The best Delfonics album since 1970.

Wyoming is a bright and promising collection of secretly wrecked songs, and leaves us curious to see how Water Liars will continue to grow as they walk their thorny path.

Even though the music apparently went through a significant studio process, it's difficult to shake the feeling that it would be preferable to hear the original compositions while witnessing the production.

Birthdays is so fragile and broken that listening to it without signing some kind of non-disclosure agreement feels borderline voyeuristic.

It does indeed have light shade and a nice melodic bent that counters the slightly desperate rock & roll found elsewhere on the album.

Burdon pours everything into this album, as if he realizes this is his last best shot to get the credit he's due. And, against all odds, he succeeds with this tough, flinty, proudly old-fashioned rock & roll album.

The Blue Room is a brave experiment, but one that pays off handsomely.

His intelligent lyrics and melodies inside the arrangements of these beautifully crafted songs underscore the integrity and passion in his trademark voice. This is inarguably his finest album.

The lyrics to the more energetic tracks are no less dire, but as the album speeds by at just over half an hour, the impressions made by the slowest songs become the strongest, without melodic hooks or youthful release to hide their hopeless sentiments behind.

Even if not everything on Velvet Changes works, it shows that Jones can do pure pop as well as experiments--or a mix of both, as on "Holiday Man"--and the album ends up being more promising than uneven.

The four-song EP Punk Authority, Swanson's third release in the technoise vein, is some of his most punishing and relentless material to date.

He leaves all those classy trappings behind, picks up his guitar and plays a bunch of songs he likes, maybe even loves. It's not an especially compelling reason to make an album but it's not a bad one, either, and the same can be said about the experience of listening to Old Sock: it's a pleasurable way to while away the time.

Sound City: Real to Reel sounds exactly like what it is: a bunch of old rockers jamming in a studio. Often, this is quite enjoyable, as they're all excellent musicians playing through a top-notch board, but the songs do have a tendency to drift away from the point, sounding like exceedingly well-executed first drafts.

Like good goth, this is painful and exclusive, full of moody anthems and baritone melodies that won't cut through the static until the fifth listen or so.

Stereophonics seem loath to leave all that they know behind, so Graffiti on the Train remains distinctly earthbound for all its big aspirations.

The combination of strong songs, Lissvik's inspired production, and the chances they take (and nail every time) make this the best Mary Onettes record yet, and the first to sound like they have their own voice.

The Next Day neither enhances nor diminishes anything that came before, it's merely a sweet coda to a towering career.

These songs, and the album as a darkly moody whole, show the band to be growing into masters of crafting modern psychedelia with dark swirls instead of day-glo, and bad trips instead of sunshine days.

Golden Grrrls (despite actually having a bad name) made an album that embodies the best things about C-86-derived indie pop (warmth, innocence, honesty, community) and doesn't skimp on songs that make you want to get up and jump around the room with a big silly grin on your face.

Apart from the increased cohesion, the quality of the songwriting is far higher, reminding us of the astonishing promise and tossed-off ease of Banhart's early material, and suggesting that his detours into less exciting sounds were just part of a journey that might be much longer and more rewarding than expected.

With songs largely based around Natalie's love of soul and melodic '60s pop, Wild Belle have a less frenetic, if still hypnotically languid take on NOMO's world fusion sound.

On the proper What About Now, the group is striving to sound big and important yet winds up sounding small.

No other artist combined such strong streetwise attitude with disarming warmth. She did it from start to finish.

Eternity of Dimming is a beautiful, nostalgic (in the best meaning of the word) hymn to time and place, a long suite of songs that falls together like a wonderful quilt of memories.

This set is a stunner. Scaggs is in full possession of that iconic voice; he delivers songs with an endemic empathy and intimacy that make them sound like living, breathing stories.

Produced by Spoon's Jim Eno and featuring ex-Black Joe Lewis guitarist Zach Ernst, The Electric Word is remarkably similar to the group's earlier recordings. The lone difference is the superior recording quality.

As it stands, the album lives up to its name, offering a low-key but promising introduction to the duo's music.

It's organic, relaxed, unforced approach is deceptively high in performance skill, yet resonates with an emotional depth that rings true throughout.