It is, more than anything else, the sound of a band having too much fun being good to try being great.

I'm not sure what this one will sound like when the heat lets up--but what matters for now is that Beach Fossils have crafted a breezy and charming debut that renders such questions, at least for right now, unimportant.

Lullabies to Paralyze loses points for a handful of uninspired tracks and questionable production values, but I can’t imagine anybody who’s enjoyed the Queens in the past not taking to at least half of the songs on this album.

The disc is disjointed, lacks much in the way of cohesive musical character, and ultimately never really reaches to be anything more than a bunch of decent songs held together in the semblance of an album.

The Hawk is Howling is an immensely satisfying, patient, and expertly crafted album that ranks among their best.

So it essentially comes down to the fact that “Come Down on Me” and “Go” are likely going to be two of the best tracks of the year, but that a great deal of ’64-’95 is less likely to stick to memory.

Like similarly engaging pop music, Room(s) diversifies and moulds its winning formula into a variety of fledgling creations.

Infinitely better than their last album, and proof that The Manics are now capable of writing pop music that’s neither dull nor pandering.

Made In Brooklyn’s not as bold or striking or collected as No Said Date, but the sophomore effort’s a fine follow-up, nonetheless, and almost certainly doomed to the same neglect.

Compared to All That You Can’t Leave Behind, it’s immensely sincere, well-thought out, and meaningful... [It] also happens to be loaded with hooks.

Pleasure essentially satisfies, even if I have to admit that it's hard not to feel absolutely, completely, and totally lied to by virtually everything about Pure X that isn't their music.

Over time Napa Asylum reveals itself as remarkably cohesive and more than willing to cede points of entry every few tracks. Still an exhausting experience, sure, but one that's often thrilling, and well worth the effort it requires of us.

Want Two disposes of almost all of the commercial elements that had been blamed for One's downfall without revealing a satisfying work in the process.

It's just wonderfully consistent, satisfyingly familiar.

These guys have the tools, and God knows they have the chops, but Thundercat has yet to develop a compelling sound of his own, and no amount of production wizardry can ultimately disguise that.

Here, they succeed just by doing what they do best, taking few chances, but sounding more comfortable in their own skin than they have in a very long time.

Fans of old school R&B (or really, any of Daptone's artists) would do well to give him a fair shake. It also goes without saying that everything on No Time for Dreaming will sound better live. Bring your megaphones; here's a guy impossible not to root for.

The tinny, noisey/flangey/hurtful sound that's shellacked on in cheap 16 bit hinders some of the best material he's written to date.

The melodies and production are top-notch, even if, lyrically, the album’s motifs barely move from sullen dismay to cheery dismay.

It’s music that, outside of a live setting where one has the benefit of watching her assemble her loops, calls for patience, and it’s difficult to anticipate under what circumstances her techniques could lend themselves to something either more ambitious or longer in form or structure.

Clocking in with around thirty five minutes of largely instrumental music, one’s tempted to cast Thank You Very Quickly as a one-off, but both the band’s communicable enthusiasm and obvious technical skill pull it off.

It's true that Riceboy Sleeps is no departure from New Age, is in fact a strengthening of at least Birgisson's place at the centre of its indie iterations. But it also takes the formula of another band a lot of people like and bends it just enough to make that formula interesting again.

At the end of the day, this still isn’t a great album. It lacks continuity, much of a sense of rhythm, and the character that Banhart’s 2004 releases took on.

This is an album you could easily hate -- especially if you like things like change and development.

Arrow, the band's fourth album, doesn't differ significantly from their prior efforts, though the fiddle and pedal steel flourishes of 2009's rootsy The Mountain have been largely excised in favor of more hot shit guitar soloing care of new recruit Mark Nathan.

Since Ferrari Boyz doesn't mark the reemergence of Gucci, it's best viewed as a warm-up for Flocka's previously-mentioned sophomore effort.

Son strikes me as even more experimental than Tres Cosas, and as such it’s less interested than that record on really opening itself up to the listener. That may be a good thing, admirable even, but it doesn’t stop the whole thing from feeling a little cold at first listen.

It's an album both in tune lyrically and out of time stylistically, and that's what has All Things Will Unwind approaching relevance.

Mister Heavenly, for better or worse, have debuted as a strong musical voice, one with perhaps so much combined talent and perspective that their reverence occasionally gets the better of them.

Despite its democratic structure, Unsound suffers from a curious sequencing problem, or what we around here like to call Channel Orange-itis--but few bands of their vintage continue to write songs this prolifically or professionally.

Half of me thinks the group was aiming for a bit of something hypnotized and dreamy, that they worship Spacemen 3 and the patience that entails. But then the other half thinks Cryptograms is something gritty and furious, maybe something religious, but still something of a turtlehead waiting to poke through.

Penance Soiree is everything dirty and vile about rock music.

The best songs on The Forgotten Arm reveal the extremes of love and despair under their smiling masks, but the sorrows of the album are tempered by what can only be Mann’s own joy.

A relatively straightforward rock record with no shortage of epic flourishes and catchy choruses.

