More about lyrical swagger than emotional substance, LiveLoveA$AP is a solid intro to someone who could be an enduring figure in the years ahead.

Unlike Manson's previous records, there's no real guiding concept here, which is probably for the best.

It’s sure not a knockout, but it’s his hardest-hitting album yet. Just don’t call it a comeback.

Gibson is a very talented young artist testing his limits and only occasionally stumbling.

Blue Wave fails to clarify what kind of band Operators truly is. Are they post-punk rabble-rousers? A modern pop band hiding behind retro synths? A gritty indie rock trio? Of course, they're all of the above, with Boeckner happily shape-shifting in between.

It's an interesting listen but doesn't leave a strong impression.

It’s an album of spare and precise beauty, and when it was over I really wanted to see the film.

Compared to his earlier work, it's just decent.

The co-founder of Godspeed You! Black Emperor still makes stumbling experimental rock but fails to improve on his previous work.

Many other songs retread themes of self-doubt and disillusionment, reaching previous levels of intimacy but without taking us anywhere new. Musically, Green does take C&C into somewhat unfamiliar, heavier territory.

Anyone familiar with the Flat Duo Jets will tell you that Dexter Romweber is a helluva guitarist (Jack White is a proud fan club member), yet our boy Dex has always been lacking in the vocal department. So his delivery on Ruins Of Berlin sometimes sounds more like a Buster Poindexter impression of Conway Twitty.

It sounds like fun was had in Dave Grohl's garage, but this good album could've been great had they spent more time songwriting prior to plugging in and cranking up.

The professionalism behind these country-lite treatments keeps the band from sounding as relaxed and spontaneous as they apparently do live.

Whether it’s your thing or not, Music Go Music’s blissed-out pop is, at the very least, well crafted.

His latest mundane disc lacks edge despite sometimes aiming for U2.

The constant dynamic shifts between intimate verses and extroverted choruses become a bit repetitive.

A sprawled-out, futuristic tribute to Diddy's own celebrity.

The end product, however, is an album easy to admire yet tough to love.

Tindersticks’ return to form on their eighth album isn’t evident when you first press play. But look past the uninteresting six-minute jazz drone that opens the album and you’ll see that the prolific English group still has the enough soul to succeed.

Her percussion is often mesmerizing, the glue holding it all together. It’s all cinematic in a broad sort of way, the kind of album you can put on and walk through the streets, imagining how the movie of your own life would unfold. Thematically, it swerves through early 20-something existential angst in a rather predictable and trend-chasing way, which starts to lag and feel samey in the album’s second half.

It’s far from a perfect record, but it’s their best in years.

She may have gone a little too far toward conventional pop, and not all of it rings true.

It's hard to shake the notion that the songs are leftovers from the songwriters' other bands.

Half Moon Run's embracing of bands they love (Radiohead, large swaths of Montreal's breakout mid-00s scene) make much of Sun Leads Me On sound familiar. But it's not so bad to be visited by old friends.

Throwback factor aside, there is a lot of shameless fun on offer, though little imagination. But what they lack in originality they make up for in hooks and enthusiasm.

Pop music is never a purely cerebral exercise, and despite its intriguing concept, The Next Day is woefully short on anything to sing along to.

Album highlight Paper Romance's pulsating, danceable track makes up for the tedious rock-bottom rock-out Look Me In The Eye Sister.

Wiz has never shied away from top-40-baiting tunes many rappers eschew, and he’s crafted a few more on Blacc Hollywood with varying degrees of success.

The songs are ridiculously catchy, albeit predictable and overly comfortable in that 70s folk rock vibe he loves so much.

The pair typically alternate between sexed-up dance-pop and psychedelic ambience, but Tales Of Us is their most pared-down effort in the latter category.

For the first time Audioslave sound more like a cohesive unit than a product of two groups spliced together.

T.I. vs T.I.P. suffers from its star's inability to commit to character.

His major-label debut after years on Def Jux feels status quo for the most part, and new labelmates will.i.am and Snoop only dilute his product with lazy cameos. But there’s still much to admire about Mur’s campaign to turn on some heads.

The album is laden with a nostalgic longing that’s never as compelling as the cinematic leanings.

It’s a collection to bob your head and sing along to, something that will never go out of style.

