Working on a Dream works hard on sound, but sleeps on actual songs.

Like a Mojave Desert mirage shimmering tantalizingly before disappearing, Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future is ultimately left little more than a string of sweet nothings, there for your fleeting pleasure. It's a pop tease.

The opening Wright sample is a hard look back at a year most people would already rather forget, but it's a perfect intro for Gutter Tactics, an album that draws much of its strength from the same well of outrage and disaffection.

It's Svanangen's record in miniature: It preserves what was fleetingly great about Loney, Noir while proving that Svanangen has more tricks in his bag than most people thought possible.

It also probably means that we'll be getting something new from Nau the next time around. Switching between musical characters is obviously Nau's default setting, and for all of its pleasantness, Paranoid Cocoon, in the context of his career thus far, feels like transition music over a costume change.

Time of the Assassins could have used a few more trips to the Rolodex to bring in a ringer of a singer or two, since Fraiture doesn't seem up to the task, or necessarily even into it.

There's that unmistakable "side project" air surrounding this record, the sense that this is just an enjoyable way to wile away time during hiatuses in other endeavors.

It's of the moment and feels new, but it's also striking in its immediacy and comes across as friendly and welcoming.

Simultaneously sparse and rich, The Crying Light mines maximum intensity from a relatively minimal mix of basic melodies, pithy lyrics, and understated arrangements.

Like Wonder, Guilty has its share of up-tempo tracks, yet its real pleasures are idiosyncratic, revealing themselves the more attentively and often you listen.

The sometimes drifting song structures, frequent tonal shifts, odd lyrics, and interludes presented a stuffed canvas full of interesting sounds that didn't seem to have a focal point, didn't seem to have a place where you were supposed to enter the composition. Eventually, however, everything fell into place.

Luckily, Grand features not only some of the band's most personal lyrics, but also some of its most universal.

Blood Bank certainly dispels concerns that Vernon's accomplishment was somehow environmental--that "For Emma's" poetic circumstances, and not its contents, were responsible for its success.

Mercer's able to fill cavern-like spaces with the might of his many soliloquies. Easy listening or not at all, it's why Skin of Evil--here and gone in just 30 minutes--remains so gripping: Some turns are capable of provoking a physical reaction.

Never has that rift between Pollard the songwriter and Tobias the arranger been more transparent-- and more problematic-- than on the formless, often dull The Crawling Distance, a particularly blank batch of Pollard tunes dressed to the nines in Tobias' perfunctory sheen.

In their slightly glib mastery of pop-song forms, and their apparent belief that great pop music can be forged through sheer force of will, Cut Off Your Hands sometimes recall Bloc Party. The difference, thankfully, is that Nick Johnston seems far more appraochable and grounded.

Drone Trailer arrives--after numerous CD-Rs and tapes of cross-cultural, relentlessly unconventional music to stargaze by--bearing principally unthreatening, old-fashioned rock'n'roll.

Not everything here fails in such catastrophic fashion, but because the band noodles its way through Mirror Eye's druggy, sitar-laced exercises without any thought towards coherence (or completion), even its few promising tracks feel slapdash and unfinished.

The collection is a timely, if at times exhaustive, introduction to the Six Organs origin myth.

At its best moments, the debut sounds like an A.V. club president's wet dream, unabashedly nerdy and technically proficient. Sadly though, the record is peppered with aesthetically dubious nu-rave moments, making LOTP sound less like sympathetic revenging nerds and more like party-crazed dude-bros who just happen to own synths.

Apart from those ['Hey Dad!,' 'World/Inferno vs. the End of the Evening,' 'Dead Sailors'] and the relatively slight 'Do We Not Live in Dreams?,' though, Major General hits some massive highs and nary a single crushing low.

In their rush to be the UK's most important band, they seem to have ignored restraint, charisma, and charm--the qualities that made them Next Big Thing candidates in the first place.

Haymaker! is a typically witty, rambunctious album that shuffles up the band members like a deck of cards.

