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.

Secret Machines remain the same band responsible for 'Now Here Is Nowhere' and 'Ten Silver Drops,' which means the toughest tracks often still devolve into hypnotic grooves and motorik mutations, and the gentlest starts often lead to the most bombastic conclusions.

However disparate its geographic points of reference, Temper is an artistically consistent, tonally temperate, record--depending on your taste, maybe a little too balmy and dispassionate.

Changing of the Seasons feels like the record where Brun's lack of range catches up to her.

Houdini sounds like an attempt to escape from the predicament of the sophomore album, making more nuanced use of orchestration and sticking with a comfortingly sweet and naïve tone while also expanding its perspective.

Unfortunately, this humanity doesn't translate to the music. The performances are flawless, but overly so.

Stretching the sinews of their sound almost to the breaking point, Religious Knives find a balance between the repetitive rhythmic skeleton of krautrock and the psychedelic keyboard thrusts of early Doors.

Despite it all, Reefer is Thorburn's best album of the year, and it is so successful because it feels tossed off, like he's not trying so hard.

The fact that this dorkiness has enveloped a few usually-on-point guests (MF Doom, Mr. Lif & Akrobatik, DJ Shadow) is unfortunate enough; that it's being perpetrated by two MCs who've been consistently great since the early- to mid-90s just makes it more frustrating.

As a backing mini-orchestra, Elf Power and the Strums may not be as inventive as Lambchop or as dark as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but they give Chesnutt just want he needs: a relaxed and less rehearsed environment.

Civil War shows a band that's matured in some typical ways-- as if anyone was clamoring for "broadened perspective" from these guys-- and some unexpected and not unwelcome ones.

Musically, Nicolay's in his comfort zone, making the sort of album he'd been more or less heading towards since "Connected," an album that, while certainly rooted in hip-hop, knocked like a pillow fight.

It's an intriguing approach that yields a few great songs, but because of the glut of similar material, these standout tracks tend to get lost in a neutralizing fog of sameyness.

It's still a heartily ramshackle affair, with pots and pans for percussion, rudimentary banjo picking, and what sound like first take on every track. The album's clattery rawness is its chief appeal.

In the end, though, Everything Is Borrowed's musical high points aren't enough to save it from its lyric sheet, and that, going forward, constitutes a real problem for Skinner.

for now we're stuck with Dig Out Your Soul, which like every Oasis album from 1997's "Be Here Now" onward, makes cursory gestures toward making the band's mod-rock more modernist, before reverting back to the same ol', same ol'.

Consider OH the "most Lambchop" of Lambchop releases, as it swings through almost every tone in the band's history of influence-collisions, arriving at a soul of its own.

Maggie balks at the chance to make your knees go wobbly, keeping its allure strictly intellectual and technical rather than hot-blooded. That ethos isn't going to win a lot of hugs and kisses from fans or non-fans, but Maggie never asks for more than a firm, professional handshake, the kind of appreciation it more than deserves.

Break Up the Concrete seems a bit uneven: The faster numbers begin to sound the same after a while, and the album hits a slight lull halfway through.

She's never been as in control of her voice, an incredible instrument that is as strong as it is attractive. And on The Living and the Dead, it's found just the right setting.

City of Refuge seems more like a collection of ideas for three or four different albums than one complete work.

Their latest record has more instruments and lyrical or melodic turns than hooks to hold onto, but its problem is more like an excess of ideas than a lack of them.

It's obsessive and choppy. It's playful. It's gleefully oblivious of when to shut up.

Un Día is as warm and welcoming as it is weird, but it's also something of an experiment.

It might seem counterintuitive to call Chemistry a grower: From the first listen, it's both pummeling and riveting.

As violent, plaintive, and ultimately conflicted as anything she's already written ("I know how to kill but I hate how it feels."), many of Powell's lyrical sketches are of the blood red, open-heart-surgery variety, a word set her producer knows well.

Ferndorf as a record isn't something to get you hearing music in a new way or an open up a new world, but it does succeed very nicely for what it is.

Ambitious and complex, it's stuffed with cocooning harmonies and shimmering, sunlight-smacking-the-Pacific melodies--a languid, easy West Coast record (think Randy Newman or SMiLE), infused with classic East Coast anxiety.

We all know a little something about chasing that ideal version of ourselves, and Antony's persistence in the face of futility makes it a joy to run by his side.

On Doomsdayer's Holiday, the haze is even thicker, and the album represents a sort of endpoint to their journey: taking place in utter blackness, it is their most alluring and impenetrable trip yet.

It's an album with its feet on the ground and its head in the clouds, and listening to it is a lot like waiting contentedly in a kind of musical purgatory, happy to be there but still wondering what comes next.

So among Forfeit/Fortune's many misses, Bachmann can't help but hit a few.

XOXO still manages a lonesome, crowded sound. Whether it's the sturdy chord progressions, overstuffed lyrics, or just Bianchi's tendency to avoid with melodies with contours his voice can't match, most of XOXO is likeable, if not a little tough to parse.

The set most vividly captures the Clash's most enduring qualities: the triumphs and tribulations of being populist punks.

Most of all, it's Díaz-Reixa's intuitive feel for rhythm that marks out Alegranza! as such an unusual and enticing listening experience.

He is, to put it bluntly, one of those people who gets it right far more often and in more different ways than your ordinary person really should. Uproot is another one of those instances.

The result is a collection of songs so taut and concisely resonant as to be psalms.

The debut's boring, not awful, but until the band stops sounding like they have a hundred cooler things to do than be in a studio, it's hard to imagine them as anything more than surf muzak.

Though the concept of "growth" can border on illusory, the shady, gnarled Black Forest comes on less strong than Pale Young Gentlemen, but is ultimately a lot harder to shake than its charming, if slightly hammy predecessor.