The best executed Harvey Milk album to date, and one of the most accomplished metal records you'll hear this year.

This Is Alphabeat feels labored, sacrificing identity in its endless eagerness to please.

Yes, it's a pleasure to hear Green articulate romantic satisfaction, and good for him if he's satisfied. But the grain and pull of his voice is all about longing for both flesh and spirit, and it doesn't quite fit here.

Songs in A&E is certainly Spiritualized's best work in 10 years.

The kicker is that, without their live/electronic shtick to distinguish them, Midnight Juggernauts don't seem to be anything other than gifted mimics.

Never merely meager, this project delivers, both when you're waving your orgy-snorkel all blotto on-the-town, and for a soundtrack to serious rumination at your midday desk of harsh reality.

It's hard to actually consider Welcome a bad album, mostly because it has this inexplicable likability: It's bizarrely comic without coming across as cheap irony, and it's pretty clear Pants lays down these semi-instrumental jams because he wants to have fun and make noise with some once-expensive, now-dated (and, subsequently, currently underheard) musical machinery.

Nothing to Fear might be the surprise highlight of this collection, even accounting for all the classic stuff on the first disc.

What the title describes is just as ineffable as their sound: you can see it coming down, but somehow it fails to leave any tangible impression.

What All the Saints lack in rhythmic variation, they make up for with absorbing atmosphere--their sound truly is subterranean, a dimly lit, cavernous rumble that gets more suffocating as the album progresses.

Their sources are varied, yet the pleasure isn't recognizing the different sonic elements, but in relishing their almost supernatural co-exist

On several songs, Johansson gets lost in Sitek's swelling production, which may suggest a weak interpreter or a dearth of vocal personality but adds to the album's pervading dreaminess.

No envelopes are pushed on the quartet's latest, The Lucky Ones. But there's an increase in firepower that makes it their best effort in a while.

These songs may be less immediately catchy, but all of them have a moment in which they break away from their straightforward guitar-rock underpinning and allow strange, spacious moments to burble up from within.

II Trill is a solid and occasionally great record, an album more directed toward car-stereo utility than bedroom contemplation.

In a way, they don't even try to [reconcile their spotlight-swallowing energy], and that makes No, Virginia... an album on par with the Dolls' two fully conceived LPs.

Unfortunately there aren't a lot of opportunities to get caught in that lovely crossfire on Re-Arrange Us, a record that, for all its lush bells and whistles, finds the pair sounding as bare-boned and sparse as you'd expect a two-person band to be.

Freedom Wind includes three of the four songs on the Explorers Club's original EP, and it partly fulfills that record's promise.

Lie Down may be Oldham's most country record of new songs in years, and it's also one of his most accessible and least academic records.

El Rey has its share of surprises, mostly in the vein of its particular subject, which is the cruelty older men visit on younger women, and vice versa. But mostly it's merely another Wedding Present record: witty, randy, guitar-heavy, and not quite satisfied.

Trading layers of mood and melody and meaning for layers of Pro Tooled artifice, French Kicks have razored off the bullshit, leaving a core of beguilingly honest tunes.

Unfortunately, Inherit tries to give the listener both of these great tastes at once, resulting in a combination that's less like chocolate and peanut butter, and more like toothpaste and orange juice.

As far as mainstream pop-rock records go, Brain Thrust Mastery occasionally gets the job done.

At times, the maturation feels forced; the more adventurous moments here are experimental only for such a high-profile group, and they don't play to Gibbard's sentimental, word-weighing strengths.

Thing of the Past is a perfectly pleasant, well-produced album that offers an authorized version of what Vetiver fans already unofficially know about the band.

If you isolate any random 45 seconds of Directions to See a Ghost's 70 minutes, you'll definitely be compelled to listen for another few minutes--after which time you'll probably start waiting for a solo or a shift in tone that might not even come.

For what is in essence the ultimate expression of inadequacy, self-loathing, failure, and impotence, 12 Angry Months is a tough little thing.

Throughout the album, glimmers of invention and humor are allowed to shine through.

With their frantic, rushed rhymes, and beats which are a bit too eager to please, the Kidz may be popular. But if they want to any cred they're going to have to learn to be themselves.

Way is a humble first step in what sounds like a glorious new trip, where the really well played guitar becomes something else entirely.

What it lacks in a unified style it makes up for in a referential (and reverential) enthusiasm that anyone with a subscription to Wax Poetics should recognize as an individualized, well-crafted love letter to funk gone by--and funk yet to come.

The good news is that the band's official debut (following the 2007 collection "Wind And The Swell") is still a solid art-pop album at its core, and importantly, more "American Gangster" than "The Crane Wife."

On a lyric sheet, Titus Andronicus may appear to espouse the sort of wrist-cutting histrionics emo's typically lambasted for, but the magic lies in the band's oddly enthusiastic grass roots delivery.

In an attempt to be taken seriously, they've sacrificed too much of their effervescent appeal--after all, enthusiasm and artfulness need not be mutually exclusive.

