As much as Tidings rides high on it's own brand of sweaty juke-joint appeal, its finest moments are a grab bag of genre detours.

As with generations of Swedish popsters before them, Sambassadeur excel at picking up sounds from the U.S. and UK and refining them to their catchy essence.

You get the feel of two of the world's greatest musicians in a room together, having a conversation and creating a document that will carry their legacy into the future. It is not challenging music. Anyone can approach it easily, and it is the perfect initiation to Touré's talents for listeners who haven't yet heard him.

Constellations begs for more rather than delivering all of the goods all of the time. Perhaps that's an old-fashioned concept-- demanding the sort of patience and attention that technology's made obsolete. But at this point, it's exactly the move Balmorhea needed to make.

Every hoedown on Sigh No More-- every rush of instruments in rhythmic and melodic lockstep-- conveys the same sense of hollow, self-aggrandizing drama.

It leaves a very hazy, almost spectral impression when it ends. But it's also warm and in some ways comforting, and it improves the more you listen to it and tease out the details in the songs.

Alternately inspired and frustrating, it addresses themes of lost love (and lost chicness) with Queen-size 70s-rock pomp, neoclassical interludes, and one ukulele-based chamber-pop song.

Though there's a nice sense of humor throughout, there's just not enough meat on the bone to inspire any sort of real investment in the majority of these songs.

Kollaps Tradixionales makes no apologies for this shift, but it does defuse 13 Blues' sometimes oppressive air by reconciling the band's current incarnation with its more graceful earlier output.

Measure is, if nothing else, a truly crafted record.

As it is, Peace & Love sounds like a rough draft full of rookie mistakes, rather than a veteran defiantly going it alone.

The Stimulus Package would work better as an album if Free had a little more help directing his skills, or if he just decided to rap hard on every song instead of tying himself to concepts. But even the goofiest songs here are still fun listens, and a few tracks come close to capturing his old brilliance.

At first listen that seems off-- the chops and compositional sense here are the most immediately impressive part of the album. But dig deeper and you realize Local Natives never lose sight of the pleasures of being a youthful rock band-- right down to themes of wanderlust and discovery.

Argos is still witty, but here his punchlines tend to be predictable, due in part perhaps to the disc's overstretched answer-song conceit.

It's a shame to waste the term "spectacular" on such a mundanely depressing, blatant cash-in.

While Presidence may keep its distance, it's never hard to enter, and individual pieces are as intriguing by themselves as they are in the album's wide-open context.

None of the tracks leap out on first listen as obvious show-stoppers, but Pearson's nonetheless collected the most rhythmically diverse selection of tracks to appear on a Kompakt-branded mix in quite some time.

It's hard to miss the pressure the band was under to deliver here--it's nearly palpable in their overfed production and search for direction, and as a result, Odd Blood is a bit too much of not enough.

One Life Stand is their most consistent and most complete record.

Yet it still feels honest, like something said out of necessity instead of opportunity, and the result is an album that engages with the idea of loneliness in exceptional ways.

The undercurrent of menace and sadness that defined Massive Attack's best music is largely absent, replaced with a drowsy, half-formed gloom that, if anything, suggests resignation instead of dread.

Soldier of Love offers listeners a rather narrow range of interest-- songs that (at their best) suggest strong feeling restrained by a fierce dignity-- but Sade remain the best at what they do.

In general, Talking to You sounds like an album that is gradually divorcing itself from history and geography, as the Twins learn to build on that West Coast sound to create something unique and personal. They're not there yet, but give them another tour.

Bundick embraces a cleaner and mellower sound that's more indebted to hip-hop. He wears his inspirations proudly, and throughout there's a clear nod to producers like J Dilla and Flying Lotus.

The best bits of Eyelid Movies show range and attention to detail, so it's hard to care when they downshift into waves of serpentine sound. Eyelid Movies is a sumptuous, seductive record, easy to let fall into the background, sure, but easier still to fall into.

At 70 minutes, Black Noise is a big, dense listen but also the kind of album that rewards investment.

