An intimate, intelligent, and always transporting cycle of songs that sends VanGaalen closer to his own voice and, in the process, closer to us.

Bound Stems have the rarefied ability to make that mess sound gorgeous, as if all were in its right place even when it's held together by chewing gum in some spots.

Perceived loss of self is a risk Desveaux herself takes in making music so largely bereft of easy cultural or regional signifiers, yet the keenness of her songcraft makes these hard-won, universal sentiments far more rewarding than most lazy splashes of local color.

They're this close to being a rock band while still sounding like their weird selves, which makes this their most accessible album to date.

Because of its multifarious song types--leftfield club thumpers, futuristic sex ditties, and funky space jams--some will contend that Sweaty Magic lacks cohesion, that it's too ADD to be listenable, but I would argue that is precisely Rafter's point.

Nights Out may turn in a little too early, but for about three songs, it wrests synth pop supremacy from Metronomy's many competitors.

It feels like exactly what it is: a slipshod collection of songs constructed intermittently, in broad strokes, over a period of years.

The Holy Pictures turns out to be very much a soundtrack--but one in which heart and mind prove to be as inspiring a source as any script Hollywood throws at him.

"But now I'm back." And he is, with his finest non-"Smile" album since the golden age of the Beach Boys. Lucky us.

End Titles rewards just about any amount of listening investment equally, and it completely lacks sharp edges.

Bolstered by a gimmick and a catchphrase, the album is by-and-large Jeezy qua Jeezy, and the new fissures aren't enough to keep pundits gabbing.

Shall Noise Upon is a great record, and an impossible one to digest in just one sitting. That's hardly a problem, though, because coming back to it is so rewarding.

proVISIONS is no exception, its array of peyote rock, twilight ballads, space cowboy soundtracks, and spooky sidetracks off the beaten path on par with the band's best work.

These elements [traces of her jazz and blues-rock past] add splashes of unexpected color to these songs, bringing the extroversion of those styles to the too often introverted genre of indie pop and making Hummingbird, Go! sound to big for any kitchen to contain.

This new record is a more favorable look at the 00s Chemical Brothers than its predecessor, and its 2xCD version features a better bonus disc than the 2003 model.

Every song on the album is crafted with clinical meticulousness, its production clean as a whistle, but like a flawlessly constructed garment lacking in inventive design it ultimately falls short.

There are enough instrumental interludes and understated melodies here to make the record a grower, and it eases into the sunset for much of its back half.

While Manuva's unorthodox style is a unique pleasure, too often his flow can be laconic to the point of being subliminal--a good portion of Slime & Reason's midsection demands attention, but doesn't necessarily deserve it, not when the beats that support his rhymes are just-below-scale like the budget g-funk of "Kick Up Ya Foot".

In 1997, this kind of thing--crisp, echoing guitars, provincial strings, existential moodiness--actually sounded kind of exciting. Just over a decade later, though, the exact same recipe, prepared exactly the same way, conjures up new dominant aftertastes: false profundity, compositional laziness, and outsized egos.

The Golden State band Golden Animals mine that particular epoch of mild psych and blues rock--especially the middle part, when 60s idealism gave way to the dope-daze haze of the 70s--for all it's worth on Free Your Mind and Win a Pony, the duo's solid enough debut.

Never mind the retro-gazing moniker-- The Week That Was is a band you need to hear now.

That inferiority complex and desperate need for approval keeps L.A.X. surprisingly entertaining even though there are far more weak tracks on it than good ones.

It's not a case of Solange performing best when she jettisons her ambition, but rather her need to find a way to let her avant inclinations work with rather than against her pop instincts, and maybe the best way for that to happen is to let the former emerge organically through the latter.

As much work as Sweet clearly put into this disc, hearing him glide instead of soar makes it all sound too easy, which sadly makes it that much easier to forget.

Motorhead do what they do best: be Motorhead.

