Highly personal, heavily detailed, and brimming with wounded optimism.

Longtime fans, wondering what the Cowboy Junkies have been up to for the last three years, will probably find several songs to like on One Soul Now. Newcomers will be much happier by picking up Open.

A skillful synthesis of classic rock and modern sensibilities that's pretty irresistible.

Hitting the Ground is flat-out clever, cool, and cocky.

Retro-conning the existing Songs of Experience material to suit the political climate wasn't the easiest task and the album often shows its seams, particularly when Bono decides to tackle the crisis head-on.

While Sound of a Woman is slightly too long and unfocused, at its best it's a potent reminder of how much fun this sound was--and is.

She and her team of musicians, writers and producers straddle the line between twang and glitter on just about every song; sometimes it leans more in favor of line dancing, sometimes the glitter ball takes over, especially on the shimmering "Raining Glitter.". Sometimes, like on "Live A Little" or the very hooky single "Dancing," it's the best of both worlds.

Honey nonetheless comes across as an attention-grabbing experiment more than it does a third proper full-length.

There's definitely an unfinished and tentative feel here.

Though Psychic Lovers sometimes feels a little labored, it proves that the seemingly accidental brilliance of Dinner's earlier music was anything but.

Despite its intentionally unrefined character, the album is well crafted in terms of both songs and production balance, though they may not want to cop to it on record.

"Right 2 Left" (with Melé) constructs a tribal house banger using a sample of Busta Rhymes' "Dangerous," which ends up being a good idea, although it feels somewhat unfinished at only two and a half minutes. Still, the mixture of proper hits and slight experiments makes for a well-rounded album, and Diplo contains some of the jet-setting producer's best work since the Hollertronix days.

Do the Bambi isn't a radical change from Stereo Total's previous work, but it is completely enjoyable from start to finish.

Scatter the Rats is a triumphant return packed with odd comforts and familiar memories. Two decades later, L7 have aged quite gracefully, no matter how unfitting that word may be when describing this ever-raucous crew.

On Chroma, he's got enough lines in the water that he's bound to get a bite sooner or later.

Unfortunately, there's an underlying feeling of insincerity. More often than not, the lyrics are literal interpretations of song titles.

A bumpy, oddly compelling restart, Purpose should hook open-minded pop fans who previously paid him no mind, and it could even win back some of those who wrote Bieber off years ago.

The album's 70-minute length allows enough space for a bounty of mostly nondescript trap productions that support these simplistic boasts. In these tracks, Yachty sounds like he's going through a phase more than refining his individualism.

Mascis sounds like he's having a blast cranking up the amps with his old buddies, no matter if they're real or imaginary.

Like its namesake phenomenon, Recurring Dream's songs are a fascinating mix of elusiveness and inevitability that only grows richer with repeated listening.

Streamlining arrangements and song structures more so than in the past, the album's pop-leaning blend of dance-funk and the softer side of classic album rock is their most accessible yet.

The set employs the unique, off-beat flow preferred by the Michigan underground, which Yachty adopts well enough on tracks like "Concrete Goonies" and "Final Form."

He has highs, he has some lows, but spends most of his time somewhere in between--largely because he's doing it the same he always has.

The Colossus finds Rjd2 back to doing what he did when he first began recording: simply curating excellent productions instead of wooing a new audience by creating expressly written songs or telling a story with his full-lengths.

It's a mature, accomplished statement for one of indie rock's most reliably miserable men.

His castoffs and extras equal other people's gold, and $ingle$ 2 is worth its weight in trash.

Unfortunately, however, the adjectives that need to be attached to this record -- workmanlike, customary, unembarrassing -- aren't going to make music fans flood the record stores seeking copies.

All the Way isn't Growing's best or most essential release, but it's a likable outing and should have no problem appealing to the New Yorkers' hardcore followers.