There's a dark undercurrent of dispossession coursing through these songs, which sound measured and conflicted even as they grasp for meaning and import. That generosity of spirit suggests Geiger knows that everyone, even Canadian collectives and celebrity kids, is an outsider looking in.

Nobody's ever going to this guy for clear, concrete ideas; abstract obfuscation is what he does. On Hello Cruel World, he finds some new ways to do it. They don't work out as often as we might hope, but at least he's trying.

Highlights aside, Total's belligerence is as predictable as it is teeth-grinding.

Thee Physical wants to mosh in the punk club as much as it wants to throw on some lip gloss and hit the town, and it's frustratingly enticing to imagine how the record would have turned out if Egedy had leaned on the gas towards the latter option.

On Random Axe, the verses are reliably good, but the tedium of clock punching replaces the spirit of competition.

Little Dragon have clearly mastered their style on this album; hopefully next time around they will deliver more songs worthy of their sound.

Whether a calculated retreat or just a natural maturation, the Horrors have found a sound more content with background and atmosphere, and it suits them nicely.

Mirror Mirror smacks of a band struggling to be taken more seriously, but simply settling on a more stone-faced form of pastiche isn't the way to do it. All they've really done is trade a Halloween party for a history lesson.

The Cool Kids have now proven that they can make an album, but they haven't proven that they ever needed to make an album.

All waves of revivalism and nostalgia aside, Are You Falling Love? sounds like it was beamed in straight from 1993.

While they're still a talented band, you can't help but wonder how much more memorable they'd be if they applied as broad a sense of dynamics to their albums as their labelmates.

It's both epilogue and prologue, yet these songs retain their own specific flavor, as R.E.M. map the borders between small clubs and large venues, between underground and mainstream, between rhythm and melody, between outrage and hope. That in-between quality still sounds invigorating so many years later.

Wayward Fire continually misses a sweet spot between being lean and dirty enough to aerodynamically groove and being maximalist to the point where it opts out of that mode completely. And as a result, there's always that one last addition to the mix that sticks in your craw.

So while I'm Gay isn't a definitive statement, it is an especially compelling point on a bizarre trajectory, one that feels worth keeping around.

Rainforest feels like an artist confidently finding his niche.

While Van Pelt has crafted an album that's sharper in most ways than his debut, it could do with a bit more of these tracks' personality and sense of melodic wonder.

Though they'd probably be better off rehashing Bring It On's supplicant roots-rock in the current climate, Whatever's on Your Mind begins with a fumbled acoustic strum, and after exactly three seconds of human touch, you get all the elbow grease, brow sweat, and rock'n'roll heart of a dubstep record Cut Gomez and they bleed Purell.

From an artist whose mind and appetites have always ranged so freely, such a cohesive, uncluttered document is doubly revealing.

Some might lament the fact that so many tracks feel like teasers pointing toward something longer and more developed, with most of these two- or three-minute ideas fading out as soon as they get a good, eerie groove going. If so, you can take comfort that he's given himself so many possibilities for album number three.

It just feels like empty tribute, lip service for someone who really does deserve something more: the dignity of being left alone.

Pure X may not be breaking new ground, but as far as deadbeat summer vibes done right go, Pleasure is one killer drag.

Particularly hoisted onto such dense production, the hooks are so big, blunt, and persistent that even my four-year-old niece counts Foster the People as her favorite band. But on Torches that plays as a crutch as well as a strength.

Within and Without is an excellent demonstration of what happens when, even after the buzz-band cycle has faded, you continue to investigate a sound on your own hushed, ambitious terms.

In addition to being a strong return to form, Two-Way Mirror gives Crystal Antlers some much needed momentum after an unfortunate run of bad timing and bad luck.

If the ambiguous quality of their sound sometimes makes it hard to become emotionally invested in Gardens & Villa, in Lynch, they're blessed with a singer who has remarkable presence and poise.

Maus has a full set of songs whose architecture is just as sophisticated and riveting in actuality as it is in theory.