So obviously the biggest difference between the Last Shadow Puppets and Turner's main gig is in the lyrics. Though less immediately noticeable than the majestic production, the change in the scale of Turner's songwriting is ultimately more profound.

Nouns is so cacophonous, so fertile, and so ripe with sound that parsing out the samples and effects and various layers of guitar is nearly impossible; besides, it's way more satisfying to just close your eyes and just enjoy it.

In the end, those appearances [by Keith Fullerton Whitman, Jay Lesser, and Sun Ra Arkestra's Marshall Allen] point to the album's only downside, which is the nagging sense that there's too much straight homage/pastiche and not enough of Matmos' considerable cleverness on display. Ultimately, though, it's a minor quibble.

While Water Curses is plenty enjoyable on its own, it also sets you dreaming about where Animal Collective will go next.

At four songs, Ringer is economical, but the diversity within its half-hour run time makes it surprisingly robust as well.

Post-rock's forte is letting instruments speak for vocals. Russian Circles speak articulately, but could stand to roar a bit.

Lambency's lack of contrast and its vacuum of irresolution are only symptomatic of the record's holistic problem: there's not much memorable to grab onto.

Shine's lingering impression is that of several talented cooks crammed into a tiny kitchen, each crafting something delicious with little regard for the meal as a whole.

Released today, it instead feels like a staggering transformation and a return to form that was never lost, an ideal adaptation by a group that many people didn't know they needed to hear again.

Their jangly melodies claw their way inside your brain just the same, making them latest in a long line of Glasgow bands to effortlessly combine celebratory sonics and miserablist lyrics into something singular.

No doubt that the best halves of this and "Tournament of Hearts" would equal a breakthrough album for the group, but taken as a whole, Kensington Heights sounds like a decisive break in the band's stride.

This is an album by an artist getting comfortable with his softer side. It's another welcome surprise.

Her pop fun is a bit knowing-- she's 26 after all. But trust the Swedes. They know what they're doing with this sort of thing.

Timbaland's productions are the weaker links on this frustratingly ordinary album.

Santogold might try to separate formula and art, but her album catches fire when she blasts that distinction into irrelevance.

Rising Down isn't always an easy listen, but it's an exciting one, and its abrasiveness never gets in the way of a good throw-your-hands-up beat or a well-crafted lyric.

Smile is their exquisite-corpse sequel, a near-automatic exercise in drawing inspiration from anybody but themselves.

It's not fair to Forster, of course, who rose to the occasion with his warmest and most welcoming solo album. But even beyond the imherant emotional baggage, songs such as 'Did She Overtake You' or the slightly bombastic 'Don't Touch Anything' still sound like they could have used a pass through someone else's filter.

After the Balls Drop manages to make the most of these potential shortcomings, offering listeners a charming, warts-and-all portrait of the group.

But even with 9th's craftsmanship, the melodies, like Buckshot's lyrics are vacuum-sealed. There's a pianissimo modesty that positively sucks the album dry.

While Imperial Wax Solvent has all the buzzy, crunchy sonic hallmarks of great Fall, it also doesn't quite rank with their highest highs, an admittedly tall order when that includes albums recorded twenty-five years ago by a completely different set of musicians.

The rest of The Colourful Life is, ahem, less colorful. Most of the blame shouldn't go to Butler, but to these not-so-ragin' non-Cajuns.

The ebb and flow of the disc feels like it's advancing some unknowable plot, always the sign of a well sequenced disc but also the bridge between songs like the lovely 'Mirrorball' and the bluesy (in the get-the-Led-out sense) 'Grounds for Divorce.'

But with only two weak tracks and some deletable skits outweighed by a dozen good-to-great cuts, Everywhere at Once is one of the best albums to come from a Solesides alumnus in a long time.

Mr. Love & Justice isn't exactly the musical equivalent of dropping flowers down the barrels of rifles, but there is a certain passivity to the disc, a characteristic magnified by the rootsy approach of Bragg's trusty band the Blokes, who channel the bucolic bent of the Band rather than the edge of the Clash.

After nailing the rapid-fire EP format with tracks that constantly threatened to disintegrate themselves from the inside-out, TPC psyche themselves out on their first full-length, over-cooking songs made from otherwise spectacular ingredients.

In other words: Sure they're funny, but are these songs supposed to be any good? Surprisingly, yes.

More energy and less uniformly drab scenery might have kept these well-intentioned stories from blurring into each other.

H.N.I.C. Pt. 2 makes for a much more complete and visceral portrait of an incarcerated man than the most precise and technically sound record could possibly manage.

If the herky-jerky new-waver 'Total Bloodbath,' and the 'Ticket to Ride'-styled charmer 'Partner in Crime' find Reis comfortably adapting to the pop approach, the mix can also leave Reis hanging out to dry, particularly on the smooth '70s-Stones strut 'You've Got Nerve,' where the droning qualities of his rasp are overemphasized by a chorus that simply repeats the title ad infinitum.

From the Valley to the Stars has hills that rise close to "El Perro del Mar's" peaks, and its cohesive vision is a pleasure to behold. At the same time, though, it harps on its themes with an overzealous single-mindedness, occasionally letting flimsy stuff support an overarching conceit that requires foundations of marble.

