Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche and Jim O’Rourke bassist Darin Gray needed three years to create, during breaks in their schedules, the unhurried dream-like expedition that is their fourth full-length album.

The album drowns in atmospherics to the point where it could be entirely instrumental. Greene casts an enjoyably suggestive spell but it wafts right through you.

At 14 tracks (19 on the deluxe), Body Music feels overlong for a debut, but she’s melodic enough to captivate even when Reid’s hissing minimalism and spastic beats start to feel warmed over.

It’s softer, but it’s nice to see a band unafraid of mellowing.

Sure, it's bloated and loaded with overreaching, pretentious lyrics, but it wouldn't be the Pumpkins otherwise.

This “mix­tape album” decently whets the appetite.

The album is surprisingly full of acoustic sounds and wistful balladry reminiscent of her 90s material, but it also plugs into a load of dark, restless and weird club rhythms with help from a coterie of in-demand producers.

The novelty disco elements are balanced by enough rock-solid grooves that the cheesier moments don’t stink up the whole thing.

While it's hard to question their motives and integrity, Avocado fails to deliver the grand statement we might expect.

Other Life isn’t too polished, which means it will appeal to Savage’s pre-existing cult fan base but not the wider audience it aims for.

They seem incapable of softening their sound, even when they try.

Unfortunately, it often veers dangerously close to a corny dystopian sci-fi movie soundtrack, which becomes a little less cute with each listen.

Although All Of Me shares that record's [The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill] fervour, it lacks its cohesiveness due to a few forgettable pop turns.

4:44 is intimate, refined and mature--fascinating partly despite its flaws and partly because of them.

It helps that lead singer Tim Cohen is gifted with an expressive baritone that easily lends itself to any style the band tries on, but their subtly complex guitar rhythms and melodic hooks do just as much heavy lifting.

The album is as solid as its maker's last name but so predictable you could set your Flavor Flav clock to it.

Astbury's voice is just as deep and earnest as it ever was and comes through like gangbusters on opener Born Into This, while Billy Duffy's guitar work is still as raw and dirty as it should be--clear indicators that the whole album doesn't give itself time for ego or pointless filler.

The music often verges on innocuous, but it serves its purpose as a backdrop for Darnielle’s steadily churning imagination.

Occasionally sounding like Vast Aire’s little brother with Bigg Jus aspirations, this immense man spills his solemn life lessons while treading the literal lyric territory that Vast owns so effortlessly.

The album is executed slickly enough that this lack of cohesion isn't a huge problem. The goofy lyrics, though, owe too much to the hippy-dippy era.

The songs are old, and the album sounds really old.

Their imperfections blare through your speakers, as do the clanging discofied hi-hats, nervy guitar lines and jagged, boy/girl shouted vocals. And yet it satisfies in a way similar to seeing the final pages of your fanzine come spitting through a photocopier.

It comes off sounding like a transitional recording, but with Son Volt any change is welcome.

This second album for Lost Highway isn’t radically different from 2004’s return to sneering form The Delivery Man, only the rockin’ tracks sound slightly less raucous and the ballads not quite as bitter. So he’s back in Attractions mode, sans the old piss and vinegar.

[Dead Silence] sounds exactly like what you'd expect from the maturing Mississauga pop-punk band: more middle-of-the-road radio-friendly guitar rock, with less punk energy and more classic rock than in their younger years.

A bunch of tunes seem built for radio (So What, Error), ballad Sorrow is overly dreary, and Skin Me borrows way too much from Nirvana. But the strength, emotion and new directions make this album a winner.

They've made a sophisticated, thinking listener's indie-pop record.

There is plenty of momentum on the first half of the record.... So, it’s a bummer that the last half of the album descends into bland and skippable.

LP4 hints at the band's potential. The mildly weirder arrangements and quirkier synth twists on Party With Children are signs of what they should have fully run with.

The production is shinier, which some might hear as poppier, but the overall feel is too quirky for the mainstream--and sometimes too twee for her own good.

Aside from a few missteps like 'Everybody Get Dangerous,' there really isn’t anything to get all pissy about here because it’s an older Weezer willing to take a few chances and still doing what they want to do.

Not a mind-blowing work of art, but expect at least a few more singles to blow up over the next few months.

With an emphasis on covers, the overall mood is frustratingly lighter than Winehouse's two studio LPs. It's missing the pointed wit, energy and hard-fought candour that marked her best material, but her considerable vocal swagger is unmistakable.

Produced by VanGaalen, this record explores a whole host of interesting sonic ideas, which keeps things nicely unpredictable.

