Committed fans and casual admirers will find Notes of Blue worth a listen, but ultimately this is the work of an artist who has done better with similar ingredients in the past.

The album gathers songs of a more personal nature than were fitting for his band's fierier post-punk disposition, with a few actually predating Ought. Not that Saturday Night is a sullen acoustic-guitar record; rather, Darcy is more reflective here, sometimes channeling early solo Lou Reed and sometimes wandering into more experimental meditations.

Overall, Tears in the Club may aim for the melancholy, but it's also pretty enough to please those in search of a lush, soothing escape.

It might make their fans happy, but for a band that claims to be dangerous and rebellious, it goes a long way towards reinforcing the fact that the JAMC are no longer either of those things.

As they head further down this cerebral path, it would behoove Newcombe and his gang to work a bit harder on their core offerings before they paint on all the fun stuff.

The tempo would benefit from being quickened at times, as one track blurs into another, and given the range of styles and instrumentation you would hope for a more multicolored experience. But Digging a Tunnel remains a fascinating collage that suggests Wästberg has the imagination and ability to build on these worthy foundations in the future.

Overall, Black and White Rainbows is an interesting piece of the Bush discography, hinting at a late-era trajectory shift and a reinvigorated spirit for Rossdale and company. While he nurses fresh wounds that have stripped his world of color, at the very least he can still see beauty and hope through the gloom.

Too often, however, he gets mired in sexual pursuits, as well as excessive drug talk. The album's vinyl edition is 18 tracks long, including bonus songs and instrumentals, but even the 13-track standard CD version is exhausting, at 52 minutes.

At 17 tracks, it covers a lot of ground and not every track is a winner, but there's a decent number of promising artists here.

The songs "The Ballad of Jimmy McCade" and "Bottle" hail back to "English Rose," while "Jawbone" simmers to funky wah-wah rhythms and swaths of psychedelic guitars. These grab the attention--the other three short selections are essentially incidental music, even "Jawbone Training" with its hyperactive hi-hats--but the album's centerpiece is its opener, "Jimmy/Blackout," a 21-minute suite that builds from atmospheric electronics to a shimmering sung denouement from Weller.

A sparse duet with Oleta Adams comes across like a bonus track transplanted from a different project, but it lets the listener out in a state of romantic contentment, the finishing touch on a uniquely bittersweet addition to the box of chocolates that is James' discography.

The tone of Locus is unerringly dark with the repetition and harsh timbres occasionally tilting proceedings into the overly bleak, but there is enough overall nuance to keep the listener engaged for the duration.

There is much to be enjoyed on Everything Is Forgotten, but the elegant lightness of touch on their debut has all but disappeared. The potential is clearly still there, but next time they'll really need to embrace and explore it to their full ability if they are to make their mark.

Ross' mixtures of outrageous fantasy and sobering reality, side-splitting humor, and piercing vengeance, are intermittently as potent as ever.

The temptation is to listen to some of their mentors instead, as many of the acts who have walked this sonic highway before have done so with much more swagger, a better inclination for a danceable tune, and an inherent dose of innovation.

The almost breathtaking goodness of the best tracks here combined with the songs that don't quite connect leads to a very mixed listening experience that will have Ettes fans wishing Hames had kept some of the grit and fiery energy her old band had in spades.

Clocking in at just under 35 minutes, Sorcerer's willfully lo-fi, exploratory jam session architecture is pretty digestible, which makes the occasional sonic detour much more rewarding.

What Now is less eccentrically atmospheric than its predecessor, but their boisterous energy is intoxicating enough to win you over, and their sense of fun is palpable.

Later cuts like "Love in the Time of Surveillance" and the nervy, angsty closer reveal some decidedly complex layers of sonic architecture. Toss in the requisite instrumental, the all-atmosphere "Make No Sound in the Digital Forest," and you've got a pretty solid Incubus record in your hands, albeit one that won't win over any of the group's detractors.

There's almost a charm in the way Blondie push so hard: it's hard to think of another legacy act so determined to play a part of the modern musical dialogue without losing their identity. If they're not always successful, there's nevertheless something ingratiating about the ambition.

in•ter a•li•a is solid enough and more refined than its predecessor, but will nevertheless disappoint those attacking it through the lens of Relationship.

Devout will undoubtedly resonate with former ravers who have now grown up, started families, and face problems dealing with relationships and parenthood (and whose taste in music has drifted closer to introspective pop and R&B rather than dance music). For other listeners, however, the sentiments might fall flat, and the album might be too sparse, sluggish, and sad to really latch onto.

The Black Lips still sound like the rulers of an unwholesome party underworld on Satan's Graffiti or God's Art?, but it's hard not to feel like both hosts and guests are running out of steam.

Sounding revitalized, projecting a mix of gratitude and disgust, Wale breathes new life into an old breakbeat (and a sample from Marvin Gaye's version of "I Wanna Be Where You Are") for a defiantly proud pro-black finale. It should be enough to retain the listeners who strongly prefer the more lyrical, less hedonistic aspects of the Wale discography.

It doesn't surprise but it doesn't seem stuck, which gives the album a mellow appeal.

White Knight is split fairly evenly between solid senders and odd detours, which just makes the overall package weirder: it has the bones of a good record but Rundgren seems disinterested in actually making a good record

Coziness certainly has its appeal--it works as balm and a tonic--but it's hard to shake the feeling that Zac Brown Band overplays their hand somewhat by insisting they've reconnected with their roots. All those lyrics feel calculated and defensive, undercutting the grace of the music.

Black Laden Crown is at its best when the band keeps it slow and low, as they do with great success on workmanlike candelabra-burners like "Last Ride," "Skulls & Daisies," and "Pull the Sun" and it's in those solemn moments of churning, Jim Morrison-esque torment and woe that Glenn Danzig sounds the most sinister and at ease.