

For the most part, Silicon works, delivering strange sonic pop candy that feels a bit too distant to warm the heart, yet is strangely comforting in its isolation.

A record slicker and straighter than its predecessors. Call it maturation as much as a shift in aesthetics.

The slower stuff often turns sticky--but the group wears their heart on the sleeve and, somehow, that tendency is more endearing as the Maddens turn into middle age warriors.

Fans wishing for a full-on return to the glory of early days may not find their reward, but 15 years into their career, the Bronx have matured into their craftsmanship and can both rock and write harder than most of their younger peers.

One does have to wonder if the songs would have had more impact if they were a bit less produced and mixed. Ultimately, the fault lies with everyone involved and their combined efforts lead to an album that is nice to have playing while idly doing household chores, but is unlikely inspire too many repeat listens.

The rest of the EP, outside of the brooding "Burying Davy," leans closer to that countrified feel, and while it may come off a little contrived at times, these outtakes will no doubt help to satiate fans until the group reconvenes for album number seven.

Icky Blossoms succeed in showing many different sides of dance-infused indie rock with their debut, but there's an unsettled feeling that suggests the trio members weren't entirely sure where they wanted to go with the record.

One of the many impressive aspects of the Capitol Studio Sessions is just how balanced Goldblum's skills are as he deftly moves his audience from perky vocal standards to swinging instrumental numbers--each transition aided, of course, with some very charming stage banter.

At times, it seems like Born Ruffians elude pure pop magic--sometimes by choice, sometimes by chance--but they way they bounce off of each other and lock together again is never less than impressive, and one of the greatest joys Say It offers.

Its versatility is quite dazzling, making it one of the best records in the Romweber catalog.

Here Comes Science is another fun, educational triumph.

This is an album of highly compositional, slow-burn epics that build with Kubrick-ian intensity and attention to detail.

Fans of Badly Drawn Boy's Have You Fed the Fish? and Doves' Some Cities should understand Adventures in the Underground Journey to the Stars.

The performances are strident and lean, suggesting the players are every bit as invested in delivering the best reading of Ludwig-Leone's complex and often gorgeous songs as he was inspired in creating them.

It's a casual, tossed-off affair, although one filled with mutual admiration, riveting one-upmanship, and a glorious journey across the hip-hop production spectrum, from Mannie Fresh to Metro Boomin.

There's a great amount of flash and polish, all wrapped up in a tight package.

The band's organ and raspy vocals give Red Bedroom a jolt of early punk, which, combined with an adept sense of rock ‘n' roll, has signs that the Fever has been spending equal time listening to proto-punk and garage rock bands of the ‘60s.

There's the bad feeling that all this Xanax chewing and gun throwing might be bad for the health and/or soul, but Triple F Life moves fast and rocks hard, making it hard to dwell on its shortcomings.

Melodic, wistful, whimsical, reflective, yet clever, the album showcases Hatfield at her peak, crafting fragile, endearing post-jangle pop songs that reveal themselves shyly and sweetly.

The Blackbird Diaries isn't for everyone: it's mainstream but not sterile; it celebrates roots music without overly indulging it or neglecting pop; in short, it's catchy as hell and better than any Stewart solo project to date.

When it works, it runs like a stallion, but for fans whose allegiances lie with Carter and Carroll's previous incarnations, the engaging but jarring Anthems will probably prove awfully hard to digest.

Not Animal gets better as it progresses--the sparser, melancholic songs are pushed to the front, leaving the band's energetic material to bring up the rear--and Margot's sophomore album subsequently concludes on a high note, effectively masking any sour taste left by the band's battle with Epic Records.

It's unsurprising that this album is filled to the brim of arena-sized singalong choruses--which will undoubtedly be sung to the rafters by delirious teenage fans--but unfortunately, they sound all too familiar.

Fans of either rapper will enjoy hearing them together for an entire album. The effect doesn't wear out and Plata o Plomo ends up being a worthwhile addition to both discographies.

For Ever's complex blend of bare emotions and gorgeous production makes it a huge step forward for Jungle. A band this successful could have left their private lives uninvestigated and turned in something more guarded and rote, but the palpable honesty of these songs is what makes them soar.