Taken together, You Are All I See still can't help but feel like an old cathedral--easy to admire in awe, but somehow cold and remote; hard to really make your own.

It's music you might hear in a CB2 furniture store-- languorous and luxurious in tempos and tone, but without any sort of sentiment outside of the swooning used to implant the idea in your brain that you might have sex or do drugs on that reasonably priced but fashionable couch.

Though they could still stand to pull back on the vocal fanfares, brushing away some of the gunk that mottled up their earlier records and doubling down on melody each open up new avenues in their sound, and Still Living finds Ganglians delivering on their early promise while stepping confidently toward whatever's next.

Even with its increased focus on classic-rock virtues, the album isn't really a collection of riffs and wails and choruses; it's more a muscular sort of vibe-out-- badass ambient music, if you will.

The economical use of space makes Widowspeak feel like a chance meeting with a pining stranger, one who spills their guts then vanishes from sight just as they're beginning to make an impression.

Really, no one would ever accuse Islands or Man Man of lacking character and presence, but once Thorburn and Kattner return to their bands after this dalliance, you'll be excused for thinking they'll sound a little bit incomplete without one another.

This odd and intermittently pleasurable artifact just kinda sits there, an unintentional rebuke to the artist that orphaned this poor thing.

If it's possible to go through the motions while still mostly shouting, Ferrari Boyz would be a prime example.

Like a lot of indie-pop albums, Program 91 is relatively quick and dirty. But despite its brevity, the album's second side drags a bit, as the skanked rhythms begin to bleed into each other with a lack of individual distinction.

The really amazing thing about the album is how anthemic and affirming it feels despite the near total absence of proper sing-along choruses.

The only problem is that Johnson's tales aren't all that hooky. At least, not enough to buoy Tripper's soft and moody music.

Love Has Made Me Stronger's rough-around-the-edges imperfections only allow Kleyn to convey her spirited optimism all the more forcefully. That sort of music boldness never goes out of style.

Neither the melody nor the ambience overwhelms the other. It's easy to hear the silky, billowy tones through the dying-battery distortion, but hard to picture what they'd sound like without it.

Mirror Traffic tickles that nostalgia without sacrificing maturity, discovering that "playfully relaxed" is a valid third route between "slacker" and "manic."

Watch Me Dance doesn't reconcile the clash between retro and modernism, but at least it does the past a decent amount of justice.

In other words, Fool's Gold made a Foreign Born record.

The problem with it, beyond a handful of unflattering genre excursions, is a slight but persistent thinness of imagination.

His antiquated fantasies still very much belong to him, but it's still a joy to peer inside them--even if the canvases they're displayed on have shrunk ever so slightly.

Instead of exploring their sound and growing more dexterous over time, Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter have backed themselves into a creative corner on Marble Son--with a sound so austere it becomes tedious instead of heady, tentative instead of revelatory.

It's softer feel also illustrates the dynamic range Cohen has as a songwriter on his first solo outing, one that isn't especially revelatory or inventive, but does offer a solid starting point for the second chapter of his career.

This year, we've seen Taking Back Sunday, Saves The Day, and the Get Up Kids attempting to play catch up with themselves, but here Braid bafflingly jettison the goodwill of their past: the palm-muted verses and squeaky choruses, the one-sided conversations of the lyrics, the antiseptic production -- I'll say it could come from anyone because you probably don't remember who the Pinehurst Kids are.

The music's measured rhythm and plaintive chords may belie those bright sentiments, but if everything lined up perfectly, this wouldn't be Richard Youngs.

This is rock music that has come almost completely unstuck from the blues, with a sleek, relentless drive subbing in for swing.

The EP's lackluster tracklist leaves iTunes Session seeming clunky and unrepresentative--like it's not a full set, but an excerpt from a larger show.

The album's use of analogue synths isn't a regression, but an attempt to find a new way forward.

On Watch the Throne, they push each other and have fun doing it, and the result is a stadium-sized event-rap spectacle that still sounds like two insanely talented guys' idiosyncratic vision. That's worth celebrating.

The element that makes Family of Love sound like the work of an almost entirely different band is the massive leap in production value.

These songs store well more than a half-hour of reward and intrigue-- appropriate enough for a record that had to be made three times.

Native To is packed with well-executed, hummable stuff, but it wears thin quickly.

Lateness never does much to prove Clare and his producers were on the same page (let alone reading from the same book).

This self-fulfilling fatalism is at the heart of innumerable rock songs by innumerable bitter young men, but it is rarely expressed with the introspective clarity that Bachmann displays throughout Icky Mettle.

Many of the album's best songs seem to inspire comparisons with dancing: There is a connection to the idea of dance as liberation here, as Lloyd's blushing sincerity builds up potential energy, the nimble performance acts as a release valve.

Let It Beard's structure, its scope, its knowing nods to an earlier era's excess.