Throughout Crime Pays Cam wobbles between comfort and rote, often landing on the correct side of that division, but illuminating in the process that the gap between laziness and his brand of lazy brilliance is both a crack in the sidewalk and a yawning canyon.

The Jicks do an incredible job of coming into their own as a band, channeling Malkmus’s sarcasm and foolery in a less controlled setting brilliantly; they just can’t, because of the immediacy of the album, tease out the full quirkyness.

The result is predictably less than comfortable, though certainly not in a difficult, experimental way.

In the end, we needn’t concern ourselves too much with the machinations of some emotionally arrested Peter Pan of pop. Moz will always have the last word, anyways, which makes the barb from the album’s closer all the more appropriate: “This might make you throw up in your bed, I’m OK by myself!”

Flight of the Conchords ultimately succeeds apart from its parent television show because it’s a modest comedy album.

B.o.B. may be too eager to please at this stage of his career, and Adventures is perhaps too stuffed with ideas and styles to be deemed a true success, but the triumphs fucking reverberate.

When T.I. is on, he’s really, really on, and, at several points, King lives up to its own hyperbole. It’s just that those points correspond precisely to the places where T.I. is actually talking about how great he is.

The Ponys' arms are so full of the good old stuffs, they can't offer much that's new or really interesting, yet they're talented enough to make it difficult to care about that sort of thing.

It’s hard to fault the album for a little flab when the band’s trying new things and mostly doing them well; hopefully they’ll realize that underproduction simply isn’t their style next time around.

But despite the hit-and-miss subject matter you can’t ever get mad. [Slug]consistently does a fantastic job with his (underrated) delivery, which has improved drastically over the last three records.

What you do get is indie prog impeccably performed by musicians at least as talented as Mars Volta but with better taste.

This is Rhys wholly in his wheelhouse: offering up a handful of standalone highlights and clever deep cuts, hitting pleasure centers along the way, and quietly adding to a catalogue as deceptively substantial as anyone currently working the pop circuit with fifteen years behind and at least another fifteen ahead.

Typically heavy subject matter aside, Mason actually seems more content in his skin than he has in some time, and anyone who has previously garnered enjoyment from the Beta Band or King Biscuit Time will unquestionably find something to dig within Boys Outside.

She still has yet to manage a really killer album, but There's No Home finds Hunter well on her way.

There is a vital something absent; reassuringly, though, the greatness that eludes awE naturalE doesn't feel like something THEESatisfaction will never "morph" into.

Perhaps what’s most frustrating about these missteps is that their combination with the album’s brief length (at least 10 minutes shorter than their previous efforts) smacks of songwriting torpor.

He's pushing himself ever so slightly, and while it might not be enough to draw in the unconverted, the rest of us will want to stick around for more.

If you like blues-oriented rock from a man who can pour out his soul like Robert Pollard's bartender pours Bud Lite, then, by all means, give Bubblegum a try.

It is High Profile rap music. He’s buttoned up here, ready for the cameras, and on occasion, things work ecstatically.

It's an appealing, bombastic hybrid of '90s nostalgia, and anything less than audience ear drum obliteration is not an option.

White Wilderness gives Vanderslice's listener something to fixate on other than his often-good lyrics. As a consequence, despite its predictably moderate tempos and unchanging volume, it's a sign of progress, of potentially great things to come, and Vanderslice's most immediately welcoming record in half a decade.

Hey Venus! is like a really good haircut: it's brisk, light around the ears, and after so many 'do permutations it's bound to get some compliments about how civilized it looks, how grown up.

Despite the inessential nature of some songs, and perhaps the inessential nature of the album as a whole, for sympathetic ears it serves as a kind of skeleton key to White Denim's bewildering powers, as much as any collection of demos or rehersal tapes.

Sirens is no "Heartbreaker" - though the stylistic grab-bag is reminiscent of Adams’s debut - but it is a damn good start.

For every elastic, tuneful, vacuum-packed “Phantom Limb” or “Australia” -- pop craftsmanship of the highest order, redolent of Chutes’ front-to-back triumph, crystalline, flawless and packed so thick with thoughts and words and hooks that they unravel marvelously indefinitely -- there’s an obvious b-side.

Danielson's past successes may have been the work of a hundred voices gathering 'round to sing the same joyous song, but the most successful parts of The Best of Gloucester County embrace a different kind of communion altogether. Not just the community of Gloucester County, or New Jersey, or the indie rock or Christian communities, but one of all things.

For anyone who legitimately enjoyed Blood Sugar, and think that they might actually want to purchase this thing, Stadium is unquestionably Red Hot Chili Peppers’ finest release since.

Garbus’s peculiarities are often quite charming--often, not always, because there’s only so much so-called cute we can be expected to tolerate, and though Bird-Brains remains on the side of acceptability, it flies dangerously close to the line (er, wire).

It's an excellent debut, and hints at a potentially significant force in indie rock in the coming years.

I’m finding these chocolate bar grooves and dark, open spaces in Watersports a pretty nice place to be, and if the guys in Mi Ami have mellowed a bit with age, they haven’t gotten any less interesting or vital, still embroiled with the spirit and verve that supposedly ended at the Black Cat not all that long ago.

