Listening to the beautiful, restful and balanced sounds of Green Lanes, one hopes that they do indeed continue to work together for years and years.

Story of My Life is polished, but it's far from slick; it's honest, wears its heart on its sleeve and is full of imagination, grace, and spit.

As elegant as they are, the melodies don't easily lodge in the subconscious, but the bigger problem is that the production -- by Lynne, who plays virtually every note on the record -- is airless and precise. This dryness is a remnant of the digital age, where every element in a recording is exactly in the right place, and if it's not quite a drawback, it does mean From out of Nowhere can be a bit of an uncanny valley: it's close enough to a genuine item to satisfy, yet different enough to disarm.

Enigk sounds like a mixture of Peter Gabriel, U2, Sarah McLachlan, and a little bit of Elf Power, and tries too hard to be profound and meaningful.

A little more passion in the vocals and songs that are actually about something would have made The Happiness Waltz a triumphant return, instead it feels like backtracking.

Like label mates Aphex and Autechre, this all amounts to something of a tough listen, though it is tracks like "Sixnot6" and "Distracted2" which really reward the listener willing to wade through the bleak atmospherics.

More than once everything connects perfectly.

Anna is nothing revolutionary, of course, and that dog. fans have certainly heard this before. But that same audience will most likely want to hear it again, as will anyone who believes female rockers don't need to choose between being a folky riot grrrl (Ani DiFranco, Dar Williams) or a mainstream maven (Meredith Brooks, Sheryl Crow).

Peachtree Road proves that he's back to making good, solid records focused on songs, not hits, the way he did at the outset of his career.

All the Gang Starr trademarks are in place, from Premier's perfect upchoruses to Guru's reedy voice cutting or instructing, and sounding better than ever.

Another 12 tracks of curiously beautiful but quite intense melancholy.

This sophomore effort finds Brand New maturing, reaching for textures and song structures instead of clichés.

Maybe by the time the next album rolls along it might be time to stretch a bit and get away from the sound they've cobbled together, but for now I Was a King sounds just about right to anyone who is a fan of the history of noisy guitar pop of the last 20 years.

Whether it works or not depends on whether you're in the love him or the hate him camp, but no compromise is just what his fans signed up for in the first place. The Darkside, Vol. 1 is a mean beast of an album that will surely make Joe's army re-enlist for Vol. 2.

Not Music is all over the place in the best possible way, and fans who love Stereolab's gracefully intellectual side will especially appreciate it.

It's had to imagine how long Ha Ha Tonka can continue to grow on each album, considering how good they've become, but if you're looking for music that's smart, ambitious, literate, and fun at the same time, Death of a Decade could well be your introduction to your new favorite band.

This album perhaps best shows the duo able to capture the sense of drone as exaltation, something derived from the choice of instruments used, whether old keyboards, guitars, effects pedals, or further combinations and extrapolations as desired.

Above all, Mungodelics practically bubbles with undisguised joy in the moment, a pleasure in activity, and the possibilities they explore.

Wasner and Ehrens have made an album that honors their devotion to R&B and dance music in the best way possible, with love, respect, and a bunch of memorable jams.

Sure, no one is going to mistake this for an Einsturzende Neubaten or Jesus Lizard album (and most definitely not a Silver Jews disc), but the links to those acts can still be felt in the music here, making this self-titled debut an impressive collaboration between a trio of rather impressive collaborators.

Longtime listeners will know the drill, but newbies looking for some frame of reference might want to imagine Sigur Rós, Mew, and Sunny Day Real Estate in an art school lunchroom brawl.

The small army of musicians continue to merrily pursue their muse, unconcerned with the human logic of time and space.

It's easy to guess that most of the guys paid tribute to here wouldn't know what to make of the tracks, but if anything here leads the average garage rock-loving Dirtbombs fan back to the sounds of Detroit techno, the album will have done its job.

Trendy South African rhythms and austere strings spin a web around Davidson's poetic lyrics, and in this intricate, introspective setting, their talent becomes very clear.

The connection between the album's title and its contents remains a question mark, but it's befitting of this surprising, deeply inspired debut.

An uneven sophomore album.

Fear and Saturday Night is a smaller-scale album than 2012's Tomorrowland and it's lighter, too, finding the Americana singer/songwriter settling into a comfortable ragged groove.

At the end of the day, The Melvins know what they're all about, but with Everybody Loves Sausages, listeners get the chance to roam around in their heads, if only for 50 minutes or so.