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.