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.

After a few more times through Hit After hit, you begin to sense there's something more to these songs. It may be a knock-off, but it's an incredibly nuanced one.

Akinmusire easily trumps Truffaz in the area of technical skill. His agile delivery and rounded, even-tempered tone recall facets of Kenny Dorham and Dennis Gonzalez in terms of burnished beauty and melodic alacrity.

With these five songs, The Fresh & Onlys have finally moved out of the garage for good.

Holy Ghost!'s self-titled debut puts me at a loss. There is no way to penetrate this album. It's dance music that exists entirely for its own disposal, either into your iTunes, your DJ set or your garbage can.

From the vocal harmonies to the steel guitars, tympani, and winds, Fleet Foxes continue to give rich and varied textures to their consistently tight harmonic structures and memorable melodies.

The ratio is fixed, and any intimations of possible ineptitude is eradicated in a batch of songs that transition from anthem to chaos with ease.

For completists and anyone else paying attention, it is the most expansive and rewarding route to the band's elaborate genius.

The album as a whole, however, is more than reasonably enjoyable. While still by its nature loosely strung and carefree, Born with Stripes demands your attention in a way that Living on the Other Side never did.

Now comes the Orchestre's first album in 20 years, Cotonou Club, and it has some of the bet-hedging one tends to see when musicians don't trust what they've got--re-recordings of old material and guest stars.

What A Pleasure drips with what so many second-outings lack: promise. If this EP is an indicator, what comes next from these dudes will merit anticipation.

I'm From Barcelona is fun, but ultimately shallow.

On the inauspiciously titled Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, the band's sixth album, it's focused inward and enriched its traditional dynamic ebb and flow with some artful embroidery.

More than anything else, one gets the feeling that Bespoke exists to defy categorization and manifest that essential need to live as a unique being, no matter how inevitable the factory-churning repetition of prescribed lifestyles may seem.

Wit's End stands to lose a lot by being judged on a song-by-song basis: there are standout moments, courtesy of ingenious arrangements and lovely melodies, but the album's shadowy guiding principle remains in my mind long after listening.

Golden Era, the smartest, funniest, most urgent hip hop joint of '11 by far.

The result is a lot of chaff and wheat that still need to be separated.

Bands like Eternal Tapestry ask listeners to slow down, to be less antsy and goal-oriented, and to simply let time and musical texture wash over them. That's fine, but wouldn't you rather have an instrumental psych track grab you by the balls? Let's have more galactic, more derelict, more excitement next time.

The privilege of reinvention is something we've always granted rock bands, so why not extend the courtesy to Black Sun, an electronic album that's awkward but earnest.

Stylistically, this collaboration veers from intimate in scope to blown-out and dancefloor-ready. And yet, it holds together neatly, shifting from style to style without really losing cohesion.

Slowed down, the only thing revealed is how seamless his stitching his, how clever his adjunctions are and how much musicianship it takes to create a good sample-based record.