A sameness runs from track to track--brisk tempos, mid-range key, the loud/soft thing--but if you take time to work out the lyrics, you'll be rewarded with intriguing surrealism, goofy fun (no surprise considering their band name) and, on incendiary pop-punk Psykick Espionage, a welcome dose of badassery.

The result is a very quiet record (possibly reflecting her admittedly timid nature--stage fright was once a big problem for her), but one that rewards a close listen.

There’s something bewitching about this free-form section of Testing, but there’s still that feeling Rocky's stylistic adventurousness--however appealing--is overwhelming lyrics and flows that aren't as ambitious as the production.

When the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach works best, Metal Moon sounds like little bits of all your favourite records glued together into one mutant disc.

It's time to move some units, so quirky's out and tunefulness is in.

Two fundamental problems: he's got an incredible amount of energy, raging away in the high-pitched voice that Eminem haters can't stand, with little to say that he hasn't already said before; and the beats are often middling.

Fans of the Mary Chain's Suicide-meets-Shangri-Las hijinks will have an immediate connection to Sister Vanilla's sweetly sinister sound, particularly when Jim or William steps up to the microphone to add his droning vocals.

A fairly satisfying collection of disposable pop R&B.

It's a solid album with strong production and songwriting, but it won't blow any minds.

A couple of songs sound like Much More Music hits (Breakfast, Forever Be), but a few genuine surprises--the Simon & Garfunkelesque cover of Labi Siffre’s Bless The Telephone, the slow-burning Floyd and country-rocking Friday Fish Fry--demonstrate Kelis’s deft versatility.

While it would have been more interesting if Goodman had channelled her punk roots more consistently, Hour Of The Dawn is full of the catchy songs she’s known for.

There's relative lack of confrontational left turns and endurance-testing meltdowns, which might divide long-time fans over whether this is Wolf Eyes' most boring album or their most "mature."

The Dears' biggest coup with Gang Of Losers, though, is Lightburn's newfound ability to express his own sturm und drang through varied delivery rather than just a bloodcurdling caterwaul.

There’s mountains of potential here, but the initial hype was premature. If he keeps it together long enough for a second album, Williams may deliver on the promise of greatness.

The result is a slick, accessible rap record that's about nine songs too long.

Surrounded by blunt-force catharsis and brandishing some clever, caustic wordplay (like rhyming Lil Boosie with Susan Lucci), Blanco manages to be a pure delight as a rapper, even if he isn't calling himself one.

It’s a masterpiece of uneasy listening but would be a lot more digestible had it been trimmed to a manageable length.

Sonic Youth fans should find plenty to love, but we’re more intrigued by the instances where Moore leaves his established comfort zone.

It's a quick, occasionally dirty and sweetly affecting collection of ballads about ill-fated romance, the Bay City Rollers and letting go of love.

The latter half of WIXIW has enough to offset their plodding attempts to be experimental.

Though murky mixing obscures their incendiary songs, the overall mood of disquiet and anxiety is potent (perhaps prescient?). If only they could shape it into something with more of a jolt.

Although Lay It Down is initially appealing because it has the super­ficial sound of Green’s classic Hi material, you soon discover that Green has nothing terribly deep to offer lyrically, and his vocals are locked on cruise control throughout.

Alphabets picks up where Animal Planet left off and the devastating Labels began in 1995, but it suffers from the law of diminishing returns.

This much material is exhausting to make your way through, the stretches between moments of genius way too long.

There’s a mopey, self-pitying quality to the lyrics, and the duo never once connect with or transmit the sultry passion that existed between those 60s icons [Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot].

Q might appear masked on the album cover, but his explicit tales of hardship, prosperity and loss hide nothing.

More for the dedicated convert than the curious.

Too few of the two dozen half-developed tracks here do justice to Smith's talent as a songwriter.

It may be exactly what fans have been waiting for, but you have to wonder how long the band can keep using the same templates.

There’s no mistaking the album for anyone but Yorke’s, but despite his rep as a singular genius, he does play well with others.

The biggest flaw: the band attempts to cram too many ideas into a song (Cleaning Out The Rooms), particularly in the album's second half.

Hit Reset, the Julie Ruin’s second album, is super-spunky.