The band's superhuman patience and dirty minimalism seem fit for longer, more sprawling works. Instead, they're stuck in limbo between catchiness and craftsmanship.

Listeners are left wondering if they’ve just gorged on an Anglo response to J-pop, a post (white-)boy-band attempt to alley-oop new jack swing, or the work of a Scissor Sister gone solo.

Plush's vision was obviously reaching beyond his abilities when making this album, and though that's commendable--better to try and fail than not try at all--sometimes you acheive less on the road to greatness.

There's something to be said for a debut album that so vehemently defies conformity, even if it kinda cuts off its nose to spite its face in the process.

By paying attention to detail, Yttling and Li's prove that doesn't have to be [an impossible task]. But even more impressive is the way their intimate, playful miniatures capture the daring and novelty of modern pop, as well as its hooks.

It's rare for a band to survive the death of a key member, but Ra Ra Riot are actually thriving, turning The Rhumb Line from a potential "what could've been" record into a rousing, poignant testament to Pike's life and his former bandmates' resilience.

To that end, the whole album has a lightness of touch that makes it sound warm and comfortable, especially after the sad weight evident on the also-excellent "Margerine Eclipse."

Like the Blood Brothers, Take Me to the Sea is united by Whitney's voice, impossible to ignore as it slides between seemingly any style that could be described using the verb "wail."

You & Me isn't as hard or immediate as the band's earlier records, but that's not a complaint; Its sound is coy, and invites you to spend time with it.

Earth is a whopping 70 minutes long, and at no point in it do we get an idea of what exactly the fuck the Dandy Warhols are trying to tell us.

Oceans Will Rise is not a bad album, but it is very much the sound of a band still trying to figure out who they are--and in fairness, they have lost and gained a member since their first record. But three albums into a career, they should have a better idea than this.

The joy of watching them not fly off the rails made even the weaker shows worth hearing. But in turning that experience into a scrapbook, Remember kills the magic.

Lindstrom knows all the right moves to give his own brand of spacey disco an air of transcendence, but the result feels so effortless that his facsimile and the "real thing" become indistinguishable--a fake so real it's beyond fake.

Songs this bitter demand catharsis, but nestled in its pop cocoon, that side of Hatfield's story instead gets stifled by the soft bomb approach when what you really want is for the singer, once and for all, to explode in rage and break something.

On first listen, his second album as Death Vessel may seem passive, even flat-- just competent, non-descript folk-rock. Give it time, though, and Nothing Is Precious Enough For Us proves more intriguing.

These 15 tracks were certainly worth the almost-decade-long wait.

Human Highway work best in this inviting, flickering-campfire headspace, and for an amiable if ephemeral 40 minutes, Moody Motorcycle offers a pleasant soundtrack to the dwindling days of the summer.

This is clearly a band with some musicology under its collective belt, and its members have the technical skill to fold their diverse interests into guitar rock without forcing anything; the surprises come fast and, often, satisfyingly. But Haege's big voice puts a lot of emphasis on the prolix lyrics, which remain dismal.

As a pure lyrical record goes, Pro Tools doesn't disappoint, but fans who want everything to be a banger will be let down to find that there's not a lot of headknock here.

The Uglysuit are certainly competent, but on this debut their music feels too by-the-book.

Mugison's vigorous showmanship--effectively conjuring the writhing, sweaty-browed anguish of a man of the cloth who's been caught in a by-the-hour motel with his pants down--isn't always enough to elevate his songs beyond genre exercises.

Produced by John Agnello, Here With Me features a small roster of musicians, including her regular backing trio, who do a fine job of complementing O'Connor's melodies without intruding on her personal space.

Don’t Be a Stranger is a charming collection by a confident and competent group of musicians, but its drawback is its same-ness.

The quiet-to-loud dynamics aren't forced, the ahh-ahh backing sighs come at the exact right moments, the church bells on the title track sound like god. These songs are simple, mostly, but they're executed perfectly.