His greatest strength is his storytelling: lyrics are never expected or trite, not annoyingly inscrutable but just obscure enough to be intriguing.

Still charismatic, quirky and iconic into her 40s, the singer grounds whatever style the band takes on with a trademark confident and longing delivery.

While his tortured, guttural delivery comes off as the lunatic ramblings of an abusive boyfriend, the actual lyrical meat of The Last Romance rings with the uncomfortable, ugly truth of facing your hungover self in the mirror the morning after a one-night stand.

Their approach is no longer as unique as it once was, but unlike many reunion albums, this one stands up fine next to their seminal work.

Despite a more eclectic stylistic palette, his sophomore Puscifer album is just as moody and dramatic as those other projects.

The combination of chugging half-time beats, machine gun riffing and techno's sonic extremism is way more pleasing than it should be, the weakest point being Jonathan Davis's earnest adolescent vocals, which we assume actual Korn fans will enjoy.

Jackrabbit is smart, charming and ambitious. But it would have been a lot more concise without the filler tracks in the middle.

The album, her best to date, would've worked better had she dived into the sea of sadness instead of dipping her toe in from song to song.

Some nice instrumentation, with mandolin and other strings makes for an odd juxtaposition with the stunningly inane lyrics.

It kind of sounds like classic AM radio interpreted by a very strange garage rock band.

The fleeting interlude Sonora, inspired by Cochemea’s Yaqui (an Indigenous nation from Mexico) ancestors, brightens the album with a hint of tropical sax.

Occasionally their influences come through too heavily, and the album would've benefited from one or two fewer songs. Still, a hugely pleasant listen.

Swanlights is curiously one-note, occasionally self-indulgent and fails to leave a strong impression. Or perhaps Hegarty's simply raised the bar impossibly high for himself.

Danny Elfman’s Notorious Theme feels stranded between two worlds, while the Legacy remix of 'One More Chance' is a perplexing and disturbing Pro Tools-era creation in which Biggie’s 12-year-old son rhymes back and forth with his father, lewd lyrics and all.

Simple, lo-fi surf rock fuelled by Daniel Lee's charismatic, laconic singing and melodies as memorable as ever.

It's a solid album, but too conservative to make many converts.

Not as good as we were hoping, but still strong enough to make us excited about the next chapter.

When they do get adventurous and experimental, they execute it with such smoothness that even those moments of danger and excitement sound muted and safe. It's a solid disc, but you can't shake a sense that the Budos Band is capable of more.

Overall, Hard Candy sounds a bit too much like Madonna’s trying to catch up with the American R&B princesses. Having said that, she holds her own for the most part, and when her own voice shines through, she reminds us why she’s outlasted so many.

Despite a few uncomfortable moments, the Brighton trio turn in another solid effort.

It's all deliberate gazes, chins down and forced smiles, like being at your best on your worst days.

His house-derived grooves don't have a lot of the swing and soul that older heads crave, but they're also not nearly as heavy-handed and macho as his haters claim.

Songs are focused, multi-layered and crafted, sometimes even bringing Wilco’s more experimental moments to mind.

Sometimes it feels like he's competing too hard with the intensity of the big, expensive-sounding production--especially on the mid-tempo numbers.

The album as a whole is still more interesting than any of its individual parts, but now we can truly appreciate each and every fragment.

These kinds of shameless retro-isms would usually be cause for a scathing review. But as much as we’d like to snub their lack of originality, it’s hard to deny that the Pains do what they’ve set out to do quite well.

Kidsticks's risk-taking, while not always on point, proves Orton capable of reinvention. She's still a voice worth listening to.

At 18 tracks, Starboy delivers some pop gems, but its last third falters with a string of schmaltzy ballads eventually rescued by the Daft Punk-assisted closer, an enjoyable bit of retro lite-funk that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Random Access Memories.

On Maps, BR breathe new life into their formula--short, fast and melodic Cali skate-punk ditties led by the always politically and socially aware growlings of lead singer Greg Graffin.

Too often these songs sound like Death Cab B-sides, like the 'I Will Follow You Into The Dark'-mining 'A Bird Is A Song.'

On their third album, Band of Skulls stretch even further.

Despite the beautiful arrangements, it's hard to shake the notion that Still Corners, like a lot of new indie bands, haven't yet risen above the sum of their influences: movie music, Morricone, Slowdive, Broadcast, Nancy Sinatra.

Like Mickey Mouse conducting the ocean in Fantasia, she often seems more a celestial vessel for the heady energy and abstract imagery than a relatable character--a balance she doesn't always strike.