Think what you want about its theatricality, its twee --- at base, it’s a technically accomplished album, and if you’re willing to give yourself over to it, or do lots of drugs, a charming ride.

So, yeah, Bury Me in My Rings is yearning indie pop, sometimes overwrought, sometimes appealing in its dorkiness.

The second album has the more obvious and combustible singles. But there’s nothing on the second album that comes close to the 1-2-3 punch of 'California Goth,' 'Wavves,' and 'Lover.'

This is a step forward, and the new studio approach is a constructive development.

But the real appeal remains Zedek’s humbled insights, a worldview informed by an affirmation of our common suspicion that “there are some things you can’t see / with a roof over your head,” and, having lived as such, her solitary cold comfort: “if you don’t like the answer / maybe you shouldn’t ask.”

Yes, the album stretches itself a little thin towards the end and some of Smith’s slurred lyrics are truly unintelligible, but essentially this record is joyously, thankfully, inexplicably, after all these years, still the sound of the Fall.

The record attempts nothing: it doesn’t stretch or break a sweat but celebrates its easy victory ecstatically, like some asshole Olympic sprinter racing against a middle school track team.

The no-bullshit album cover might be the cheekiest thing about delightfully straight-forward Brothers.

Frankly, this is an odd listen.

They have it in them to write great pop music or truly important experimental music, but Dirty Projectors have to decide where they want to end up before they start.

They capture and transform generic ideas about space and environment in ways beyond the grasp of most bands. Sadly, this approach limits their accessibility; even so, theirs is a world well worth, at least, a visit.

Hit After Hit doesn't achieve its titular goal completely and totally. It does come fairly close, though, and makes strong cases for the tunefulness of San Francisco's new garage music, Smith as a songwriter, and the appeal of something done straightforward if also done well.

Reptilians is a batch of competent dance-pop-not as groundbreaking as fans have hoped, not as obnoxious as non-fans may've assumed-overcompensating for all the patience they've tested and the goodwill they squandered on their looping baby-steps back to the Starfucker moniker.

Sheff is he orchestrator, but through all the manipulating elements, all the new band members, Sheff seems to be more at odds with his art than ever before.

One of [Bejar's] most accomplished (and self-studied) albums, but it’s also one of his least vital.

Tussle have sharpened their edges, sawed excess fats and driftwood from their bloated frame, and end up sluicing waters--at least some of the time. It’s the most cohesive decision they’ve made yet, but one wonders what Cream Cuts would have sounded like had it been unbound rather than streamlined.

Tokyo Police Club have readjusted their approach-a much leaner, Strokes-ier brand of indie rock, which allows them to continue to play to their strengths while conveniently avoiding the missteps that held them back before.

Hal is basically just a pleasant, fun album.

They’re still far and away the best bet for impeccably produced, beach-ready power-pop, and way better than your shitty sounding power-pop band, so excuse them if they seem to harbor no interest in doing anything else.

Gather, Form & Fly is a bright record full of energy and dynamism even in its most cacophonous sound collages, but what’s so frustrating--what becomes more urgent with every listen--is how great this album could have been.

It’s hard to tell if this disc will have much in the way of staying power... but it’s a hell of a fun listen.

A strong album with some growing pains.

The remainder of Echoes is considerably more diffuse, engaging in levels of genre-hopping that might seem a little desperate were it not for the fact that most of the songs hold up.

As a whole, We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves doesn't necessarily offer the highs of his past two albums, or something as immediate as "Rights for Gays," but it is a remarkably cohesive listen.

What keeps Siberia from being more of a snoozer is the fact that there’s more Will Sargeant guitar to be found here than on any other recent Echo outings, and Heaven Up Here producer Hugh Jones returns to give the band what’s arguably their fullest production values since 1984’s Ocean Rain.

Nada Surf have not reached outside their comfort zone with The Stars are Indifferent to Astronomy.

The real credit, however, goes to the songwriting of the eponymous duo. This album was not "saved in the production," as it were. The Con is a document written in the half-frenzy of a clusterfuck.

What’s left, then, is an album that’s overlong, but one that’s surprisingly easy to succumb to.

Saint Bartlett, Jurado's ninth album and a perfect place to start for the uninitiated, succeeds mostly because it seems to attempt nothing in particular.

In lieu of an actual follow-up [to The Knife's "Silent Shout"] we get something that manages to make good on two of those three elements [of the decade’s best electronic records]. I’ll take it.

For an established pop writer like Thomas this sort of effort is long overdue, a necessary rung on the twisted, misdirecting ladder towards writing one of those singular, inexplicable albums.

While this solo venture is a unique take on the sound developed with BMSR, his song structures and instrumentation are built-in with monotony, practically usurping the purpose of developing a creative solo project in the first place.

With The Moonlight Butterfly, the Sea and Cake are in no danger any time soon of fasting in light of their diet of quality white bread, and it's not like anybody who is purchasing a "mini-album" from this band expects otherwise.

It’s a good record, and doesn’t try to recreate The Decline, but it doesn’t manage to capture its energy, fear and grandeur.