It may be hell for him, but it’s compelling listening for anyone smart enough to shitcan the Kanye comparisons long enough to sit down and give this record the attention it deserves.

Lookout doesn’t have the feel of a major step forward for the Silver Jews: sonically, it falls pretty comfortably between "Bright Flight" and "Tanglewood" and doesn’t have the sort of big events that marked those two records.

At Mount Zoomer is a tremendous success.

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

Evil Urges furthers the reveal with confident and imaginative strides, now with 100% less burning kitten jokes.

Though wrong and stupid kinda work (in a good way!), Tha Carter III is more a balanced, self-conscious synthesis of everything viably great about Lil Wayne, hyperbolic or not, than the penultimate statement of the MC’s “legendary” status.

This music can be difficult, but through its brooding emotional core and sophisticated, understated arrangements To Survive is also one of the most satisfying albums of 2008, melancholic and unloveable though it may often be.

Assured in its fastidiousness, with enough schizophrenia to make whiplash a factor, Los Angeles cements Flying Lotus’s status as the best producer in a burgeoning scene bursting with talent, categorization eluding whatever scene that may be, whatever it means to be a producer.

I can’t help but feel that this album wants to have it several ways, but the net result of following all those paths means it plays out only one way.

Exotic is witty, literate, and charming.

Even if this time around the music takes a more prominent role, it’s this delivery that gives ExitingARM a sense of unity.

Velocifero‘s flaws are mostly minor, stylistic quibbles that could be leveled at any one of Ladytron’s other three albums—namely, that each song could stand to be about thirty seconds shorter (more easily forgiven on the dance floor), and that they have a tendency to repeat the kicker far more often than necessary (same).

As such, it is both a strong refutation of every album Weezer has made since "Green" (as it, in its time, seemed to balk at "Pinkerton") and a numbing confirmation of the only available place this band has left: comic shearing, loose plagiarism, three separate solo projects (all of which are balls).

Worth mentioning about Rook, as something of a corollary to its ostensible punch-in-the-gut dynamics, is how creatively put together it all is.

Prejudices be damned, this is the best hip-hop record this year, and if that doesn’t satiate your hype-riddled appetite, then you would be well-served to shut off your computer, removing yourself from the power of the web, and throw this in your car stereo.

Songs in A&E retains all of the weight of its self-imposed seriousness, its capital A artistic gravitas, but unfortunately leaves the uplift of invention to the memory of Spiritualized albums it so readily evokes.

For all its maximalist glory, DISCO is remarkably nuanced, minor elements seamlessly shifting in and out of frame behind the compositions’ vibrant foregrounds.

They may not seem on-point at first, occasionally wandering into vaguely tangential realms like a professor who’s a few dropped chalks away from the retirement home, but eventually the genius of it settles in.

There’s other fun songs on The Sun, but nothing that sustains itself as consistently as “Charlotte” and “Numbers.”

Seriously, if there’s one thing on No Way Down that doesn’t at least momentarily hook you, even in the basest, more familiar way, where do your roots go and where do your loyalties lie, eh? Maybe in that sub-dermal nostalgia something about this EP truly resonates, well beyond its frugal runtime.

Sitek’s technique is, successfully, fascinating and unexpected. But so many purposes and conceits, both avoided and embraced, collide over the course of the album’s eleven tracks that technique simply overwhelms melody and Johansson’s voice both, but mostly whatever it is about the song that Waits nailed to the wall in the first place.

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.

No shocking directions or paroxysmal about-faces, but Lie Down In The Light is still some glorious stuff, expectations met and mettle once again tested.

So, no, this isn’t groundbreaking sound art, just really good dream-pop, as pleasant as this music can get without being--don’t deny the thought you indelibly harbored--cloying; that’s a space that we need bands to fill.

Although flawed, Rockferry holds a startling amount of promise.

It’s a predictable formula, a majority of the tracks building to a triumphant climax set to an egg timer, peppered with forced witticisms, seemingly culled from Postsecret, that have reached a new apex of laziness.

In total--and there is absolutely no other way to absorb this album; if it lets up it will lose itself--the sentiment is hostile, championing a mismatched, bitchy pile of allusions to alienation, dissatisfaction, and indifference that begs for attention and respect but is too passive to amount to anything but a wan wash.

There are songs on Nouns that seemingly defy you to listen, and not because they’re loud or crass or due-heavy on true-dat market-maneuvers and what I guess we can now safely call “aural assault”; and not because of the bad vocals, bunkered mix job, or the hundred and one other things that would make your parents, my professors or Celine Dion hate this album.