Sure, they're a very raw talent, but a formidable talent nonetheless, and this record's peaks hint at even greater musical epiphanies to come.

Liars and Prayers' success is owed as much to the band as its leader, but in the end, there's still no doubt about who's working on whose watch.

A great deal of Death Set's charm lies in how their toothsome double-guitar attack is deliberately undermined by their tinkertoy beats and new-waved keys; when the band try to overcompensate with the aggro.

Saturdays=Youth meaningfully diversifies M83's catalog while retaining Gonzalez's indelible fingerprint.

Konk feels like a mere cowardly act, a TPS report from a band that strives to be nothing more than British pop's ultimate company men.

So this record's creative and artistic value is pretty much nil--in fact it only just hits competent.

More so than the album's overall malaise and inconsistency, it's this ridiculous (and in some cases, offensive) attempt at "edginess" that's most off-putting.

It highlights their strengths (that voice, those beats, that authentic giving-it-their-all vibe) and hides their weaknesses (lack of songwriting breadth and dynamic diversity) making it sound like there's no place more fun than a Gossip concert, and no better host than Beth Ditto.

So Embarrassing is a bold change in direction for Capillary Action, but one that pays off as well as one could hope.

The Bad Seeds sound even edgier and more sophisticated on Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, providing a fitting pulpit for their bandleader's ravings.

Even if every one of these tracks stands as a formal experiment unto itself, after an hour or two these half-formed ideas begin to bleed indistinctly into each other, evolving into puddles of vaguely ominous aural mush.

If "Title TK" was a tentative first step back into the public eye, Mountain Battles finds Kim and Kelley proudly venerating the Breeders' battle-scarred history and bull-headed perseverance.

These moments of misplaced weight make Antidotes hard to recommend, but there are good ideas and moments all over the record.

Walk It Off attempts "The Loon's" indie patchwork using fewer and larger pieces, causing less-than-stellar ideas and riffs to suddenly become load-bearing pillars for painfully linear three-minute pop songs.

Clinic play with a renewed sense of the same eerie raucousness that drew people to them in the first place; this would be an easy second-album recommendation for a new fan after they've initially discovered and absorbed "Internal Wrangler."

Habits has little to apologize for, no serious blemishes or ill-advised shifts in direction.

It's as if a bunch of people have gotten together to try and create a communal experience they don't quite believe in. It's a little depressing here, but elsewhere, the sense of irony serves the album well.

Regardless of what kind of audience it ultimately finds, though, In Ghost Colours earns its smiles with a combination of ingenuity and easiness that you don't often come by, and for that, even in April, it already feels like a triumph.

The Spirit still play hard-to-get, which helps to avoid any ridiculous moments on this polished sophomore effort, but they're often too stand-offish to even challenge the listener, let alone push the envelope that their influences have so neatly prepared for them.

Likability has got Kylie Minogue this far, and it pulls her through again--even the weak tracks on X have a sparky enthusiasm that makes their magpie modernism sound less cynical.

This debut is unusually taut and polished, with hooks, crescendos, and clever turns of phrase nearly always in the right place.

In the end, lost amidst the faithfully reproduced house piano progressions and familiar melodies is anything signaling that those epiphany-filled late nights were actually, you know, fun.

Maneuvering between the King of Rhythm's joie de vivre and their crestfallen, crossroads-blues heritage, Attack and Release subtly expands the Black Keys sound.

Accelerate's broad strokes, big riffs, and beefy production (the album was reportedly recorded in "just" nine weeks) are admirable, as is the disc's concision, but its success is still more as a step forward than a slam dunk.

For the most part, it's all the same old bong-thrash, save for the record's one non-heavy trick: English-jig folk.

The album draws its power not simply from the quality of Kozelek's songwriting, but from the close intertwining of words and music, which makes his albums much more essential than any book he could ever publish.

There are a number of somewhat bland mid-tempo tracks and a few sketchy incidental things, like the ultra-brief vocal exercise 'Thank You Very Much,' but this is a worthy addition for Apples fans who haven't already tracked down every flexi-disc, Japanese import, and vinyl edition in the band's large catalog.

While Funplex's super-sized dance pop can't quite compare with the band's best moments, there's plenty of residual B-52's-ness to satiate longtime fans.

Whether it was intended or not, White's personality sometimes overwhelms, and makes Consolers sound like a little sibling to Icky Thump--a little less unique, certainly, but another loose, comfortable affirmation of what they do well.

Plants and Animals may not be the first band to put Montreal on the musical map, but, with this album's there's-no-place-like-home vibe, they are certainly the first to celebrate it so warmly

While Cave represents a return to form, the band hasn't recaptured the beauty of early highlights like 'When the Red King Comes' or 'A Dream in Sound.'

Overall, it's this sense of forced importance that makes the album no fun: You feel like it's meant to do something to you, not for you.

Sixteen meaty songs strong, the album is part slightly-fictionalized tour diary, part rumination on unrealized success and finding fun in the day-to-day.