In all, Sky Swimming is a lovely, impressionistic debut that suggests Elephant are on the cusp of delivering even more.

Artificial Sweeteners may not be their most instantly impressive album, 2008's Lightbulbs still has that honor, but it does sound great on first listen and continues to sink in deeper with each subsequent spin.

[The Birds of Satan] deliver a batch of songs combining the muscular intellectualism of Queens of the Stone Age with the melodic passion of Foo Fighters.

Devil sees them continuing to move forward again, and although Hale's presence will certainly be missed, fans of the band will find that the return of Frost and Owens more than makes up for the loss.

Red Beans and Weiss is a greasy, gritty report from one of L.A.'s last original rock & roll street denizens. It has a grimy charm all its own.

The preponderance of funky synthetic (and real) horns, fat grooves, and African and Eastern polyrhythms make Someday World an excellent exercise in beat-conscious, electronic art pop.

Sure, there's artifice and humor here, but there's also heart, and this blend of emotions is what makes A Letter Home one of Neil Young's quintessential, endearingly odd records.

Natalie Merchant is not a progression so much as a deepening and, as such, it offers a quiet comfort for anyone who has ever loved her music.

While some of these cuts are forgettable, his inventive engagement with Latin pop here is not only successful, but satisfying.

Throughout it all, the album's sounds are so transporting that they carry the less accessible moments and make Breathing Statues an entrancing second effort.

While Creative Adult's short-fuse energy made their brooding earlier EP releases exciting, they've managed the difficult task of keeping that fire alive throughout what ends up being a lengthy and considered album, burning with a dark fire for the full duration of the 12 songs presented here.

Lane's songs and delivery are strong throughout All or Nothin'; they're more polished and crafted than those on Walk of Shame.

The moments of pop are catchy and engaging, but far more compelling are the songs that dig deeper into tense dynamics and protracted storytelling.

Life Among the Savages isn't the easiest Papercuts album to love, but over repeated listens the mood the restrained sound creates and the subtle emotion the songs convey are more than enough to win over anyone who decides to stick with it.

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.

Along with the pseudo-bossa nova rhythms of "Naturally" and rolling melodic synth pop of "Heartless," the album takes gradual steps forward and shakes out to be one of Savage's more consistent collections.

The folk singer/songwriter side of Mulvey is the one that is shown for most of the record, while his extensive influences flit in and out of each song, leaving their mark in the percussion, melody, and arrangement, but never taking center stage in his impressive repertoire.

Timbaland and Reid evoke the Michael Jackson we all love and miss, finding songs that are worthy and giving them arrangements that are simultaneously nostalgic and modern. It's a difficult trick to pull off but they largely succeed, so XSCAPE is a worthy and memorable coda to Jackson's career.

Aldred is in top form here, and with Elliot's help he's unearthed a music box filled with undeniable loveliness, but the songs are as fleeting as they are lustrous; museum pieces without placards.

This album easily captures Guided by Voices doing what they've always done and always will do--ride their seemingly endless font of catchy tunes and crunchy riffs into infinity, and though this is no career-defining masterpiece, as a make-busy project for five guys stuck in a snowstorm, it's pretty great.

Perhaps there are no permanent additions to her canon here, but the remarkable thing is how satisfying an album this is: it sounds good and the songs are sturdy, proof that Parton is far from resting on her laurels.

It's both club- and cafe-ready, artsy, cool, and elusive enough to woo the Williamsburg contingency, yet soulful and lightly sweetened with warm Southern honey.

Shade Themes from Kairos is striking in that it not only hosts a variety of tones and colors based on dynamics, textures, and yes, the illusory stretching of time, but it reflects a true collaboration by principals who are actually investigating what the possibilities of the latter might sound like were it actually possible.

It crash-lands, abruptly ending an album that, depending on the amount of time spent with it, will seem either fragmentary and hollow or fathoms deep--either a trifle or among the group's most remarkable work.

Without reinventing the wheel too much, Newcombe delivers another slice of his breed of highly evolved rock & roll genius with this album, further polishing his ever dangerous songwriting skills and offering a vivid spectrum of production, stylistic distractions, and psychedelic black holes for the listener to get swallowed up by.

The result is a relaxed, conversational album with stronger songs than some of the band's earlier efforts, looking over concepts of aging gracefully without succumbing to the clichés that often come along with such trains of thought.

Carey unfortunately doesn't feel nostalgic for the succinctness of her early albums, but this shows that she's still capable of delivering 40 minutes of strong, supremely voiced R&B when she's up for it.

Volume X isn't quite as consistent as Trans Am's finest work, but it's still a lot of fun and will have fans anticipating what's to come between this album and Volume XX.