The singing may be subdued and the playing quiet, but everything here packs an emotional wallop.

Unfortunately, despite a few great tracks and plenty of pounding productions, Blank hits a lot of familiar notes.

The Ruminant Band is generally a happy affair, though, and cameo appearances by Califone's Tim Rutili and Jim Becker help chart the Fruit Bats' migration from bedroom side project to full-fledged band.

Creaturesque's subtler pleasures may require more time to sink in than the impulsive skinny-dip plunge of its predecessor, but fans of classic-styled melodic indie rock will find it every bit as summery and inviting as the backyard swimming pool on the cover, and well worth the wade.

The bottom line is Troubled, Shaken Etc is an album: paced, sequenced, structured, and produced as such. It's utterly lovely, feminine, and subtly adventurous.

Anjulie is quite impressive as an opening salvo from a talented musical collagist whose minor flurry of hype is well-warranted.

Infinite Light shows that Lightning Dust haven't lost any momentum since the release of their self-titled debut.

Nurses proceed to provide exactly what is expected of them and what their audience presumably expects.

It's not essential Pernice by any stretch, but as a soundtrack to the novel, it works just fine, and its relaxed charm makes it worth hearing even if you don't read the book and are just a fan of the man's music.

Radio Wars demands its listeners heed that siren song, and it's truthfully hard to resist.

Kleerup can certainly be accused of repeating the same tricks over and over, but at least he has some remarkably effective (if not immensely distinctive) tricks — essentially, moderately paced and genially thumping robo-disco beats wedded to majestically buoyant chord progressions, played on synths that somehow manage to sound lush and punchy at the same time, with some bonus keyboard flutters for icing.

Not everything works--Tisdale isn't convincing when she tries to deal in either pain or carnality, but when she sticks to the surface, she makes sure that Guilty Pleasure lives up to its title.

Add it all up and this not-so-conceptual-after-all album points out both the rapper's limitations and his strengths. Call it a draw.

while Midlife could have used a heavier dose of this side of Blur, there's not a bad track here, and the set also brings their glorious, epoch-creating single 'Popscene' back into circulation.

Though her voice has yet to fully develop and lacks the uniqueness running through her bloodline, it's clear she landed a major-label contract on the basis of her talent.

A handful of ballads do add variety to the album's pace, but Owl City is largely a vehicle for the one song Adam Young knows how to make.

Because the sound is of paramount importance, this does succeed as pure radio-ready product, which is enough for Sparks to sustain her momentum if not enough to give her some kind of identity to build a career upon.

I'm Going Away is a departure that fits in with the rest of the Fiery Furnaces' work, and it's only fitting that a band this creative can pull something like that off.

The influence of that 1972 double LP can be heard in the similarly homespun production of Under the Covers, Vol. 2 but where Rundgren was open-ended, Sweet neatly ties up every loose end with the care of a pop fetishist, making sure all the harmonies and guitar licks are in place, never adding any untasteful elements.

Molina has a consistent--if downcast--view of the world in his songs, and the canvas he uses to express it does so perfectly.

Riceboy Sleeps has all the majestic calm of Sigur Ros with none of the dramatic storm, all of the lull and none of the squall.

Not quite as much fun, but still fun.

The record isn't a failure by any stretch; there is enough going on to make it at least worth a listen or two if you love the sound of 1990s American indie rock as much as Wye Oak do.

Alternating between fingerpicked acoustic and electric, the remaining tracks are hardly deficient of introverted charm, but with the exception of the semi-propulsive 'Rebecca,' the pace is sluggish at best, resulting in a collection of songs best listened to in threes, or all at once with one's forehead pressed against the window waiting for the rain to pass.

The textures are right but Our Lady Peace remain deficient in hooks and melodies, something that didn't matter as much when their sound boiled with indignation instead of merely simmering, as it does here.

Nothing here is flashy, which is keeping in a long tradition of Hunter's and is yet another reason why he's often called underrated, but when he's making records as rich and resonant as Man Overboard at the age of 70, it's hard not to listen with not a small degree of wonder.

Sugar Ray can sometimes try too hard to seem younger than their years, pushing the dance beats a little bit too hard, and Mark McGrath relies on some unseemly Auto-Tune, but even with this too-evident aural botox, the group remains a guilty pleasure that's a bit hard to resist.

Megafaun are just as taken by quietly tortured dark-night-of-the-soul whisperings, lo-fi oddities, and shards of feedback shade as they are of banjos and summertime evenings, giving Gather, Form and Fly a bit of an unsettled edge at various points.