They’ve got the formula down now, so you can’t sweat the technique, but it would make for a more engaging spin if Stereolab could mess with the equation now and again.

They’ve topped up every track with so many hooks and contemporary indie rock clichés that their new songs sometimes go right past catchy into corny.

Judging by Devonté Hynes’s ambitiously grand follow-up to Falling Off The Lavender Bridge, with its piano intermissions, ubiquitous orchestra and choral chants, there’s been some Freddy Mercury blaring through his player.

Ultimately, it’s Rubinos’s unflinching lyrics that linger long after Black Terry Cat ends.

Seventies and 80s soul and funk influences shine through on nearly every track.

There are enough good songs to give Queen a pass, but if it’s going to be 19 tracks, it needs to be more consistently awesome.

Grown-up, seductive and a little bit explicit (when it needs to be), it’s a small triumph for guys trying to get in touch with their emotions through the medium of R&B.

Mr. Impossible is easily Black Dice's most accessible album yet, but that's not saying much. It's still very uneasy listening.

It's a solid denouement to Elaenia's touring cycle, and perhaps helps us appreciate that album for its use of exactly the right tools for the job and appropriate scope for its ideas.

It's apparent Nelson doesn't share Adams's enthusiasm for the Fleetwood Mac and Grateful Dead numbers, but he's at home with Gram Parsons's $1,000 Wedding and Leonard Cohen's well-covered Hallelujah.

Papini’s vocals seem scaled back, too--there’s less energetic chattiness and more silent resignation.

They may have quenched their thirst for charging rock, but it’s their mellower songs that stand out.

The production on this unfocused album is, as usual, nothing mind-blowing. Still, Skinner has an insightful charm and a lyrical gift that makes this a respectable send-off.

Their records are blueprints laying out a basic architecture to be improved upon, expanded or subverted when the band plays live. Big Boat offers glimpses of the group's playfulness.

Add in some politicking and dissociative trilling and Wild Water Kingdom is revisionist rap meant for fans who believe in Heems's neurotic, post-post-colonial, lapsed-academic POV.

The overall level of creativity bodes well for Harvey’s next proper solo outing, but this one is a mixed bag.

It might have fewer surprises and off-kilter oddities than we’d hoped for, but it definitely won’t kill your buzz.

After a year of Kanye and Pharrell's Lacoste-sweater-vest raps, this gutter shit should find DMX welcomed back with a vengeance.

Some of the hunger and electricity he displayed in his pre-prison era seems to have diminished. This is something to tide people over until his next record, not an artistic statement by any means.

If you can't stand top-40 contemporary dance pop, don't bother (and consider not leaving your house for the next couple of years). Listen to Contrast with an open mind, though, and you hear a kid with real talent.

Sometimes abruptly but always skilfully, these rhythms drag and push the record to its limit on the existential moaning of the album’s closer, God?

By never taking her spare, mystical tunes down the typical singer/songwriter avenues, Ices sets herself apart from both the New Age and the folky acoustic guitar sets.

Little Broken Hearts is held back by a lack of intimacy and the unemotional stiffness we associate with Jones. Still, it's almost a great album.

Mangan's emotive voice is as assured as ever, and his socially conscious lyrics penetrate. Add in a stark, disillusioned tone and sluggish tempos and it makes for an overly serious listen.

Unfortunately, too many songs have that thin, cheap quality that so many indie dance bands were into a decade ago. Good thing they're so ridiculously catchy.

Initially off-putting due to the pitch-corrector’s close association with the grossest of gross pop, Woods slowly enchants with mesmerizing vocal layers that pay no mind to verse/chorus/verse conventions.

If you can deal with the frequent ridiculousness of the songs, Wild Cat is a fun listen. The production is raw enough to approximate their live sound, and more than a few choruses will get stuck in your head. If you’re looking for much more than that, you’re listening to the wrong band.

It’s full of the proggy rhythmic U-turns, complex structures and virtuoso playing for which the band’s known.

The album's biggest flaw is that Jonsi's opted to sing in English. Sure, we can now understand his lyrics, but hearing about people riding bikes, making out and just gallivanting about derails the experience.

Emotionally, this album doesn’t live up to the principals’ own recent projects, but it’s an energetic, feel-good summer listen--in traditional New Pornographer’s style.