The whole album lacks focus. Williams jumps around from big band to Pet Shop Boys electro to piano ballads to easy rocking. The one common thread is overproduction.

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

Besides turning out impeccable vocal, guitar and banjo performances, he infuses each song with a timeless minimalism undoubtedly developed through years of propping up others.

Bicycle begins with an infectious melancholy hook, opens up with a perfectly placed vocal line steeped in regret and ends with Peter Hook-inspired guitars over a choir. Breathtaking stuff.

The album adheres to a less-is-best philosophy, and the songs sound effortless. It’s simple, straightforward and immediate, just like the first Strokes album.

Whatever the case, Ratitude is both a clunker and a fitting end to a decade in which Weezer continuously spiralled downward.

It’s a bummer that Slayer’s November 13 Air Canada Centre show, and their entire tour, has been postponed due to lead singer/bassist Tom Araya’s back problems, but we can console ourselves with their excellent new album, which finds the dark-minded, serial-killer-obsessed California thrashers keeping all things in balance.

I remember being disappointed after subsequently discovering Bleach, the band’s debut. It didn’t have Nevermind’s hooks, precise quiet/loud dynamics or Butch Vig’s glossy production. Years later, it’s those attributes that make Bleach so endearing.

Packed with lo-fi-meets-nu-rave parsings of UK post-punk discontent, the album’s distorted melodies are immediately catchy yet convey brooding emotional depth.

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 Ween/Animal Collective/early-Beck thing works on Don’t Go Phantom and You Cried Me, but you have to stomach Jookabox’s tendency to chipmunkify their voices. Still, both tracks are enjoyably balanced.

Some will be sad to find that his pulsating vocals and wacky storytelling have subsided, and that his vague lyrics have grown simpler. But anyone who’s avoided Banhart’s hippy-busker tunes now have a reason to give him a chance.

This is the most radio-friendly they’ve ever sounded, and as a result there’s less of that sense of fragile intimacy. That’s not necessarily such a bad thing, especially when it’s replaced by an addictive burning urgency, as it is here.

The band sounds like it’s trying to rejuvenate itself, thus injecting the release with a certain energy and vitality that "R.E.M. Live" lacked.

The newest disc from the once-innovative Vancouver group assaults you with 18 contrived, lazy tracks. The best is a seven-year-old re-release, 'Red Dragon,' from when Moka Only gave this outfit some class.

It’s refined, poised, sweater-and-scarf music to settle down with in advance of winter’s messy hysteria.

If you love car culture, traffic, suburbs or Stevens’s lyrics, this might be where you turn off.

Converge create art-school hardcore while still delivering on metal’s basest needs.

They sound more like a live band than they have since their debut, and this relaxed natural quality suits them perfectly.

Along with this requisite silliness come beautiful melodies (See The Leaves), exploding rock-out sections (The Ego's Last Stand) and catchy, laid-back guitar melodies (Silver Trembling Hands).

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.

Ditto’s lyrics are still a blend of sex and politics, always delivered with enough passion to fill the dance floor and keep it sweaty.

As overwrought as the lyrics are, the songs have an attractive, dreamy, atmospheric quality that helps the London band avoid embarrassing teen melancholy. It's also surprisingly hypnotic.

This album is a stylized, slightly-paranoid romp sure to pluck the heartstrings of anyone who has ever lived life with reckless abandon.

Love 2, their sixth studio album, continues on this path, though its empty lyrics and overall cheesiness do grate.

Yes, the melodies are all bubble-gum lightness, but don’t worry, Raveonettes are still very dark and won’t be making inroads into top-40 radio any time soon.

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

With a name as dumb as Hockey, these Portland hipsters tempt me to dismiss them as having overdosed on irony. But to their credit, there are a few decent new-wavey pop hooks here.