Displaced Canadian "middle child" cultivates honky-tonk misery so extreme it dallies with the absurd.

[Glad Rag Doll] brings out the warmth in a voice that's been chilly, verging on aloof, at times. She calls this her "song and dance record"; I'd call it her nimble, witty, change-of-pace record.

Midway through, here comes some madman with the deeply stoopid "31 Flavors" and you realize it wasn't going along fine enough.

Though he dumbs up his songwriting half the time by fearing fun literally as regards forward motion, don't give up.

I decided that Lukas's stoned-hillbilly affect was just what his dad needed to distinguish this particular assortment of what-thes, why-hasn't-he-evers,​ and written-to-orders from rival entries in his unchartable catalogue.

The lounge feel is shored up by sometime guitarist Bruce Edwards, who if he ain't Ulmer at least ain't Jim Hall.

More than half the songs sound effectively the same. Rocking, absolutely. Tighter, too. Tuneful, in their way.

True, the record shudders to a virtual halt when the ecumenical auteur turns beatmaker midway through, and some may judge the rhymes irresponsibly playful.

Overlooking the nine subminute snippets‑-most annoying even at that length, with bows to the nine-second "Tick" and the 24-second closer‑-that leaves 16 songs that pretend to be songs, including one A plus, two clear A minuses, and six close enoughs.

First emailed across the seas, then finalized in Vancouver, their music is to pop as hardcore is to punk, with the Joey Ramone fillip of Cooper's bizarre pronunciation.

Just when you're thinking not bad at all, come some songs.

American Idol haunts this artistic breakthrough.

He's worth the shot Jay couldn't resist giving him. But he's still not comfortable enough or clever enough.

Atmospheric. Play loud anyway, so it won't be.

Rocky raps over the music without saying a damn thing older, meaner, and sharper rappers haven't said before. Then, bang, three dynamite songs.... Then, aww, three tracks that could be more obvious by half.

Sweetly skeletal arrangements featuring various bandmates and his bassist dad underpin the quietest and most winning singing of his career, with lyrics so crystalline you never need the booklet.

Creating a suite of well-turned if unnecessarily understated antiwar songs, she's a gifted, strong-willed minor artist bent on shaking England in particular.

For better or worse, and it's both, this is kind of what you'd figure sort of: a Sonic Youth record dominated by that band's most important member.

she recorded her fourth album with Polly Jean Harvey adjutant John Parish, and musically they get results.... But non-Bamanan speakers may well find that her supple vocals are no more engaging should they follow her unremarkable spiritual tribulations in English or French.

Yet subtle fiddle, accordion, pump organ, and especially bass liven up the acoustic guitars just a touch, and both Mitchell's fluting, childlike lead and Hamer's mellower follow avoid purist sanctity as well as modernizing pizzazz.

Many of these songs are merely bemused, and when she revises "I'm just a soul whose intentions are good," all she achieves is a different singalong from the one you expected.

A little too decisively to instill much hope for his love life, the rowdy songs are deeper than the thoughtful ones.

A lot of the time he's trying too hard to say too little or trying too clumsily to say too much, sometimes even with his trusty guitar.

Finally we've reached a tipping point resembling the riot grrrl moment of the early '90s, one in which every feisty hip-hop soprano has a you-go-illygirl edge on her notebook-toting male competitors.

With four-on-the-floor dance music the nearest the actually popular pop world came to mindless rocking out in 2011, I only wish it had a few "I Gotta Feeling"s.

The surprise is that the attention requires so little effort, because there's always a musical touch to keep you alert.

I give him extra credit for both preaching to the converted and doing his damnedest to rally the holier-than-thou.

Insofar as she pretends her willful pose is the holy truth, she's annoying. What saves that pose is the willful power of a presentation less Courtney Love or Chan Marshall than PJ Harvey.