The Babies' debut, released on the long-running Shrimper label, speaks well of collaboration. The album succeeds by touching on the hallmarks of both bands' sounds, while standing strong on its own thanks to some unexpected touches of true rock 'n' roll grit.

The People's Key, more or less Oberst's 10th album as Bright Eyes, finds him aiming for the prophetic over the personal, embracing the luxuries of the studio instead of hunkering down in the bedroom.

I'm not particularly enthralled by that idea; rock minimalism often is rather aesthetically empty. While faulting the band for taking that route doesn't feel right, it does make the album a rather uneven, if still interesting, affair.

His inventive and affective pairing of resonating melodies and noise is impossible to deconstruct--that is to say, narrow down to a specified meaning or reason behind each piece. We, the listener, get to apply each of Hecker's abstractions to whichever feeling we choose. That's definitely an ocean worth diving into.

Anika was apparently recorded in a short time, and it's hard not to wish it felt at once more urgent and more cohesive.

Luckily, the songwriting on Minks' debut hits far more frequently than it misses. It's a solid establishment of a noteworthy sound--the proverbial "encouraging first album."

With Asleep On the Floodplain, Chasny returns not just to his personal roots, but also to the roots of popular music itself.

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

If you come to this record for the title, expecting rueful literacy and songwriterly self-deprecation, you might be pleasantly surprised by how hard it rocks and what an undemanding good time it can be.

Playing any of these three records on home speakers while choring through the day, their subtle modulations will melt away, their wispy chimeras passing unnoticed. An immersion through headphones, or at pane-rattling volumes, provides the magnification that these cataclysmic environments call for.

You may stumble upon an experiment or a minute-long fragment here and there, but the deck is stacked with memorable songcraft and an attitude that understands silliness without succumbing to sketch-comic dead ends.

What might be most appealing about this clear and intimate recording is the way it captures not only a wide variety of textures, moods and voices, but also the musicians' comfortable--and nonetheless passionate--virtuosity and elegance of expression.

Akron/Family II really captures a feeling of happiness and at the same time melancholy, and that's what makes it beautiful: those two feelings at the same time.

Bird Songs is unpretentious and as good a "mainstream" jazz record as you're likely to hear these days.

It is, in short, the sound of a group confidently, and unassumingly, re-defining its own universe.

There are a lot of good songs on here, to the point where the band's consistency can border on monotony.

So it continues with Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, an album with no missteps...because every trick that Mogwai has used in the past is present in almost comically balanced fashion.

While Dulli has mined the same vein of pop music for almost 25 years, he has nonetheless accomplished an awful lot with it.

If she wanted to move or enlighten, Let England Shake falls short.

The world is crawling with Fahey-loving acoustic guitar players these days--in large part thanks Tompkins Square--but ones as good as William Tyler are rare.

The end result is the 11 songs on Unlearn, which I'll save you the frustration of calling "eclectic" and opt for the even more euphemistic "well-informed."

It isn't the transcendental work of which they're capable, but nonetheless taps into a thriving, sometimes exhilarating strain of striated rock music.

Much of what lends the album distinction is the tension created between the band's bold, confident projections and the more delicate core at their center. At times, that tension can be disorienting.

Now, they're just going through the motions.

While Carlson and company continue to explore new influences (much has been made over the band's recent declaration of affection for Pentangle and Fairport Convention), Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 1 sounds to me like a different manifestation of the same sound they've been exploring for some time now.

A dozen listens later, I'm still not sure if there's a beautiful core here that's half-obscured by the wrapping or whether it's the wrapping itself that's beautiful. Either way, it's a remarkable finish to a very promising album.

This is clearly a departure point, unexpected but more than welcome.

Bardo Pond's self-titled is a massive, monumental piece of work, proving once again that this long-running outfit can still crank the heavy, mind-numbing psych that it's always been known for.