Naive and wide-eyed, Wander / Wonder tries so damned hard to feel real, to make big dreams and grandiose plans feel distantly (but not quite) attainable.

The main problem is that the songs are so quietly pretty that they slip by without friction, so that you're halfway through the album before you've registered a shift in mood or tempo.

Bruner has some pretty sweet, vibey chops that he deploys sporadically here. If cultivated, he could deliver that skewed-fusion, weed hazed love letter he's attempted here. In the meantime, best to let him noodle it out on his own.

Make no mistake, Glazin' is a simple pop-rock record. It's fuzzy, and it has a nice swirling psych touch, but it also displays a relaxed, confident craftsmanship - a touch of reverb here, a Martin Hannett nod there (check out the snare on "Crush") - that elevates it just so, pulling it out of the garage gutter and into the warmth of the sun. Or the Jacuzzi, as it were.

So, enjoy it if you will, and forget it if you like.

Perhaps most impressive is that in what is arguably the band's most traditional record to date, Tinariwen manages to loop in highly recognizable people and sounds without any effort.

Sound Kapital never quite settles into a comfortable pattern of pop.

Mirror Traffic arrests those indulgences and presents Pavement fans the best opportunity yet to stop worrying and love The Jicks.

The sound necessarily lacks the precision and propulsion of, say, house or grime instrumentals, and since nothing forces the listener to pay attention or move, Down 2 Earth disappears as it reveals itself.

Drums Between the Bells at its simplest is often Drums Between the Bells at its best.

Kleyn sounds just fine accompanying herself with adept piano and efflorescent harp flourishes, her music FX-free except for a little echo, and I can imagine a less skyclad presentation simply gumming things up with New Age goo.

The problem is the lack of hooks, atmospherics and soul.

While it wouldn't be fair to hold Obscurities up to Merritt's 1990s albums with The Magnetic Fields and others, the material here certainly makes a strong claim for achieving next-best-thing status, providing a welcome nostalgic reminder of the many pleasures offered by what has already more or less become a nostalgia act.

Whether a frolic or a detour, the latest stop on Hynes's winding musical road is worth a listen. But take his own early words as this listener does: out of context, as an invocation of caveat emptor.

Maybe Butler was aiming higher than simply "dance music." A laudable ambition, but one that sadly isn't matched by the content of Blue Songs.

More often than not, Slave Ambient offers a sound that's equally familiar and new, simultaneously meeting expectations and evading them. It's an album whose immediate accessibility cloaks a deeper, subtler series of rewards.

Anyone seeking the nightmarish flipside of a Herzog soundtrack will find H-p1 a rewarding listen.

It's the same songwriter we've seen in snapshots from various foreign lands, this time in front of buildings that may as well be down the road: same Seine-side accordion we heard on The Flying Club Cup, same mournfully stately horns he picked up in the Balkans for Gulag Orkestar.

The Coathangers are clearly a band in transition, and it's very possible that this album's disjointed nature is a result of the band throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks.

Holing up by himself, worrying about money, obsessing with death and letting the walls close in is probably not good for Dwyer as a human being, but it's certainly good for Castlemania.

Haley tows the line between soundtrack and banger throughout, exposing the similarities between the two but also the pitfalls that come with catering to a particular demographic.

There are perhaps ways to defy expectations and still capture that truth about oneself, though that's not present in Two Matchsticks. Holding that against The Wooden Birds is certainly unfair in many ways, but still must be accounted for.

From listening to both of the intended follow-ups to his first album, though, you wouldn't know any better, as both records capitalize on the musical maturity of Harlan County in different but equally satisfying directions.

Ultimately, Williams never made a record as intense and as beautiful as Our Blood.

In the end, Giving is a more than satisfying swan song for this lineup.

Personally, the album works for me because it's kind of a gloss on intersecting listening practices that also has a distinct identity; the concentration of techno, the emotional lift of pop, the cratering impact of dubstep, and CHLLNGR himself are all there. It follows that the highs are toned down a bit for all those to fit comfortably. But then, the album feels so complete in itself, you don't really notice.

The early material is interesting, if only to hear how "Web in Front" and "Wrong" were fleshed out on Icky Mettle. But it's the album, and The Greatest of All Time, that are the real draw here.

Owl Splinters is a testament to what practiced musicianship, studio know-how and an ear for textured complexity can accomplish.

There's a number of visual pieces that lose their power, and while Notaro is good at describing what she's talking about, those visual bits interrupt the flow. In that sense, Good One feels like a straight showcase for her act, one that doesn't make concessions to the audio-only listener.

Bakesale's consistency allows it to work tremendously well as a beginning-to-end album.

Birchard's music is euphoric and in your face--if only he could combine his staggering technique with some true grit.

This album, like others that nudge closer to perfection without technically breaking new ground--I'm thinking of the Cass McCombs and Tape albums, to name ones I've written about this year--could be a springboard for thinking about why musicians who seem capable of almost anything stay in their comfort zones for albums at a time.

Through the Green is one of the finest dance LPs of the year for sure, but it's not something I could listen to every day.