At least OX 2010 doesn't feel entirely like one MC stranded in his own malaise. The beats are serviceable, with some unostentatious boom-bap from the likes of Kount Fif, Harry Fraud, and Ayatollah. And the guest verses range from complementary mediocrity (Cappadonna treading water on "I Don't Care") to complete upstagings (Guilty Simpson going berserk on "The Verdict").

Don't get me wrong: with its staccato, bonus level synth stabs, keening psychedelia and 1980s-drenched drum sounds, Melt is still very identifiably Truise. But with the exception of the banging double whammy of "VHS Sex" and "Cathode Girls", there's nothing much here to suggest that Truise has upped his game in any meaningful way.

Where disco went far beyond mere escapism in the 1970s, Casablanca Nights only gets you out of 2011 for a few sweet minutes.

They're not teenagers anymore, but you'd never know it from listening to them. That's not exactly a compliment.

Player Piano finds Hawk more concentrated and economical than ever. Unfortunately, it comes off more like complacency than conviction, that Hawk's either holding back on us, misreading his true strengths, not recognizing the need to rise to the occasion, or possibly all three.

The record pits some emotive and occasionally downcast singing against arrangements that throb nicely, and there's a good sense of balance and variety throughout.

Bakesale add-ons will mostly be of value to those who loved Sebadoh's first few years of all-over-the-place wildness, but it's not as if their second-disc inclusion can dull the parent album's punch.

Ultimately, Sean's a likable character.

Unlike Beach Fossils' compartmentalized distance, though, Brown Recluse sound bright and direct throughout Evening Tapestry, like light shining through their sleepy fog. Sort of like a dream? No-- better.

It's still a potentially alienating album: unnerving when you're not on its aggro wavelength, inviting when you are, and transfixing either way, thanks to the aggregate work of Death Grips' core.

Dyrdahl never received enough credit for the excellent sound design of his work, and while Sagara seems nothing more than an interesting detour, his careful ear and sense of structure are here in spades.

As extroverted as these songs sound, you really never get a full sense of Hooray For Earth's personality.

This might not be the most inviting sound world to contemplate, but Johannsson's confident touch with it is powerful, and The Miners' Hymns creeps into your consciousness like a musty attic draft.

The point where minimalist becomes ephemeral is a dangerously easy one to cross, and it's hard to think of a better line-straddling example than the Carbonated EP.

Shangri-La offers more than enough frantic beats, fidgety bass lines, spiky guitar leads, soaring piano riffs, delirious vocal harmonies, and, yes, cowbells to fit in on any house-party playlist.

We Are the Champions might disappoint some diehard fans, but it's also proof positive that JEFF the Brotherhood can play with the big boys.

As an album-length wallow in bad feelings, it's an impressive thing indeed. But I prefer Jesu when their music is about connection rather than isolation.

It might be hasty to applaud a return to form for an artist who's spent the past few years coming to terms with what that form's supposed to even mean. But it's still great to hear what Wiley can do when left to his own devices.

Patient, generous, and smart, the song proves that while Kenny does well to maintain the Wooden Birds' solitary core, he does well to expand it occasionally, too.

Despite White Hills' plentiful output, pacing remains a problem for the group. Live, as they run marathons around a riff, that's less of an issue; you're surrounded in the moment, lost in the feeling. On H–p1, though, it means you spend half of your time waiting to reach the crest.

Dominated by shuffling drums, slow southern rock guitar licks, and pedal steel, the music on Mount Moriah is unobtrusive and reserved--at times almost too much so--but there are some fine flourishes in these songs, which feature members of Megafaun, St. Vincent, and Bowerbirds

Combined with an expert use of space rare for such a lo-fi record, UMO manages a unique immersive and psychedelic quality without relying on the usual array of bong-ripping effects.

This guy is still on a very serious roll, and it doesn't seem to be anywhere near over.

Blanck Mass is all about Power excavating new domains while still working within that great glut of voluminous space he's already mapped out.

All these lurches and groans and crashes and bangs and stutters and roars come together to form one consistently rousing, emotionally immediate whole. From them to you.