An Invitation adds a new chapter to that story, told in an unmistakably American idiom fusing Broadway and Tin Pan Alley and Copland, spotlighting Inara George as a sophisticated new voice and confirming Van Dyke Parks, at 68, as an inexhaustibly vital national treasure.

Tittsworth has produced, by and large, an album of potential novelty singles. That's fine--you can argue that some of the best records are novelty records--but the problem is that most of the tracks on 12 Steps are neither particularly novel nor memorable.

It's angry and ferocious, but always triumphant.

At its best, Astrological Straits is a mashup of Liars tribalism, Boredoms bombast, Smell-scene art-punk, Lightning Bolt repeti-grooves, and Frank Zappa prog-overload. All this sonic hyperactivity can be exhausting, and Hill's fondness for effects, especially in his Vocoder-ish vocals, makes some tracks robotic, more like exercises than songs.

The Faint are sounding way out of their depth on the Important Concepts front, while seeming perfectly at home on material about relationship-muck.

Oberst has traded in a lot of his post-adolescent trembling for a calmer, less unbridled melancholy, but Conor Oberst is still packed with disheartening realities, and Oberst refuses to temper his pessimism, even when it starts to feel heavy and contrived, more like a narrative tic than anything else.

A whole album of these sort of showy gestures would likely prove exhausting, but the Strips are careful not to overdo it, and Girls and Weather is stacked with singles that condense the band's energy and enthusiasm into more compact bursts of joy.

Brazilian Girls have no problem making their mish-mash sound downright normal, which in a way it is.

Even if Preteen Weaponry is one more left turn out of many in the band's catalog, it nonetheless reaffirms what makes Oneida stand out.

The Airborne Toxic Event is an album that's almost insulting in its unoriginality.

Re-Up Gang is sort of like going out for a nice meal and filling up on bread.

'Someone Like You' is the stand-out track on a fairly solid album, but how much better would they have sounded with a little judicious editing and a sharper focus.

Bits is streaked with irreverence, whether for C&W formality (the intuitively simple melodies of 'Featherbeds' and 'Young Love Delivers'), instrumental tightness (at times, they can make No Age sound like the Famous Flames) or lyrical artifice.

Most of the seven tracks crammed between these fine bookends, including two undistinguished instrumentals, run together in a modal drone, lacking urgency or emotional inflection.

Old Days features all the objective elements of useful rarities disc, but it's doubly valuable for reminding us of a Mirah that might've grown up too fast.

The result is pale, beefy, and contemptuous.

Oh! Mighty Engine is endlessly pleasant but oddly faceless, a record strangely free of feeling.

Double Bubble is neither deep or dense enough for electronic connoisseurs, nor is it brash enough to spawn another "Connected" with kids sprung off of Justice or Hot Chip.

Instead of a symbolic death, The Slip feels much more like a possible rebirth.

This stands pretty much alone in Weller's catalog in terms of sheer eclecticism and unpredictable, dream-like flow.

Every part of Life Processes seems meticulously calculated with such antecedents in mind, laid out in every detail and implemented exactly to referential specification.

The joycore bricolage of CSS is all but missing on Donkey.

Fate still manages to be a master class in illusory "good" songwriting. The bulk of it is so fenced into classicist templates-- chamber-y pop meets maximum R&B with the occasional smidge of "tasteful" gospel/parlour games ("Hang On") that, even when merely competent, it can still win over those unimpressed with all that punk and hip-hop riff raff of the past three decades.

Mostly, Something lives up to its everyman title by removing the truly heart-pounding moments of a BSS record and replacing them with a sense of community, easy friendship, and a kickass guitar pedal collection.

The songs here are almost all identical: polyrhythmic miniatures built by small drums and shakers, clouded by blankets of echo and reverb; deliberately basic structures; short, and in their own way, catchy and pretty.