Baker pretty much only has one idea, and although it's solid, he could benefit from a shift in approach.

As it stands, I enjoy it for what it is.

This is where the irony comes in--he sacrifices most of his originality to referential tropes. Through successfully emulating noteworthy keyboardists of the past, he nearly obliterates his own identity as a practitioner. It's not that he isn't good, either. He's too good.

It seems often as if the songs come to life more through sonic detail and aural shape (a variety of distortion tones, drum sounds, reverb ranges, and the like) than in compositional changes of direction, harmonic depth, or hooks. This doesn't, however, make the music dull. Instead, there's something compelling about the way Young Widows use these details--a shimmer, a hum, a scrape--for drama rather than relying on the often cheap dramatics heard in "heavy" music.

At times, there can be an over-reliance on an organic-sounding push-pull rhythm here; on the surface, a few of Riposte's songs do have a tendency to blur together after a few listens. But when everything comes together--as on the aforementioned "Outt!," which builds and builds, effectively ending the album on an exhausted, triumphant note--it's a mesmerizing project.

As I said, there is nothing really to fault, at least superficially, with Night Gallery, but it just never builds on the decent ingredients at play. It's simply far too easy to forget once you've heard it.

Approaches to guitar rock that are generally better segregated sound great together here, as they jump from '90s indie to shotgun at yr face drunkfuzz. I've got no idea where they can go with this. For now, they've made a record that leaves me spinning after every spin.

Bermuda Drain bears the influence of Fernow's recent work with gloom-pop monger Wesley Eisold of Cold Cave. Synths dominate: crystalline, graceful and clean.

It's a great, moving set of songs from one of the few modern songwriters to actively challenge his own preconceptions of his art.

There's nothing new here, but much to love, and if "Tally" makes you think 10 songs by 10 other bands, that's only because it succeeds where they fell short.

This second full-length is like looking at fog through a clean window. There's nothing there, and boy can you ever hear that nothing clearly.

There are the four originals here on Horses and High Heels. And for my dope money at least, they count among the highest songs she's had since getting off the stuff some 20 years ago.

It's a record with 20-20 hindsight vision. It perfects the past's mistakes, but misses the fun in making them.

Zomby's achievement with Dedication is in plausibly connecting these austere sounds to underground bass music. The best DJs can do this, but few producers even try.

It's like Fiery Furnaces with more heart and less irony...and that's not a bad thing at all.

It's All True is exactly what mature dance pop should sound like in 2011.

When obtuse means nonsensical and there's no one consistently there to tie the free associations together, it becomes less a case of judging Vast on his own street odyssey and more a case, ironically, of falling back to where we started in the least desirable way: It's good, yeah, but it's no "Iron Galaxy."

They pull off a wide sound for a duo, sometimes creating too much space. There's some room in the back seat for more low end. Then they'd really boogie.

Ascension reaches for the infinite, but achieve it only intermittently. Mostly you're left with songs that don't stop time, only slow it down.

The tunes still aren't anything too memorable (though in fairness that's never been Boris's particular forte), and the frippertronics and sonic detail on songs like "Galaxians" makes things less ordinary than they might otherwise be, ranging between fairly standard chugging and brief breakdowns intended to sound heavily narcotic.

Unlike previous output, the ten tracks on Attention Please are slick, synthesized, almost club-ready vamps (or at least that seems to be their aspiration). The affect may be intentional but for the most part I found them to be drowsy, forgettable, head-nodding throwaways with at least a passable amount of textural variety but very little in the way of memorable song-writing.

PH's previous efforts (the live shows, in particular) have been experiments in what an average listener can take, punctuated with bursts of pleasant catchiness. On Laced, Whitehurst has inverted the ratio, which works, which means the more grating leftovers can be appreciated for the oddities they are.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra is the most basic, easily digestible, pre-chewed pop archetype. With zero nutritional value.

While Diaper Island doesn't represent a significant break from VanGaalen's existing body of work, it ultimately haunts and endures in just the right amount--making this one of the strongest entries in an already consistent discography.

It's just a bit too nice.

Alas, the new Earth Sound System is a particularly undecided record, offering two disparate approaches that make no attempt to cohere. The caveat "your mileage may vary" has rarely been so applicable.

There's something lunky and crude that weighs down the chaos, even if it outwardly resembles arty contrariness. Motorik without motor skills, New Brigade actually sounds new.

Even if it fails to meet impossibly high expectations, The Harrow & The Harvest offers a handful of keepers while moving Welch and Rawlings (hopefully) past their writers' block.

Though the harsh synth textures and borderline-disjointed edits from the EPs remain, the record as a whole is simultaneously hazier and more distinct: more fine detail in the cavernous reverb, more impact with every tumbling, hypercompressed stack of drum samples.

If Share the Joy is the direction Vivian Girls are going in, I'm interested in seeing how it plays out.

The truth of W doesn't look as good on paper, but give it time. It's more convincing than it has any right to be.

