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.