The slower pace and more sentimental outlook of XXXX gives listeners the necessary space and encouragement to surrender to the band's emotional message.

Kings Ballad still doesn't meet all the expectations Muldrow may have initially inspired, but it's a positive, measured sign that there's more to come.

With precious little exception, these songs are just so wispy, and the band's treatment of them so delicate, it turns Courage into a museum piece, stuffy, bloodless

Concocting the world's finest excrement-related rhymes, Rebirth is most definitely a flop, terribly unsexy, and contains surprisingly few shit jokes.

Though Lamkin's monotone voice is not the most expressive instrument--it barely wavers whether the occasion calls for a Monks-style organ vamp ("Move Along") or a prom-night embrace ("Mexico")--each album side gradually ratchets up the tension and releases it through a raucous rave-up ("Pull Out" on side A, "Parasites" on side B) that successfully bridges the Soft Pack's Nuggets-schooled ethos with the modern-day discord of San Diegan patron saints Hot Snakes.

Sure, most of Chorus is pretty, but it's only that: Between the glistening guitars, cymbal washes, sighing strings, and electric piano, the beauty LaValle conjures is effortless but ultimately less impressive for not having any sort of contrast.

Shining are combining jazz and metal in original ways, from the filling up of jazz's precious empty spaces with ticking nervous energy to the replacement of metal's vocal aggression with creepy and disconnected noise. And if that's not the same as true originality, it's close enough.

The album has no grand arc; it's just a collection of pretty okay jams for people who already own everything Pentagram ever recorded. It's fine, but it's nothing more than fine.

While Descending Shadows (their second full-length and first for Vice) is leaner and mellower than anything they've done, it still barrels forth with the same haggard, long-fanged intent that made Dead Moon so great.

Strange Keys is generally relentless and tremendous, burying its themes in kaleidoscopic distortion. It's as if the comparisons that Bower has earned in the last seven years--Merzbow, Wagner, second wave black metal--finally took magnificent hold.

For all Madlib's eclecticism and supposedly short attention span, his work here sounds focused and sharp. The beats aren't wasted here by any means, but a different crew could have brought out even more potential.

The subject matter subverts her inherent sensuousness, but this is still Charlotte Gainsbourg singing-- at times, she can't help sounding like the cooing French goddess her father helped popularize. It's dead sexy, reborn.

Romance Is Boring smacks of that feeling, knowing more than before but still trying to hash out just where to go with it. It's fun watching bands grow; it's been a pleasure watching this band grow up.

This is both the most diverse and most listenable of their three full-lengths, and yet it never seems like a compromise. It feels like the product of careful, thoughtful growth, bringing in new influences--bits of mid-1970s Fleetwood Mac, sparkling indie pop, even a few soul and gospel touches--while maintaining the group's core sound.

There Is Love in You always has just enough going on to pull you back in any time you feel like relegating it to the background. It works best taken whole, rather than broken into individual tracks.

This isn't the kind of stuff you're going to walk around humming. It's too weirdly shaped to really abide in you--you have to be willing lose yourself in it instead.

Merritt's songs are as delicate and meticulous as porcelain miniatures. Unfortunately, Realism holds more tchotchkes than museum pieces.

Icy and stiff has been the band's M.O., but its new material demands performances that command that sparseness rather than toy with it. Had the band drawn on some of that confidence from R&B as well as the instrumentation, it could have made this record even more compelling.

Despite its nonchronological sequencing and song-cherrypicking, it never really comes together as an album; it's more like "the many moods of Fucked Up," or, rather, their many variations on one mood.

Beyond its canonical interest, Campfire Songs has its own charms. Though rigorously composed, it feels deceptively spontaneous. The atmosphere is both inviting and severe, and startlingly vivid.

Citay remain controlled and careful. Songs are constructed so that each line plays a certain role, every note tells its tale. Maybe that's where it will lose some listeners, too: It's not tough and rough and wild around the edges like Green's old band could be, or a lot of heavy metal can be. And it's not open at the ends like jam-band music. But this is Feinberg's third album of eight tracks in about 40 minutes, all exploring the same excitable intersection of psychedelia and pop.