Another artist might show signs of disappointment or uncertainty when faced with the notion that not much has changed in half a century, but on Medicine Songs, in the face of the unchanging nature of the oppression she’s expressed through her music, Buffy Sainte-Marie has chosen to be just as determined, unflinching and constant in her own art.

Roberts is less concerned with sticking to a chunky, riff-driven formula than with experimenting with the many layers that he and his band are capable of producing.

Infinite Arms further fluctuates between the vigorous (NW Apt.), the understatedly pretty (Evening Kitchen) and the yawn-inducing (title tune).

Some songs feel just short of full-blown biting, like No Question, which is awfully reminiscent of the classic Breeders single Saints. Still, it feels hard to write them off as some kind of revivalist project. If anything, the band’s unshakeable determination to stay in their own lane seems like an ideological gesture. You can’t be cool if you’re worried about being cool.

Casually clever lyrics, gloriously fuzzy guitar leads and that immediately identifiable off-kilter pop genius dominate.

Same Old Man isn’t Hiatt’s finest hour but it’s still far from his worst.

The married couple bash out organ-pumping pop blasts that exuberantly pick apart their youthful experiences.

Ginuwine sounds more than comfortable throughout, and succeeds in making fundamental R&B with a good deal of replayability.

The songs are excellent in their own right, but when they’re all lined up, Interpol start seeming like a one-trick pony.

The more overtly rock moments give the album a bit too much of a 90s alternative feel, but that’s got to be expected from someone who came out of the slam poetry scene and previously worked with Trent Reznor.

The Whigs are at their best when they embrace their more overt pop sensibilities over the wall-of-guitars thing, but it sounds like they need to expand their record collections.

The whole idea of Philly fruitcakes Man Man releasing an album that sounds like a dusted deconstruction of Tom Waits’s Swordfishtrombones--complete with grumbling old man affectations--on the same label that releases albums by Waits is too much of a nutty coincidence not to be a cockeyed po-mo parody.

By rights, this should feel cloyingly sentimental, but Vandervelde’s musical virtuosity means it’s beguilingly exotic, particularly album opener 'I Will Be Fine'--an insomniac’s echoey hymn to the pre-dawn hours.

Unfortunately, the rest is incidental disco-lite dross, with a couple of bland bumpers and a little East-meets-West fusion thrown in for good measure. The three M.I.A. tracks would’ve made a solid EP.

Brendan O’Brien, best known for his continuous work with Pearl Jam and Springsteen, takes over from Gavin Brown on Billy’s third s/t offering, and there’s some noticeable dulling of the edges here.

All the best cuts are Ye-led and stellar. He's as inventive, hilarious and potent as ever. The guest list, however, is less consistent.

The mainstream-organic gloss of his production has always baffled me.

Unfortunately, subtlety gets lost in the process, and only about half the guest vocalist are actually effective.

She manages to cut through generic themes to inject darker predilections with hard-sung vocals that sound downright masochistic at times.

Less party than their live show (and some of their previous releases), Inner Fire is still damn hot.

Unfortunately, her adventurous side is rarely heard in the more radio-friendly jams, which are heartfelt and catchy but less inspired.

It’s a sad irony that just as Earle has hit his stylistic stride--beautiful, pedal-steel-soaked country and poppier soul--he’s writing fewer tracks that’ll floor you.

Hearing 2003’s Frank the first time around, I can’t say I was knocked out by Amy Winehouse’s supper club jazz singing, and the album hasn’t improved with age.

Although the album's frenetic energy doesn't quite match that of their breakthrough (whether they like it or not, 2008's Visiter will always be their benchmark), it's a solid new direction.

They do try to mix up their formula, a move that pays off when subtly employed (the reggae textures in Satellite, for instance) but fails in the big, obvious spots.

Relapse isn't their best work by far, but if you listen to it next to their genuinely great albums like Psalm 69 or The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste, it stands up better than the cranky metal/industrial establishment--who've been dissing it mercilessly--would have you believe.

Once you get past the air-horn headache that is opener Art Official Cage, the album settles into a pleasant rhythm that plays up His Purpleness’s knack for whispery weightlessness and deep grooves.

The lyrics are the album's strong suit, and for the first time ever Darnielle will be releasing them with the album, allowing for easy dissection.

A Church feels a little long, and getting through it requires a certain amount of emotional energy, but it's well worth the effort.

The quartet is at its best when hushed, autumnal and kaleidoscopic. Still, you can’t blame them for trying to push the envelope.