Ultimately The Promise doesn't point toward the future, but it does deliver fulfillment abundantly, from the place things really are, showcasing a confident, relevant, singer and songwriter.

For the majority of the other songs Lee Spielman runs the show, screeching street-sick lyrics about the crime-ridden area surrounding their Sacramento practice space.

There is a widening sense of exploration at work here; the considerable benefit of that aesthetic is clear even when it falls a tad short of the mark.

Gibbard has a gentle touch so having cushy, sugary melodies mirrored by a production equally as supple feels like a marriage of intent and sound.

Lifetime of Love is more about aesthetics and movement than message or structure, but it's got a little of all of those things keeping it anchored in the familiar.

Living on the Other Side is uncalculated and unassuming its delivery, evoking an earlier era without dressing the band in Glenn Frey's castoff threads from the Desperado cover shoot. It's also incredibly tuneful, which makes the Donkeys' second effort an enjoyable summer album.

With 15 songs clocking in at just shy of an hour, Cosmic Wind lingers, but stops short of overstaying its welcome. Instead the album sprawls out in a relaxed bliss, Lion Babe moving confidently through their wide spectrum of laid-back moods and smiling sounds.

Not many bands can recover from a disastrous album and come back better than ever. Thanks to some hard work and good choices, you can add Vivian Girls to that short list.

If their future recordings follow the template they built here, bis may just be on their way to truly becoming the great band they always seemed right on the verge of becoming.

Not for background listening, the album rewards repeat plays and gets the new project off to an impressively cathartic start.

Supergrass come crashing back to life with Diamond Hoo Ha, an album every bit as cheerfully gaudy and vulgar as its title.

This is too short and scattered to put on his top shelf, but it comes awfully close, which is downright astonishing considering the circumstances.

Even if Amnesty lacks some of the intensity of Crystal Castles' earlier work, it accomplishes the tricky task of providing common ground and a fresh start.

The sound quality is ultra-clean, it makes the listening experience relatively risk-free and also brings attention to the fact that there's not a lot of ground being broken here.

Monochromatic can also be read as reliable, giving the people what they want and with Chesney, that's an easy, relaxed good time…it's just, now that he's in his 40s, he makes records designed for a quiet weekend afternoon at home instead of a Friday night kegger.

Dunes is a perfect match of band, songs, and producer that works almost perfectly and should mean that the days of Gardens & Villa being compared to their peers are over.

Consider Dirty Work the band's ultimate bid for mainstream acceptance, and one of their strongest pop albums to date.

Nothing to Do is admittedly pretty one note in sound and subject matter, but the boys deliver it with so much enthusiasm and so many hooks, it's hard to care.

"Phoebe" is a modified bluegrass stomp and "Sunshine" comes streaming in on breezy harmonies, while "Rock All Night" and "Watch Your Step" are anchored in roots rock, but Amelita is, at its heart, an adult pop album and it's a gorgeous one at that: it glides by easily but it digs deep.

If In Another World doesn't quite feel like a classic Cheap Trick, blame that on the group's dogged adherence to their old blueprint; they follow it so closely that they don't allow room for adventure, mistake, or fashion. Maybe that means the album doesn't quite seem fresh, but it does hit its marks in a reliable, satisfying manner.

Hot Cakes is definitely worthy of throwing more than a few devil horns the band's way.

Although it peters out in its last 10 minutes, Lucky 7 is a workmanlike and thrilling if unadventurous addition to Heat's fiery catalog, and provides him with more fuel for his explosive gigs.

Whenever Everlast lays back and spins stories and tall tales on his own, his blend of folk, rock, blues, rap, and pop culture clicks.

The Datsuns re-create the sound of a beer- and weed-fueled Saturday night in 1973, borrowing and blending the revving guitar riffs and choked, macho vocals of Thin Lizzy, Bad Company, .38 Special, and on occasion, the hornier side of Led Zeppelin.

A decent but not spectacular album that, not for the first time, finds DiFranco on her way to somewhere else.

This is a worthy return, qualitatively standing head and shoulders above most everything else in its class.

So while Walls generally finds An Horse treading water, enjoyably enough for the most part, it also suggests that they've arrived at a slight impasse as to how to proceed from here; how to balance artistic development and expansion with the youthful urgency and directness that has marked their best moments, at least so far.

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.