He's proceeding at the pace of a 74-year-old legend with nothing to prove, yet he's not resting on his laurels, he's just doing what he's always done: singing songs so expertly his virtuosity almost goes unnoticed.

People and Things might not be as accessible as Everything in Transit, which contained some of the brightest pop songs of McMahon's career, but it's stronger than The Glass Passenger, indicating that McMahon has begun to move onward and upward.

There's a cohesiveness issue that keeps this one off their top shelf, but Erasure have settled nicely into that groove that the best veteran bands often do.

Wolfroy... is all about lonesome beauty, and the idiosyncratic wordplay that has become Oldham's forte.

Mute Math sound most natural when they let loose as a funk rock/alt-rock hybrid that closely resembles a heavy version of Tahiti 80. As rough as that translates on paper, this form of music totally works for them and pops up in more than a few of their best songs, including "Cavalries," "One More," and "Walking Paranoia."

The only problem with Freaking Out is that it's so short!

It's aural candy for aging goths and tortured tweens alike.

In a way, this is overkill indeed--over 100 minutes of remixes for a 40-minute album. However, it's also fascinating to hear how this current crop of producers--spanning abstract hip-hop, house, dubstep, bass music, and experimental techno, all selected by Thom Yorke--twists, bends, adjusts, and appropriates the source material.

Joined by an impressive who's-who of traditional British folk, its eclectic array of songs, spanning from the 17th century (Scottish ballad "Barbry Allen") right up to the mid-'90s (Bruce Springsteen's The Ghost of Tom Joad outtake, "Brothers Under the Bridge"), ensures that it's no ordinary covers album.

New Blood isn't always as astonishing but that's fine.

Even when just kidding around, Shatner proves himself to be an exacting master of his craft, and more than a few times on Seeking Major Tom the joke is clearly on us.

Deeper into Dream is, ironically, far more captivating when it appears to want to send listeners to sleep.

Cattle Core may well have a future as a metal subgenre, but Hank3 may want to shoot for an EP or a single next time rather than filling up a whole CD as he does on Cattle Callin.

While most film trilogies adhere to the law of diminishing returns, World War III's clever storytelling and unexpected shifts in sound show that Madina Lake have wisely saved the best till last.

Adhering to such a limited arsenal can sometimes feel like the material was cut with a full band, then mixed down to just guitars and vocals, but Underwood and Costelloe manage to fill in the empty spaces with sheer charm.

It makes you wish the two talented guys behind the record would chuck their day jobs and just keep making records this good together instead.

Tarwater's continual evolution into something other than what it was before, however subtle each individual step might be, proceeds as ever on 2011's Inside the Ships, the group's 11th full-length.

These quintessential Rifles offerings may appease those deterred by the album's unexpected wistful nature, but Freedom Run's inherent charm has the potential to elevate the band into the big league, regardless of how many longterm fans stay on board or jump ship.

The Suicide-meets-Can growl that opens "Green and Blue," for instance, may be a familiar element in other revivals, but Cronin puts enough of a hooky spin on the feedback rampage to help make it stand out as the album's first down-the-line success.

An affable shrug of an album, it's fine, but that's not necessarily OK.

Instead of re-creating sounds, they've recaptured the vibe, which is enough to keep The Great Escape Artist absorbing even when it begins to drift.

Revelation Road is the quietest record of Lynne's career, but it feels like her rawest, too, even as it offers, in small bits and pieces, the varying shades, complexities, and pleasures in her musical world.

Like any good album for the information age, Soul Punk is overloaded well past the point of saturation and its merciless in its attack, so it can be a bit overbearing, yet there's a real, vivid imagination behind its crystalline clamor.

While the album can, at times, feel unfocused, that's also the point of a project like Puscifer, which allows us to take a look inside the mind of one of the most creative frontmen of the last 20 years.

A playful, thoughtful, catchy-as-hell pop record.

They've embraced their schoolboy selves and are simply singing songs of love and good cheer, albeit on a grand scale that somehow seems smaller due to the group's insuppressible niceness.

The songwriting is more disciplined, and the arrangements and production are tighter. Together they create a seamless but welcome change in aesthetic direction.

Beyond the Sun plays it cool and plays it authentic--these aren't reinterpretations, but sincere homages--and if this doesn't have much grit, it has plenty of style and heart.