Muhly has talent and an eager curiosity; the problem is, this inquisitive intelligence often finds more meaningful expression in his interviews (or on his gabby, regularly updated blog) than in his music.

This meandering quality might put off some listeners, but to my ears, Azeda Booth have figured out how to reconcile pop music's infectiousness with ambient music's nebulous aura, and have produced one of 2008's most unique and immediately pleasurable albums.

While Bodies of Water are always noted for their vocal prowess, those guitar parts, like the fuzzy garage-rock figure that drives 'Under the Pines' alongside a psychedelic organ vamp, showcase a newfound muscularity to David's playing and riff writing.

Laulu connotes this youth, motion, and playfulness in various states of repair and construction, and it does so by alternating well-formed, multi-faced pop songs with abstract head-scratchers, each component as warmly evocative and strangely necessary as the last.

Its stylized, specific, and unflinching sound roars with a singular menace, at once terrifying and captivating.

If this attempted reconciliation produces moments of both elation and frustration, well, the band's erratic track record gives us no real reason to expect otherwise.

While they continue to prove themselves a more convincing classic rock act than should be possible in 2008, there's a tension in this album's lyrics between old-fashioned storytelling and breaking down the fourth wall. Stay Positive is their mostly successful bid to have it both ways.

Even when the vocals are being run through processors and the guitars are distorted, it still feels managed, and a lack of high-range makes it inviting and easy to listen to even at its noisiest.

On Untitled you get to decide whether you prefer Nas thoroughly exploring half-assed concepts or half-assedly exploring thorough concepts.

The beats on Story never quite cohere, and tracks like 'Uncle Swac Interlude,' an endless phone conversation with Banner's drunk uncle, further interrupt the flow.

This album is a vital addition to the Congotronics series, and anyone who's enjoyed the series so far needs to hear it.

Though Modern Guilt is more direct and consistent than his last two scattershot LPs, it also finds the disillusioned L.A. hippie struggling to balance his deathly outlook with his more crowd-pleasing inclinations.

On the whole, Cómo's not a weaker album than "YTK," but it sounds like it's overcompensating for its likely increased exposure.

There's nothing intrinsically flawed about what's otherwise a solid instrumental record, but so much of it feels so close to many of the things happening on the radio and the pop charts right now that, 90 seconds into a song, the mind might start wandering and wondering what this kind of stuff would sound like with Wale or Rihanna on top of it.

This band is still nearly as big, as slow, as lumberingly loud as they were in the days Kurt Cobain was trying out for a spot on bass.

The first disc, a June 2005 concert at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, starts out lifeless, with little variety in Smith's voice or Shields' metronomic guitar. Halfway through the hour-long performance, things pick up, as Smith yells fervent imperatives over shimmering waves from Shields' amp.

Poring through hardball's rich history with the exhaustiveness of true geeks but the wit and empathy of born songwriters, Wynn and McCaughey repeatedly manage to draw effortless metaphorical lines between baseball and life.

With this album she has created an experiment of enormous sonic range and openness--at 14 tracks this leaves a lot of room in which to expand, yet the sound never strays from its essential logic and reveals something new at every turn.

Someone Else's Déjà Vu would've benefitted from Knapp making a stronger claim of ownership to his lofty visions.

Skeleton's flaws are few and often obscured by the album's mixing: Vidal's vocal adds an additional rhythmic layer, but his lyrical work is interesting enough to be more pronounced and less muddied.

Rather than fully implementing Earlimart Phase Two, as they have hinted, the duo is still dressing up the same minimally satisfying ditties in ruffly fuzz; its still scrupulously orchestrating the same kinds of songs that appear on simpler, better Earlimart records.

Somewhere on the way to novelty-fame, Three 6 Mafia lost something, and these days they sound like they're just going through the motions.

Lush, melancholic, gregarious, generous, both precise and a little bit unhinged--this is the most original American dance album in a long while.