Half-baked and juvenile, sloppy but cheerful, fresh and joyful, the Beets may be plugging a gimmick, but at least they're doing something with themselves.

This album is the hot shit.

The band has a noticeably meaner, more muscular sound than on previous records.

Doctor’s Advocate is essentially a long album of just okay rhymes, just okay rapping, and (without the benefit of best-of-year sublimity like Cool & Dre’s “Hate It or Love It” production) a lot of just okay beats.

In the end, a few weak verses are easy to brush aside on an album this likable.

It’s a cohesive, well-produced, well-written set of songs that coheres as an album.

Volume Two is a record, of occasional charm, that comes off all-too-aware of how cranky a response to it other than “charming” will seem.

The problem, then, is that “Blessing Force” sucks and most of the rest of the songs imitate with varying success the music of the band’s staggering 2005 output.

Their experiments have only caused them to stumble off the path they’ve tread, finally tripping to one side of the thin line between smash and schmaltz.

The Spell cannot break free of the band’s successful formula without something a lot more challenging than this.

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.

Which isn’t to say that the rest of the album isn’t impressive at certain points, though the law of diminishing returns weighs heavily here.

The Aliens' retro-future, interstellar, ex-Beta Band stylings force the listener backward in time and inward in space, resulting in a weird cosmic navel-gazing that is ultimately the reason this album is only slightly more than moderately successful, and cannot be described under any circumstances as “innovative,” “refreshing” or “a step forward.”

It’s not that Rated O isn’t a good album. At least half of it is one of the best albums of the year. It’s that Rated O is just good enough and in a straightforward enough way to make you miss the Oneida that was about joyous, staggering confusion.

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.

While Summer in Abaddon features Pinback’s by now trademarked sound and cryptic lyrics with a few nice developments, it falls victim to a sort of malaise of consistently indistinguishable mid-tempo rockers on the second half of an album that starts very strongly.

What will always make The Be Good Tanyas stand out, in a roots/folk genre replete with superstar solo artists, is that they’re capable of juxtaposing their own songs next to the classics of the genre and tricking listeners into playing name-that-era throughout an entire album.

Magic manages to creep into a flat din, and tact is lost to nostalgia.

Far more unabashedly romantic than One Time Bells, the Kicks have let go of any lingering desire to be a rock band and are warmly embracing new wave style pop a la the Cars or New Order or Elvis Costello.

The Floodlight Collective exudes something astonishing and rare, particularly for a record on the fringes of indie rock, scoping into abstraction. It is, more than anything else, sincere.

Even with their glut of talent (Bejar not included), the band is sputtering for ideas.

Grass Widow have channeled a number of distinct influences, tones, and anxieties into an eccentric and strangely cohesive album. Past Time solidifies that there's nobody else out there right now who sound quite like them.

Sure, the record isn't very functional outside of its given context, but if you've tuned into this program before then it'll be nice to know that one of the most congenial of indie pop acts can still deliver on their good name and to their respective audience in equal measure.

And while every song contains allusions to forgotten surf rockish guitar chords and Duke Ellington violins, the real fun is in the way the Pipettes play off each other in harmony.

While not punch-for-punch or track-for-track the heavy-hitter "War Elephant" was, or even offering the tonal variety of "Born on Flag Day," the consistency has come into its own doleful focus, the lyrics have reached a blisteringly high point and for any/all flaws, and, in the end, it just leaves me holding the broken pieces of my face in my fucking hands.

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.

Old 97's have maintained a kind of winking positivity, which is perhaps the key to their longevity. The Grand Theatre Vol. 2 embraces this unashamedly.

If Stamey had chosen to go one way or the other — straight covers or an all-out album full of originals--- A Question of Temperature would be a much more interesting album. As is it stands, nothing here really captures the imagination.