Like a raging flood, JSBX has picked up all sorts of things on its way down, but unlike Irene, the band has turned a jumble into something tight and precise and essentially its own.

Provider isn't necessarily going to settle old scores. Its a notable release, though, both as a new work by a talented singer-songwriter and as one of what one can only hope will be several satisfying postscripts in the narrative of a great band.

His taste in sounds and sense of what to do to them is unimpeachable, but the album's greatest strength is its resistance to categorization.

None of Molina’s songs gets an extreme makeover here, and, indeed, one or two wild cards might make the whole collection more interesting. However, it’s telling that so many young, vibrant acts honor the material enough to deliver it straight.

The mix's most pleasing moments and its most successful don't usually overlap: some of the beats are fresh, some of the basslines impeccable, but it's the extramusical sensations, those slithering intimations of robotic insects rooting through the garbage for your financial information, that make this worth engaging with on his terms, not your own.

Enemy takes the game Built to Spill has been playing for a while now and hits the right emotions in the right way.

This is cold, lonely stuff, in other words, high on harsh and gloomy textures, low on solacing gestures.

Out Where suffers from heightened expectations and, strangely enough, predictable ingenuity.

The harmonies and surging melodies feel natural and completely spontaneous, pop as a relaxed outpouring of sound.

The first couple times through Rejoicer, you might easily dismiss it as self-indulgent, unconstructed indie pop, lead by a pitch-uncertain singer with no great gift for catchy tunes. But after a half dozen listens, the album opens up, resolving its contradictions and bringing its juxtapositions into sharper focus.

Oldham's music, while drawing on familiar influences ' Neil Young and the Grateful Dead are immediately apparent ' is diverse enough that it feels far fresher than a by-the-numbers retread.

Blue Eyed in the Red Room doesn’t fit any hip hop preconceptions. Moving deftly from influenced to influential, Boom Bip defines himself by leaving limitations behind.

The songs on Crab Day are more vivid in memory than when they’re playing. There’s distress at the edges that’s hard to source, but as they spin apart in performance, they lodge in the brain.

This one is as strong as the last one, a shade better for shifting the densities of the drone more. It should be a detriment that they could be shuffled together without notice, yet it isn’t.

'Stardust to Sentience' is the only piece on the album with memorable words and a melody, and it’s accompanied by very interesting instrumental warbles that heighten the song. Most of the other singing is bleached out, a pale ghost of what one wishes it were.

Sonically, we’ve got a pastiche of historically catchy musical styles, with a Lou Reed touch here, a Superchunk riff there, a 10cc harmony under it all.

The title is Norwegian for "poverty," but its rewards are as rich as they've ever been.

Though this is an enjoyable listen and a vast improvement on their debut, the promise of where they could end up is its biggest appeal. Stay tuned.

Rather than erupting with new insights, The Mountain sags audibly beneath the weight of its new strata.

The simple wallops that make up most of Personality suit him surprisingly well.

This album is louder, catchier and more memorable [than King Tuff]. It doesn’t break rules or upend conventions, but it fills its songs with more oomph and pressure than ever.

Daughters of Everything is a fine, fun rock ‘n’ roll record that struggles with a gimmick it didn’t really need.

The best moments on Appia Kwa Bridge stand up to anything he's ever done, and while it purposely breaks no new ground, there's something to be said for sticking to what you do best.

Sonically these songs are crafted out of beautifully thin, translucent textures that brush over one another to create half hues and harmonies. And lyrically, too, they pile evocative, not definitive, images one on top of the other, until a song can encompass two diametrically opposed ideas without any tension at all.

It’s worth making it through these bare patches for the two gorgeous glimmers of light at the end of the album.

The Gathering is weighted in every way, heavy with distortion-crusted guitars, sluggish tempos and an earnest, perhaps even over-earnest, search for meaning.

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.