Every synth setting and drum sound and vocal technique on I Think We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat is a pastiche of a sort of thing you've heard before.

The rest of the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack consists of Rahman's evocative score, which meshes pounding technoid percussive-heavy pieces (such as "Riots" or "Mausam And Escape") and slightly less forceful cues (such as "Ringa Ringa"), some of which seem designed to bring to mind specific moments in the film, some to evoke more general emotions.

Anyone who buys this without owning Ironman, Supreme Clientele or Fishscale is going to miss the bigger picture, and anyone who buys it while already owning those albums isn't gaining much at all.

Universal Mind Control is a painful misstep from a talented rapper who's decided to be as nasty as he wants to be--which turns out to be much, much nastier than we'd like.

A Cross the Universe isn't close to anyone's definitive idea of what a document of a live Justice show should be, but it's a diverting, sometimes-bizarre look into the first phase of fame for an aughts-era cult pop phenomenon.

Her own versions aim at some druggily evocative conception of 60s soul, which makes them pale next to the originals.

If Brighten the Corners signaled a turn to the serious, the 32 outtakes and radio-session cuts compiled here give Pavement plenty of room to, as one B-side aptly puts it, "fuck around."

The guests regularly outshine the hosts, but each has a variation on the sort of rugged, gruff flow that doesn't leave Erick or Parrish gasping.

And yet, that Emeritus often seems more righteous than cynical or hopeless (the latter two are a bit soft) is a testament to Scarface strengthening his flow in age.

It's an enjoyable listen in the here and now, which is all an album has to be, even when created by giants.

Forget the technicalities and call it what it is: a messy, glorious, and cohesive artistic document of internet café-era indie life that sounds best when sung by heart.

Electric Arguments holds onto an original Fireman ideal: to make Paul McCartney sound less like Paul McCartney. That it does so within more traditional pop-song presentations-- while steering clear of McCartney's usual preferences for piano-pounded rockers and string-sweetened ballads-- is the ultimate testament to its success.

The album is much larger and brasher than it would first appear--the closer it hews to a mix of sad-sack indie pop and elegant, monied Patrick Bateman commercial 80s sounds, the better it works.

While Theater isn't quite as dire as the above may indicate, like every other Ludacris record, it doesn't grow on you--in fact, it actually contracts.

Just as "Viva" did an admirable job of troubleshooting the band's lazy weaknesses while expanding their sound, Prospekt's March offers a truncated version of their svelte and marginally progressive new formula.

Alone was worth the occasional cringe to show Cuomo's experiments and sonic baby photos through the years, especially after three studiously formulaic records.

This mix might not help the Rapture pass every test of the best club DJs, but when it comes to maybe the most important one--the ability to make clubbers push their way to the booth and breathlessly ask for the title of that amazing cut they just dropped--they've done their studying.

This is the Killers' spitball album, the one where they try everything and see what works while Flowers grasps for a relatable tone.

Black Sea is positively huge while also being much more accessible. You get a sense here of how far Fennesz has come, how far his music reaches, and the unexplored possibilities that still exist.

In the City is proof that you can co-opt the most retarded aspects of 80s corporate rock and still not be any fun.

Even if Chinese Democracy had dropped a decade previous, it would still sound dated.

As a portrait of this ageless artist as a truly young man, Sugar Mountain is an invaluable document--and a pretty compelling one, too.

While this LP is more painstaking than B'Day, the extra effort dulls any emotional wallop; "B'Day," in all its hectic glory, offered a much more vivid peek into the elusive mind of Beyoncé than Sasha Fierce, which often reads more like projection than reality.

Campbell's vocals sound breathless on the radio show, as she displays little vocal control, gasping for air between words and syllables. Despite that, it's still a worthy artifact.

While Sunday at Devil Dirt may be more of the same (with glimpses of Tom Waits' junkyard blues tossed in to good effect), Campbell and Lanegan were never out to do anything different.

It's packed with ideas, some of which work beautifully and some of which are just a joy to hear play out, but most of all, it's still a whole other world of pop music--an absolutely unique, enchanting, and irreplaceable vision of how the stuff can work.