Heart's production work, again by Bilerman, isn't always successful....But the album shakes such shackles often enough to maintain an atmosphere of warm intimacy.

Niblett's music is very much an acquired taste, and there are few ways to enjoy this other than on her terms. She's not oblivious to this, and she has a sense of humor about it.

The result is comfortably atonal--a headphones listen that's difficult but ultimately more haunting.

It's sort of a perfect concept for Thompson: it's not particularly clever or abstract but to actually gather the efforts, time, and resources to release this album-- straight-faced-- seems mad. At this point, though, those who delight in Thompson's particular madness will need no explanations.

Occasionally the devotion to six-string mayhem overwhelms the songwriting, and unless you really get off on reams of guitar raunch, Major Stars on CD may still not be for you.

A darker album, a slightly clumsier album, but an album with a strong unifying themes and a few songs worth stepping away from the bar for.

It's sort of a catch-22 that Editors can write songs sticky enough to be memorable in unfortunate ways.

The Colossus, as its name implies, strives for scale, but also strains a bit under a heavy burden. While Rjd2 excels at sonic collages, the mixed motives on this album--a current spin on past techniques, a synthesis of old songs and a turn toward the future--are difficult to balance.

Ambition can just as easily manifest itself as a desire to create a relentlessly catchy, "classic indie" album in your own dorm room, and if that's what Surfer Blood set out to do, Astro Coast succeeds wildly.

It can be a bit of a let down if you come in expecting another blockbuster like "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga," but something of a revelation if you meet them halfway.

A foreboding chronicle of the unpleasantness to follow, the typical arc of a break-up tale never materializes as "The Beginning" promises.

Real Life Is No Cool isn't just the achingly stylish and neatly accessible dance record to end all that, it also constitutes a fresh new take on the strand of retro-futurism that Lindstrøm helped create.

What seems like a perfectly swell concept for a surprise gig at the local pub-- where sloshed spectators can join in on the hero worship-- feels much more suspect when reified into a permanent record.

Ghost rarely does get the hint, often left too slight and too self-important for it's own good.

I'm sure it's all firecrackers live, and in their defense, Dinowalrus' populist-noise contemporaries (Liars, Oneida) needed periods of woodshedding to find their way. But I suppose it does the title justice when % finds a band that's not quite all there yet.

Were we swimming in a sea of likeminded releases, Frauhaus may seem merely competent-- a collection that leaves listeners wishing the trio weren't so slavish in their devotion to early-80s post-punk and no wave, but one that gets the toughly innocent, acidic vibe right nonetheless.

This uniformity of tone and tempo understandably causes You & Me to wilt through its middle stretches despite its relatively brief running time.

It's like they've spent the past two years building a bionic version of the band--not only brighter and tighter, but weirder. The group nurtures its eccentricities and the result is a record full of them.

There are a lot of things about Heartland that feel like Pallett is presenting himself more and more fully as an artist; the scope of breadth and mood of it are all grander, more assured, making ever more of a case that the guy shouldn't be viewed as a side note (string arranger for the Arcade Fire, the Pet Shop Boys) or a minor interest.

July Flame is ultimately a record that's easy to get into and just as easy to stay with.

It's pretty good. That much anyone aware of Johnston's past highpoints probably could have predicted.

Those at this taping presumably got their money's worth, but other than the few excised morsels that leaked after the show (a long anti-Radiohead screed and a defense of Chris Brown's attack on Rihanna), we don't know what was cut. Alas, those who pick up this record get an abbreviated, neutered version.

Chant Darling doesn't hit strike that balance often enough, and very few of these songs allow such a glimpse of the musician behind them. Ultimately, Lawrence Arabia's carefully tailored influences have the same effect as that stage name, as if Milne was intent on absenting himself from his own album.

In between appearances from Drake, Minaj, and Wayne-- who offers lukewarm verses and/or deranged-but-palatable Auto-Tune hooks on most tracks-- a slew of numbskulls, weirdos, and little kids sometimes make things interesting

Given its fragmented genesis, it's surprising how listenable and of-a-piece Fall Be Kind is.