White Denim's inherent restlessness means that all the band's releases feel transitional to a degree, but D's measured restraint points toward the best possible direction for them.

Everything about this song -- and this entire album, for that matter -- suggests this heart's still got a lot left to burn.

Greenwood and co.'s impulses have grown disappointingly easy to dissect. The result is music that, by any definition, remains experimental and difficult, but the invigorating internal tension between the ordained simplicity of American musics and the free-will noise jams has evaporated.

Even if Diamond Rings' rapidly evolving aesthetic has already moved beyond Special Affections' bedsit R&B, the album still stands as an exemplary model of how one can live out blinged-out fantasies on a cubic zirconia budget.

Pl3dge is constructed simply as a sturdy platform for one of rap's fiercest and most incisive voices, and it achieves that goal completely.

The lion's share of the album--along with its excellent deluxe tracks--has one of the world's biggest stars exploring her talent in ways few could've predicted, which is always exciting.

In this more restrained setting, Bodies of Water aren't quite as commanding or charming, but they compensate with more confident, nuanced songs that incorporate elements of showtunes, disco, and folk, plus mariachi fanfares and hallelujah choruses.

It's deeply refreshing to hear an artist who exudes such depth and consideration.

I Love You, Dude doesn't shake off the confines of genre to reveal a shiny new pop act underneath. Nor does it meaningfully improve on Digitalism's previous formulas.

It's easy to imagine Go Tell Fire to the Mountain giving disaffected listeners the promise of an entry to something beyond themselves in a way that James Blake or Bon Iver can't. Maybe you've grown past that sort of thing, but what about a record of exhilarating expanse and passion that sounds like indie rock and yet feels way bigger? Well, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain is that too.

Newbury conceived them specifically as a trilogy examining his own romantic past as well as the country's contentious history, and 40 years later, they sound just as imaginative, evocative, and emotional as ever.

Blueprint can be so effective when he's down to earth, it's a shame he feels the need to step up on a soapbox.

DeCicca's delivery, alternately grim and genial, sometimes averages out into nonchalance, and some of the black humor in these lyrics is a bit funnier on paper than on the record itself. But he's always been sort of a tricky read as a singer, allowing Sayre's ever-present violin to hammer home the emotional content, and Don't Blame the Stars finds the two neatly complementing one another.

Thankfully that mixture of modesty and reticence didn't endure, because Zayna Jumma is a densely layered piece of cultural cross-pollination that consistently spills over into outright joy.

Goodbye Bread is filled with such rich, breathtaking moments, and Segall, who plays every instrument here, sounds as though he's savoring every part of process.

Ways of Meaning is drone music with a light touch and the gravity turned off.

It's a rare thing for an album to have such a strong sense of what it wants to be. Bon Iver is about flow, from one scene and arrangement and song and memory and word into the next-- each distinct but connected-- all leading to "Beth/Rest".

With the help of producer Brian McTear, the songs fit together naturally; whether above synthesizers or acoustic guitar, Nadler never sounds forced.

A Treasure is the first entry to put the spotlight on a less celebrated stretch of his career. As such, this choppy compilation of Harvesters tour highlights allows us to reassess some of Young's 80s output outside its contentious context.

If Wale, Meek, and Pill could find a way to focus on their own strengths, maybe they'd sound more comfortable alongside their new boss. Instead, they all sound like they're trying to become mini-Rosses, and it doesn't work for them.

These guys may not be back in their ambition-heavy fighting form on Are You Gonna Eat That?, but they're back to rapping just for the fuck of it, and that can be a beautiful thing to hear. And hearing the album, it's immediately apparent that Aesop is still a major talent, someone who can do whatever the hell he wants and get away with it.

Clutching Stems is a patient, exquisitely produced indie-pop record that never quite makes eye contact.

The Errant Charm doesn't entirely succeed in that regard, but it remains a pleasant listen, perhaps just a bit too subliminally so for its own good.

All in all, Castlemania is a fairly loose and scattered record.

Not surprisingly, Art Department are at their lachrymose best not when trying to uncover house's absences, but when redrawing ever more finely what was always already there.