The unnatural and unnerving smoothness of Canopy Glow shows that if there was any one Anticon record that deserved to be called Alopecia, it's this one.

While it's pleasing to see Ripatti further hone his familiar sound, I can't help but prefer the alchemy of the new: The best moments on Convivial transpose that unmistakable air of aching longing onto a broader, less predictable sonic palette.

The Singles' six originals would make for a disconnected night out, and no doubt an energetic live show, but they're a wild ride in headphones.

It may not deliver the same jolt as its predecessor, but its somewhat cleaner production highlights Love Is All's strengthened pop prowess.

The first disc is fine, containing most of the band's singles and a few key album tracks. The second is messier.

This collection isn't for fans, but for those who haven't dug deeper than Ships, or for those wrongly convinced Ships was a blip in an otherwise dense and unrewarding discography.

Glider 's derivativeness and inertia put a cap on its capacity to astonish, but it has a protracted shelf life. It's consummate mood music, which goes a long way toward compensating for its shortcomings.

By-the-Numbers probably wouldn't have ever been played much on the radio in the past couple of decades, and its mood is more relaxing than fun, but it's a lovely set of covers that sound like they could've been originals

Secrets has its finger on the pulse of mainstream radio, judging from its oppressive sonics. But stuck between a tired, nebulously elucidated artistic direction and their own nebulously elucidated commercial aspirations, they just sound a whole lot like the major-label also-rans that they actually are.

It's hard to complain too much about such a brighter-day kind of record, and it feels like the perfect album at the perfect time-- released on Election Day, appropriately enough, as the ideal soundtrack for Barack Obama winning the presidency.

Little Joy is not going to stop the world or change your life, but it's one of the sweetest, most listenable, consistently enjoyable records of the season.

Underneath these filmy and seductive layers is not a band in limbo. This may be Wild Beasts' first album, but they've got a fully developed aesthetic, one that is thematically and vocally alien, but sonically, pop and conventional.

Despite the band's two-year hiatus, (k)no(w)here's incremental shifts-- slower tempos, starker arrangements, and the addition of McCann's high, keening backing vocals (which, somewhat disconcertingly, recall Journey's Steve Perry)-- advance the drama.

It's a miracle Reed was able to turn one of the most hermetic albums of all time into a communal experience, but Live at St. Ann's was also a one-time-only slight of hand: Berlin will forever be a record best enjoyed alone.

Fordlândia trilogy is simultaneously skillful, gorgeous, and a bit too polished--they're a pristine composition on a record full of them, but it doesn't gel with the messy, self-destructive historical footnotes that inspired them.

Her follow-up, Silence Is Wild, sounds not only more assured in its arrangements and performances, but more lively for being so self-indulgent.

Surfing troublingly ends with three plodding failures (including the seven-minute "Sayulita") that feel at odds with the record's fuck-all spirit.

Good ideas lurk throughout the album, but they either disappear under the weight of too much echo and overdubbing, or get pushed aside as a result of what I'd imagine is either a lack of discipline or dissenting voice during the creative process.

Money is no less creative or searching than Skeletons' previous works, but it trades too many of their fantastical charms for scurrying reality.

While Okereke has described Intimacy as a break-up album, it feels like more of a document of a band disconnected from itself.

It's not all great--'You Want History' can't overcome rhyming "mystery" with "history" or its leaden coda, for example--but it is at least as good as their debut, if not just a tick better for its relative dynamic and tonal variety.

Heart On does reveal a slightly maturing sense of pop songcraft from Hughes and Homme.

The only problem is that the rambling approach that let Smith get these things out has kept the results from being all they might have been.

A Hundred Million Suns is rife with the sense of a band striving to be taken more seriously, whether through rocking more manfully, displaying a more sophisticated subtlety, or simply stringing together three ponderous, already-overlong songs and calling the impenetrable result a 16-minute stand-alone epic.

