While there isn’t a chart-smashing Single Ladies or Baby Boy in the mix, the resulting 14 tracks (plus 17 videos) make her most complete album to date.

The record is full of earnest female backup vocals and frequent reminders (like wind chimes all over the place) that the music is homemade. Yet like a lot of modern folk, the songwriting sometimes gets lost in the shuffle.

A few songs are too long and self-indulgent (Do You Want What I Need, Hold Me), but the fuzzy synths, minor-key melodies and subtle worldy percussion make it very easy listening on the whole.

Despite flashes of melodic and lyrical inventiveness, production-wise Kelly sounds like he’s chasing innovators The-Dream and Mike WiLL Made It, especially on the strip club tracks.

It’s his excellently loose band (featuring M. Ward and Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley), intimate vocals and fondness for chimes that keep the disintegrating threads woven together.

The record revels in the band’s enjoyable madness.

At her best, Sumie evokes the poeticism of Joni paired with the headiness of Mazzy Star. But given the songs’ lack of variation in tone and tempo, an EP might have offered a more focused introduction.

If maturing means 14 (regular edition) tracks of footy-stadium-worthy anthemic choruses ad nauseam, I don’t want 1-D to grow up.

Bejar’s singing with admitted half-fluency in another language is no barrier to enjoyment. Actually, it removes an element of his style that can frustrate some of us.

On Sail Out, Jhené Aiko remains on her cloud, delivering 30 minutes of alt-R&B respite from reality, displaying soothing vocals, double-entendre-laden wordplay and a knack for choosing collaborators.

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.

The first release under eclectic singer/songwriter Solange Knowles’s boutique label, Saint Records, the younger Knowles weaves a collection of alt-R&B songs together seamlessly.

While the songs are hella catchy and pleasant, a little more grit and sorrow would have bridged the emotional disconnect.

At first, the minimalist acoustic guitar and Canning’s murmured vocals sound almost nonchalant, but his deft playing and nuanced arrangements elevate tracks like However Long and Bullied Days.

Their five-song EP produced by Dave Grohl and featuring covers of songs by ABBA, Depeche Mode, Roky Erickson and Army of Lovers is ridiculously lightweight.

Irony’s the entry point, the aesthetic and intellectual rigging that supports the record, a way into enjoying it.

Bad Religion’s Christmas album is one of the most unusual in recent memory.

It never really achieves the celestial heights of Cosmic Sky, every song after the opener feeling too much like an extended comedown, but From The Ages is an essential record for anyone who likes the sound of guitars sounding like guitars.

There’s a built-in redundancy to a Linkin Park remix album. Their music already sounds like hard rock that’s been tweaked by a knowledgable 15-year-old on his first laptop.

Protest the Hero have never been short on energy, but their fourth album lacks variety and rarely allows the listener to breathe.

Ortega is more convincing when she leaves the music biz out.

There are a few clunker lyrics--Grainger’s at his strongest when he’s singing about making love, not having sex--but overall it’s a worthy record from an artist who refuses to make the same one twice.

It’s an effortless but unpredictable experience. Hynes may not turn up until midway through a song, but he glides seamlessly into the album’s comfortable atmosphere.

For all of Lady Gaga’s talking points, the fusion of art and pop has resulted in a lot of familiar dance-pop--more artful for its campiness than its musical innovation.

M.I.A. is good at circumventing dance music clichés, often through sheer polyrhythmic excess; it’s hard to stay still during effusive bangers like Y.A.L.A., Matangi and tribal-trap anthem Warriors. On the flip side, Matangi’s forays into left-field pop (Come Walk With Me, Lights) are blandly saccharine compared with // / Y /’s pure pop moments.

While the Marshall Mathers LP sputtered toward the end, the sequel gets better past the halfway mark.

Free Your Mind is ego-free party music that will fit comfortably onto a variety of dance floors.

The most listenable song is the Chavril duet Let Me Go, which has zero of either musician’s “edge” and a whole lot of adult contemporary schmaltz.