A brief but powerful statement, Mount Wittenberg Orca brings remarkably creative artists together for a good cause, and ends up bringing out the best in all of them in the process.

While Peggy Sue's drastic musical overhaul doesn't always convince, it's an admirably brave effort which possesses enough quality to make it worth the occasional test of endurance.

The album is not just the best country has to offer (if the genre were modeled on his standard, its radio stations would be difficult to turn off), but more: it's the best that pop music has to offer, too.

Bad as Me is an aural portrait of all the places he's traveled as a recording artist, which is, in and of itself, illuminating and thoroughly enjoyable.

While Astro Coast's nostalgia is missed, Tarot Classics finds Surfer Blood showing more potential to create something unique than their debut suggested.

The results can be winning, especially when they're slathered in classic, Les Paul/Mary Ford-inspired slapback delay. However, busier cuts like "Sleigh Ride," "Little Saint Nick," and "Christmas Day" reveal a charming yet pitchy vocalist with all of the inflections of a classic torch singer, and none of the discipline.

Their loosest, wildest, and most honest collection of Saturday night/Sunday morning pining/drinking songs to date.

They've embraced their schoolboy selves and are simply singing songs of love and good cheer, albeit on a grand scale that somehow seems smaller due to the group's insuppressible niceness.

Audio, Video, Disco might just be the quintessential example of pop music in the Internet world where everything is available, and available to shuffle, but the main point is good times, great record.

He's settled into this well-weathered skin on Clancy's Tavern, winding up with his best album in many a moon.

Despite the natural feel of these songs as sung by Wilson and performed by his talented backing band, anyone who's paid attention to his solo career of the '90s and 2000s won't hear any surprises.

Certainly, part of the variety is down to the multitude of producers and writers on Stronger, but the album's success is entirely due to Kelly Clarkson, whose personality and professionalism turns it into her best album since her Breakaway breakthrough in 2004.

The writing is nothing earth-shattering; in fact, it's rudimentary and formulaic almost without exception, although they still come up with a couple of winners ("I'm Coming Home"), and lots of tunes that would easily pass for understandably forgotten oldies.

It proves McBride has plenty to offer an entirely new audience, and showcases her transition from country singer to skillful performer of elegant, hooky, adult contemporary, pop/rock music.

Instead of re-creating sounds, they've recaptured the vibe, which is enough to keep The Great Escape Artist absorbing even when it begins to drift.

Howl of the Lonely Crowd will get some notice due to the people who produced it, as it should, but at its core it's further proof of Comet Gain as one of the great hidden rock & roll treasures of the last 20 years.

A chronological ordering gives a sense to the band's progress, a definite perk, but the big payoff with Tape Club is that it offers a chance to see through to the heart of SSLYBY's songs and realize how charming they can be without the big-league production.

Songs like this--imaginative, contemplative, densely wordy, slightly silly but unflinchingly earnest--are arguably Lewis' strongest suit, especially in his recent work, and if the instances on A Turn in the Dream-Songs aren't quite as striking as those on its predecessor, the album still ranks right up there among his best.

As the album concludes somewhere in the seventh minute of "Tether," all the aim-for-the-heights stuff they're about just becomes its own locked-in loop, an epicness that feels less remarkable than simply familiar.

This is a record designed to be listened to in isolation, preferably through a massive pair of high-quality headphones rather than in the mass communal surroundings of a club.

It's almost one high point after another.

If Gauntlet Hair are promising rather than solid, they're promising nonetheless, one band of many with a shot at a further brass ring after 2011.

It's certainly accomplished and self-assured, and at its best the results are truly impressive.

Lydia Loveless' Indestructible Machine possesses a classicist's grip of country, a rock & roll sense of swagger, and the keen eye of a songwriter twice her age.

The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1: Live in Europe 1967 box is an essential addition to the catalog.

Beyond the Sun plays it cool and plays it authentic--these aren't reinterpretations, but sincere homages--and if this doesn't have much grit, it has plenty of style and heart.

An affable shrug of an album, it's fine, but that's not necessarily OK.

While it may not be quite as striking as Saturdays = Youth, it delivers a welcome mix of classic sounds and promising changes.