It's understandable if Clipse no longer feel like they have to actually prove shit to anyone, but perhaps that's why Til the Casket Drops awkwardly vacillates between confidence and complacency, between sneering at perceived competition and smarting at perceived and possibly self-made slights.

With its patchwork (and, as of press time, unknown) 1992 sources, the set's neither particularly representative of Young live nor particularly different from the pleasant Harvest Moon album itself (cheering and lack of backing vocals, strings and session hands aside).

Mostly, though, the LP does a good job keeping Gucci's culty selling points intact on a larger stage.

Every strength this record holds draws off the symbiotic relationship between Martin's beats and Robinson's voice, which adapt to each other in a way that the last two people in a barren environment might.

While it's somewhat difficult to reconcile their whole career in one live disc, the material remains unpredictable even as it gets a little more cerebral. For those who had even a passing interest in Trans Am's music over the years, this set is a fine reminder of why you likely tuned into them in the first place.

Florine feels bracingly intimate and original, in its hieroglyphic way.

Someone clinically extracts whatever trace of messy humanity made it through the first time the Bravery worked the nu-wave shtick, on their debut; Stir the Blood is a parodoxically bloodless listen.

As with nearly every R. Kelly album, sex is Untitled's raison d'être. But too often here he trips over trends.

Even if the lame parts of BlakRoc are more noticeable than the enjoyable, what really sticks out is how easy this all feels--- not once does anything feel like awkward ambassadorship.

For many listeners, his mannered delivery may prove as off-putting as Oberst's own vibrato, but for these songs, it sounds fittingly evocative, as if only he could sing them.

Oh No knows just what he's got to work with on this album, and in finding every angle he can for an incredible array of source material, he's made that much more of a case for his own style, too.

Based on Rated R, Rihanna's artistic aspirations are currently loftier than her abilities. Then again, her tenacity in the face of the unimaginable public humiliation this year is beyond brave.

Glitter and Doom Live is not simply a souvenir of a tour most fans didn't attend but a de facto greatest hits of Waits' fourth decade of music, during which his gnarly adventurousness didn't wane but only intensified.

Instead of shoehorning references to celebrity into some tracks, she's borrowing elements and templates and simply focusing on quality control. The weird result is that, despite her flitting between personalities and personas, her music feels more like her own here than it did on her debut LP.

If you've ever wanted to hear classic cuts from the dawn of hip hop turned into hallucinogenic setpieces that knock and clang like glitched-up King Tubby, Echo Party should justify whatever the hell it is Edan's been doing with his time over the past four years.

I's a 40-minute, 12-track dance-rap full-length without a single hard punchline or trenchant moment, the sort of thing that sounds like it could've been banged out in a couple of weeks.

Not every song on Don't Stop or its bonus All Night EP is a classic, but Annie's good taste has yielded another fine crop of pop tunes.

Beak> is as full of odd, compulsive energy as you'd expect from something cranked out in two weeks, made by a guy who probably had creative fuel to burn, considering that his day job took 11 years between their second and third albums.

Them Crooked Vultures still feels like a record to be checked off a list rather than one to live with and fully invest in.

Despite the summery song titles and the beach balling associations that might follow these guys around, this music transcends the notion of seasons.

Where the music in Good Evening manages to mostly please without much compromise, the visual documentation of said music bends over backwards to make itself palatable to only the most fervent of fans.

This album still falls way short of what it could be, and I have to wonder how this even happened.

The sub-demo quality's most annoying attribute is the blocky digital clipping that happens whenever the voice recorder is overloaded, which is often. So if you don't have a tolerance for cut-rate sonics--and this isn't even the warm analog stuff--forget about it. But if you do, the best songs on BiRd-BrAiNs can sneak up on you.

Many tracks from these shows have been released before, but on this box you can listen to them bootleg-style, with all the repeated songs, tuning breaks, and banter with the audience.

With Aesop Rock on production, Felt becomes a triangulation that canvasses almost the entirety of U.S. undie rap in terms of geography and affiliation. So why is this thing kind of a bummer?