Unlike Dedication 2 or Da Drought 3, Sorry 4 the Wait sounds like the work of a mortal human being. Happily, that mortal human being still happens to be very good at rapping.

The EP's 17-minute run time feels too brief. Luckily, Satin Panthers offers more than enough to tide listeners over until a potential follow-up album.

Even if Lonely Crowd doesn't quite live up to the bar set by Broken Record Prayers-- which was, after all, a singles collection-- there's still something dependably refreshing about a new Comet Gain record.

For die-hards, the most alluring part of the package may be the second compact disc, which features 18 mostly instrumental demos recorded in Gaye's post-What's Going On honeymoon period, when his vast artistic ambitions and abilities were being embraced by the greater public. These somewhat experimental demos--deep, in-the-pocket funk in the vein of Sly Stone, George Clinton, and Jimi Hendrix--clearly laid the groundwork for much of his subsequent 70s material.

Together with the ultra-mellow atmosphere, this lack of cohesion makes the album feel messy, and maybe worse, a little boring.

Through the Green can scan as simple or nostalgic, but either misses the point (and neither is the album a "modern take" on disco). It's an album of execution, of Tiger & Woods sharing sounds that aren't elusive and chasing feelings that are.

Electronic Dream is pretty, but it's pretty like the morning sun twinkling off of a dangling machete blade--you don't want to fuck with it.

It's not that they're not real, it's that the shivering vocal timbres dominate the mix to the point where large shifts in tempo and style are obscured. It's during these moments when I think that Room(s) and its elevation of the vocal sample was perhaps a better idea than an album.

This reissue of Peace Sells, celebrating a quarter century of Megadeth's second but first truly great album, is probably more a sop to those diehards than anything else, but if it turns one curious party into a convert then it's worth it, even in this time of bald cash-grab reissue ugliness.

In execution the whole thing comes off as nothing more than a thinly disguised, crass attempt to smoke latent Oasis fans out of hiding. Unfortunately for them, Beady Eye already beat them to the punch.

Legendary Weapons' greatest asset is nearly two decades of goodwill, but at what point are you just flat-out going to admit that Ghostface has been badly coasting downhill for at least five years?

Field Songs is Whitmore's seventh full length (not counting a collection of demos in 1999), and stylistically, it's right in step with his previous albums.

Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I'd Hoped, Krug's first post-Wolf Parade LP, feels like ritual music infused with 1980s nostalgia.

Self-serious flaws and all, Section.80 still stands as a powerful document of a tremendously promising young guy figuring out his voice.

Grooms' aims give off a whiff of vague danger, a static unease occasionally broken by detuned guitars and skins-smashing breakdowns.

His lyrics' power stemmed from the imagery and humor he used to render in full color a world that for most rappers exists only in black and white. To the tape's considerable credit, Gucci disappoints here only when compared with himself.

Grieves is more than game to match his collaborator's slick, itchy Okayplayerisms, switching between rapping and singing as his partner stacks up the soul chords and funk flourishes.

It's "Sam Baker's album" by name and ownership, but it's also another beat tape in a very crowded field, one where it's easy to get lost amidst the increasingly innovative producers working now.

Blackenedwhite pushes them closer to humanity without sacrificing the weirdness that's so central to their appeal. They're not out of surprises yet, and they probably won't be for a long time.

The band works via accumulation, gradually building up to moments of muted drama, yet LaCount's leads wreck that momentum.

Mostly, though, this is a depressing reminder of the distance between what Depeche Mode once were and what they've become.

Dyer and Sanchez are the sort of artists who will continue to challenge themselves at every turn. As long as they can keep that boundless creativity from going in a million different directions at once, their listeners will reap plenty of rewards.

Some of it will be a little too out-there for some people, and some of it will be a little too harmless for others. But overall, it's an interesting assemblage of artists, and the music is good, covering just enough ground that you can feel the variety but no one's likely to be overwhelmed.

There are bum notes, and rhythms that wander. But Eternal Tapestry and Sun Araw mesh well. When they hit a groove, they're a match made in a UV lamp-lit and sage-scented stoner-rock heaven.

The Men's treatment of their well-curated influences is less akin to that of fan-boys playing in a tribute act and a lot more like an irreverent hip-hop producer's approach to breaks--key in on your sources' coolest moments, change the context, and ride that perfect sound forever.

Sure, there's no avoiding the fact that some of these songs are appearing for the third time. The nagging "what now?" question isn't going away. But it can be filed away for later.

He has the sound down, somewhere between Factory Records sturm-und-drag and grotty old VHS-tape slasher soundtracks, but you could never accuse Bermuda Drain of being a slick or faceless attempt at mere nostalgia.

Not quite stylistic opposites but still distinctly different, the two producers almost always make sure to stay on the same page, taking skeletal percussive tracks and shocking them with little flecks of light. But as with much of Family and Friends, that light seems to be just out of reach.

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.