Thank Your Parents will take an equivalent span of time to reveal its secrets, especially as this final part is likely to be met with a large degree of bafflement on first listen. But taken as a concluding piece of a larger body of work, as this is intended to be heard, it's a fiercely individual statement to end this chapter in Oneida's unique history.

Walls is still a likeable and engaging album on the whole, but it's hard not to be a tad worried that An Horse's debut album began with a song where Cooper fiercely and endearingly sang, "And like that good Hole album/I can live through this," while its follow-up ends with a song where she mewls, "Ian Curtis said it would tear us apart."

Arabia Mountain may be poised to push this band further over-ground, but they're not going up without a fight.

Lange is clearly in the mood to experiment, letting more traditional instruments take a backseat while he fiddles with electronic equipment, peppering nearly every track with whirs, burrs, clicks, and clacks. He occasionally takes time to build distinct grooves from all these little pieces ("Cenar en La Manana"), but more often than not, his fiddling is distracting.

Greenspan's singing is the best it's ever been on It's All True, proving the band's mixing desk skills aren't the only thing that's matured over the past eight years.

While such transformations are pleasant, if not exactly commanding, they do manage to slyly deconstruct the "real" songs into the most basic building blocks, which are very specific to this setting.

The Coathangers' latest finds a notorious must-see live band finally capturing some of the energy of its shows on record.

EAR PWR were once a band that refused to tie a tie or recite the silly rule--it could be annoying, but at least they were being themselves. Here, they prove how hard growing up can be.

Despite their ultra-slack style and prodigious output, nothing about them says "half-assed," so it's another year, another fine Woods album.

Loud Planes documents not the dissolution but the redefinition of their relationship; it's a staying-together album, which not only makes it much more interesting but provides a persuasive argument for their musical compatibility.

The record itself brims with endlessly replayable details, some goofy and some poignant, both in frontman Alex Turner's always keenly observed lyrics and in the band's ever-proficient music, the latter of which ranges here from muscular glam-rock to chiming indie pop balladry.

He has the ideas: ISAM's pieces keep wandering into unmarked industrial zones, evoking broken things and blight. But this is heavy, foreboding music; Tobin hasn't yet learned how to balance his robust sound-art impulses with footholds for his listeners.

David Comes to Life is absolutely worth the commitment, a convincing demonstration of what can happen when a band works without limitations.

Unfortunately, Vek's voice outstays its welcome by the middle of the album. Leisure Seizure is front-loaded with its best material, such that the second half of the record becomes rather tedious.

The album would be tiring if were nothing but a sincere homage to the cheesy pop of yesteryear, but F&L temper Channel Pressure with abstract vocal exercises and overcast instrumentals to keep the balance right.

Despite all the guests, and the nods to global pop, Gloss Drop will still be best enjoyed by groove heads, whether they come from the rock or dance worlds, but if you worried Battles would run out of surprises on album two, who knew they'd find common ground between post-punk devotees, Yes fans, and the children of UK funky?

The problem with Beer in the Breakers isn't one of culture or slang so much as a narrator who is almost wholly forgettable--their stories are boring.

During Lupercalia's first half, he continues to prove himself a fine craftsman of major-key melodies, and this is his most confident and convicted vocal performance yet. But like most of Wolf's records, he eventually gives into sad songs and waltzes as Lupercalia progresses, and studded with the same overproduction tricks of cluttered strings and processed samples, "The Days" and "Slow Motion" don't offer much in the way of contrast outside of tempo.

For all the mission-statement confidence that its title exudes, Sondre Lerche sounds strangely divided: It's too pristine and too scattershot.

At just over a half hour, Cults feels like the perfect length-- just long enough for the bus ride to school (or to work). But more importantly, it executes what it sets out to do masterfully while allowing the group room to grow and mature.

As a whole, the record doesn't quite gel. The songs generally sound better out of context.

Sonically rich but melodically staid, Corporate World ultimately brings to mind Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.'s extramusical affairs: alluring at first, but a bit wanting under the surface.