It's a serviceable bit of self-generated fan fiction that's as slight as it is artistically obstinate.

It's perched at a point between the past and the present, protest and satire, and that inscrutability is often where Rundgren does interesting work.

"Jingle Bells (In Memory of Avicii)" doesn't fit the vibe and it carries only trace elements of the titular holiday standard, so it stops the party cold halfway through. Cut this track out and Happy Xmas delivers some cheery Christmas vibes.

A Tuesday afternoon pool party of a record, Songs in the Key of Animals sounds like a great time was had by all, but that you kind of had to be there to appreciate it.

As far as pop albums go, this one strikes a rare balance between familiarity and novelty.

While Heloise & the Savoir Faire don't come close to the effortless flair that Blondie had with mixing these styles, Trash, Rats and Microphones still has enough, well, savoir faire to make it worth adding to the mix.

Out with a whimper, not a bang, Exit 13 is an off-ramp leading to a boulevard of several mismanaged White Castle knock-offs.

While Tokio Hotel may not have matured enough to hang with the big boys yet, they are most certainly the dark horses pacing up and down the Disney fringe.

Joe Ely is still one of the best things the Lone Star State has to offer, and Satisfied at Last shows he's not about to stop making albums worth hearing, and still finding things to say within the style he's made his own.

For most of the album, however, Jessie J shows how wide her range is.

With a sound falling somewhere between low-key, late-night indie fare and a seasoned arena rock act, Dismantle and Rebuild is a strong, colorful debut and points toward even better things in the future from the Ramona Flowers.

Perfectly likable and pleasant.

All this adds up to one of Neil Young's genuinely strange albums, a record that's compelling in its series of increasingly bad decisions.

The outfit's three-axe attack coupled with the distinctive pipes of J.T. Woodruff find Hawthorne Heights able to go where peers like Fall Out Boy just can't.

It's brighter, denser, catchier than either of its immediate predecessors, and boasts her most assured singing yet.

H.N.I.C. 3 is a back-to-basics return to form with some worthy pop cuts, and it just takes a slight trim and a push of the shuffle button to become worthy of any long-term fan's attention.

The release is among the group's most accessible material, even if their tendency toward goth romance and arch fantasy are still very much intact.

Montage of Heck largely doesn't consist of early drafts; it consists of scrawls waiting to be turned into a first draft. While that's interesting for a while, at a certain point--and it arrives rather quickly--the fascination curdles and it's hard not to feel unclean, as if you're snooping through your beloved brother's desk.

Juliette Lewis dials down the aggression, amps up the introspection, and adds a dose of weirdness on her third album, Terra Incognita. As always, what Lewis wants to achieve is apparent and admirable, but not necessarily quite what is achieved.

Earnest, melodic, and slow to unfold, there's not a bad song on here, but surprises are few and far between.

The man's overuse of Auto-Tune is now a given, and here it coats all of his heartfelt moments with robotic perfection, but it is surprising how T-Pain's gigantic producer hat remains off save a handful of cuts.

Lostprophets still sound hungry and confident, and when they stick the landing, as is the case with the relentless single "Bring 'Em Down," it leaves a mark.

Khaled does his usual cheerleading and gets some production credits himself, but the real trick he pulls off is inspiring all these artists to somehow save up all these high-grade club tracks and singles for the DJ's annual dispatch. Suffering from Success, once again.

A set that is less scattered stylistically--dominated by tropical house and trap stylings--yet less consistent quality-wise.

An album that is just a little too familiar, even if it's classy and well-produced and spiked with a couple of new tunes that hold their own with the holdovers.

While siblings Morgan and Mercedes Lander's songwriting has improved since 2001's Oracle, there's still an air of mediocrity to later tracks like "Loveless" and "Burning Bridges" that shows an adherence to formulaic modern metal clichés, and a lack of confidence on some of the vocal takes that makes some of the songs sound like demos.

Panders to unimaginative industry and genre posturing.

Morrison is challenging expectations and listeners by stretching his musical boundaries and defying people to come along for the ride through close listening.