Looks Like Rain, 'Frisco Mabel Joy and Heaven Help the Child--represent an outre high-water mark of sorts in the country singer-songwriter era.

Zayna Jumma is the first non-cassette recording of the band playing in its electric glory, and their first CD release.

Bachelorette is undoubtedly a step forward from her previous work, but until she fully throws herself into it with abandon, both sides she's working here will invariably suffer.

This is an album in a platonic sense, crafted around a clutch of real hits that were made for group enjoyment on the radio, not just for headphones in coffeehouses. And, like every Comet Gain album that's come before, it succeeds.

There can never be too much of this kind of music--so there's a built-in safety in Ways of Meaning for Dunn as an artist and for its listeners. It's automatically successful if you take it up on its own terms, but I get the feeling Dunn is inching his way toward something that elicits a more nuanced response.

Despite its lackluster production and a dearth of strong songs, Clutching Stems isn't quite a bust. Olson still turns in some strong tracks, which are not coincidentally the ones that sound like they would have been most at home on earlier albums.

It's the unexpected emotions that Canta Lechuza can unearth that stand as its greatest achievement. Lange's most complex compositions here make fascinating art from contrasting moods, and it's that complexity that, ultimately, make this album worthy of return.

This is Quintron's best summation yet of his iconoclastic melding of raw rock & roll, R&B and funk, experimental electronics and art.

The Errant Charm is by no means a bad album, but it's not great either; it's just nice in a way that is too easy to ignore for its own good.

Gloss Drop is the most self-sufficient world Battles have made yet, and a pretty good argument in favor of music that gets less and less interesting the more you know about it.

David ain't the kind of thing you want to hear every day, but it's the kind of thing someone is going to play every day for a month. Or months. Whatever it takes to come back to life.

While Teenage Hate sits squarely in the flamey-shirt scene of the '90s, even the greaser version of Jay knew how to bust up cliches.

Fever retains the cheeky humor of other dubstep artists, but its vivacity makes it his most immediate, and compelling, release yet.

ISAM's clusters aren't as advanced as Tobin might have you think, and only represent a monumental leap forward if you compare them to his trio of classic albums, all of which were recorded more than 10 years ago.

It's striking how well the gypsy sound fits with older material, but even so, the best song on Alegrias was written specifically for the album.

It's a body of work that begs deep listening, the better to divine the wild kindness at its core.

Maybe it's less dangerous, stoopid and contagious in moments. But for this newest gift, I do feel blessed nonetheless. In the end, I guess this largesse just makes me smile.

A New Way... didn't need reinforcements, and taking in all 14 tracks in succession can be tough going, but a little bit of overkill doesn't dull the bracing energy of Orcutt's kinetic, four-string idioglossia.

Stone Breaker is undeniably a Mark E product, propulsive disco-house clouded by his trademark ambient haze, with terrific builds and releases. It's easily one of the better dance music albums that will come out this year.

Original Detroit, Northwestern, and New York garage bands figure equally in the blueprint, resulting in a robust hook-fest that plays like a mixtape of the greatest rock 'n roll songs '65-'78.

It's clear that none of these songs really require amplification, that they, in fact, drive the beauty of Diamond Mine. Still, Hopkins's deft touch somehow adds to, rather than subtracts from, their elemental simplicity

They have always written insanely short, catchy pop songs in the modern idiom, and, for those looking for the one line post mortem, Innings doesn't just not disappoint, it delights.

There's no denying Lynn's skill at reconciling disparate sounds, even if the brightest moments fail to paper over all the cracks.

Jaar attempted something ambitious with this album--it stands apart, even if it never risks a whole lot. Space Is Only Noise is unique, but also a work of modesty and, for an album that samples French poetry and is rarely danceable, it's unpretentious.

On Air Museum, they've turned more toward rhythm and pulse. So the melodies now are more like elegant patterns tattooing out micro-rhythms, and the ever-present warm timbral glow the two do so well has become a kind of undertow, a more urgent wave motion.

They seem more interested in perfecting what they've already shown they can do better than anyone else.

Impeccably tasteful, Kitty Wells Dresses is no mere museum piece. It deserves to rest in an enthusiast's country collection somewhere among, say, Buck Owens Sings Harlan Howard and Del Shannon Sings Hank Williams.

As the album thumps on, though, listeners who prefer dynamics over beat matching will lose patience.

It's enjoyable and I find myself anticipating the songs.

False Beats and True Hearts may move slowly, but it moves with grace, and it never lapses into the sameness of yore. The varied arrangements help.

With no connecting thread or great songwriting, I Am Very Far is difficult to engage with. It has its moments, of course, but the more I listen, the more I think of it as a creative palette cleanser -- a chance to try out a few ideas while planning the next big song cycle.

More accurately, these duo performances are truly sympathetic and move at the molecular level, making each piece on Cosmic Lieder wonderfully dense with information and ideas.

Past Life Martyred Saints sounds as if it's trying to save rock, but without any winks or nods.

Goblin is the messy schizoid splatter painting of the child we've raised and ruined, and it's coherent only as a hopeless plea for us to expect nothing from him again.