Here, the band comes into their own by applying their own inspiringly distinctive, bleakly appealing sensibility to whatever ideas happen to move them.

The disc infuses folk with frenetic intensity, but it's all so over the top that it's hard to take it as anything more than a distraction, like an annoying buzz or a particularly scratchy pair of wool socks.

Following those pleasantly modest, Paste-worthy beginnings, however, Adams draws the blinds entirely and Cardinology starts sliding into self-indulgent banality of a sort so pinched and uninviting it makes Conor Oberst seem like Will Rogers.

As the languid classical guitar that dots the album brings it to a close, it hits that this 44-minute opus is perhaps more inviting, and more melodic, than anything Jenkinson has done in a long time.

Throughout Alpinisms, the group finds a perfect middle ground between the indie realms of tribal and choral, layering electronic flourishes without letting them overwhelm the arrangements.

Crystal Stilts make terrific use of their recycled material, appropriating favorite forebears' brooding moves (and their richly endowed signifiers), and contributing their own deft hooks and stealth energy.

The tracks currently being dusted off in his archive, however, have so far been dependably strong, despite being mostly unfinished tracks of incredible musical variety.

While the first 20 minutes supply an appropriately cocaine-like high (with the requisite comedown), what's really missing is the debut they somehow skipped over, one where they could've showed where their passion comes from, rather than merely being actors in a Hills-hop hybrid.

So yeah, the tricks are clever; unfortunately, musically, There's Me... is an overstuffed mess.

As was the case with "Popular Demand" and even the split he did with Fat Ray from earlier this year, you get the odd feeling that Milk put his heart into his work, and yet it feels slightly impersonal, save for the career summary 'Long Story Short.'

Festival Thyme shows there's still enough fight in them to earn a reprieve.

Ultimately Skeletal Lamping registers as a misstep, but not without loads of silver lining.

The sound throughout--as ever recorded and mixed by drummer John McEntire--is gorgeous, and a nice reminder of how thoughtful simplicity can still carry a lot of weight.

Here every sound and beat is laid bare, with no heavy reverb blanketing the songs like fog. The newfound clarity produces neither thinness nor tedium, but simply a direct, unadulterated power.

These ill-advised lyrical moments can be perplexing and occasionally frustrating given the amount of care manifest in the Dears' music, but in a strange way they speak to the band's major non-musical strength: an earnestness decidedly lacking in today's indie landscape.

It's hard to predict where they'll go from here when Receivers sounds as if they've stretched their favorite sonic ideas to the very brink of saturation--but no one could have guessed they'd take them quite this far.

Its sense of genre wanderlust means it's an album that clicks on about the third listen, revealing its character and depth much the way the seemingly random swirl on the cover becomes an alligator lurking just below the surface on further inspection.

For those who haven't yet heard the band's delicate, experimental free-folk compositions, Hush Arbors is a great place to start and adroitly encompasses all of the Virginia based duo's most engaging qualities.

Although it's unfocused by design, Everything is still unfocused. Which is not to say it's inconsistent: a major improvement in this regard over Trainwreck-- which meandered off into ambient oblivion on its final four tracks-- Everything is markedly well assembled.

Which brings us full circle, in a strange way, to DFA79. While the band surely wasn't the headiest of its era, there was a svelte, muscular quality to their music-- a feeling that any excess had been cut away-- that is absent from this record (and, it's worth noting, Keeler's work in MSTRKRFT).

Stay Awake's neither a coda nor a collection of cast-offs or curios. In just over 10 minutes, the EP not only lays out five fresh TNV cuts worthy of any of their LPs, but throws a whole lot more of that "nuance" business all over the place.

For those who missed Frightened Rabbit's last record, those who weren't already enthralled by these tuneful Scots, this album will really come alive.

Exposion isn't so easily characterized--and the group comes off as more versatile, more than DIY Nuggets throwbacks.

While Williams generally sticks to her strengths and suppresses most of her more unsavory musical habits, she maintains her curious reliance on tacky AABB rhyme schemes and lyrical clichés.