Kamaal the Abstract is not a great record by any means. But it is an interesting one, a unique effort by an artist struggling to mesh two disparate musical systems, gambling that inherent internal friction could spark some excitement.

It's experimental music, to be sure, but it doesn't conflate experimentation with alienation.

To those without the stomach for Joakim's waywardness, Milky Ways will often sound as much during the course of a listen. For those who are feeling adventurous but forgiving of the same, Joakim is a worthy companion.

Out Into the Snow is another solid entry in a long career for Joyner, and it seems his place as the dark observer on the indie world's fringe is pretty well set.

Wild Beasts certainly aren't the first rock band to stand up society's dregs and outcasts, but few others immortalize them on such a wondrous, mythic scale.

Experience can be a crutch, an excuse to tread water in comfortable waters. But Popular Songs wears its age well, a calm but firm reminder of an indie rock perennial it's all too easy to take for granted.

That's Signal Morning's greatest strength: It's a supremely busy record that at the same time doesn't sound fussed over.

Blueprint 3 is the kind of stuck-on-stupid, event-driven money pit that proves while Jay-Z's at a point where he's got no one to answer to but himself, he's still capable of an entire hour of failing to take his own advice.

All in all though, it's good to hear a new Os Mutantes record that carries forward the ideals and exploratory spirit that made us all love the band in the first place, even if it won't ever supplant those classic early albums.

It's weirdly kind of a grower. There's nothing that immediately jumps out and announces itself as the 'Where Do You Run' of Everything Goes Wrong.

Even if a lot of Heartbeat Radio is affable and politely poppy, a lot of it is so pointedly bland that you can't help but wonder if the good stuff stands out only because of the beige filler around it.

It's not always great--the band has a tendency to let its best ideas get the best of them--but there is a bigness of sound that is hard to approximate. And even harder to control.

So naturally the big question now is if the rest of Get Color lives up to the promise of 'Die Slow.' The answer is that it does... kind of.

Mister Pop stays the course for the rest of its relatively compact 10-song, 34-minute length, reshaping the Clean's core components into poignant bossa nova instrumentals ('Simple Fix'), propulsive Krautrock-outs ('Tensile') and, as only they can, bizarro fuzz-organ jigs that resemble White Light/White Heat-era Velvets auditioning for "Riverdance" ('Moonjumper').

In Prism ultimately sets a new standard for them: don't just make it sound like you never left, but rather make the past seem like a mere warm-up for what's to come.

Like Ghostface's modern classic, this album defies hip-hop's current atmosphere of youthful cockiness and aging complacency: instead, it's driven by the sometimes celebratory, sometimes traumatized sense of stubborn survival and perseverance, a veteran mindset that can no longer picture success without having to defend it.

Hawthorne clearly has the ability to integrate and recreate his influences in his own compositions; it would be revelatory if he added more of his own signature sounds and soul into the music.

East of Eden, in that sense, isn't so far from Studio's West Coast: a masterful, hypnotic album that draws on a world of influences but is ultimately limited by none.

As Good as Gone is Nudge's best album so far, the kind of record that indicates a band has found its signature sound, and is poised to deepen and expand it.

These 38 meticulously prepared minutes offer dozens of memorable moments. They just demand that you listen.

Tillman's intimate, close-miced voice, does lend Year in the Kingdom a lonesome, somber tone, one Tillman-- a funny, amicable dude, if you've ever heard him clowning on himself at a Fleet Foxes gig-- would do well to shake on occasion. Next time, maybe; for now, the stout, supine Year in the Kingdom, Tillman's second fine record of the year, will certainly do.

Just as you'd have to be made of stone not to enjoy at least some part of a Monotonix gig, anyone who likes garage rock would have to be an obstinate stickler for originality not to enjoy the best parts--that is, the majority--of Where Were You When It Happened?

Red contains no clunkers, only lukewarm forays that further convince me this band can nail any sound they want, cheekiness be damned.

Where the old Bondy would sometimes show his hand too blatantly, the new Bondy is playing his cards with greater aplomb and much greater skill. When the Devil's Loose, A.A. Bondy's second album, is evident of this ever-growing skill. But that's not to say there isn't room to grow.

Unsurprisingly, the rarities on The Fine Print could make a good album, but the oddities are often distracting.

He's only a middling guitar player, but insists on soloing and showboating endlessly, drawing out songs to unnecessary lengths.

Their equipment may be largely restricted to percussion, vocals, and the occasional embellishment of keyboard, but their ability to fully eclipse these limitations and create music with a strong improvisational pulse and so much vitality is a no small feat, and proves that they are continuing to experiment in magnificent, dynamic ways.

Humbug isn't better than either of its predecessors, but it expands the group's range and makes me curious where it might go next.

Mew has succeeded in developing a good sound from some of the least hip ingredients imaginable, and No More Stories... feels like a consolidation of every stride they've made to date.

Unfortunately a whole album of similarly DJ-pitched material, all the quote-unquote pop frills shaved off, wouldn't have allowed blog readers to devote the few days their attenuated attentions can muster for He Was King's singles, before the next this-is-kind-of-okay-I-guess electro-pop album arrives to distract them.

It's a sad case of an artist forgetting what makes her great, settling for what makes her merely good instead.

The results are perfectly pleasant but rarely inspiring, hardly sterile but at the same time too smooth.

Yehezkely, with her limited range and slightly detached delivery, effectively bridges that gap between the music's indulgent/escapist tendencies and our desire to connect with it despite that distance.

By dividing the sessions into what amounts to an overview of his career, My Dusty Road detracts from the recently discovered source material, making it both an incredible find and a missed opportunity.

That mischief is largely missing from Origin: Orphan, and the lack of lyrical cleverness seems to have infected the music as well, making for a mostly cloudy listen from a formerly sunny-day band.

It's wide-eyed pop minus the fizz, demonstrating that sizzle can still be subtle.

Fortunately, whether she's sifting through the anguish she's caused her mother and the trouble she's having finishing her album, or realizing that good sex can make for bad boyfriends and that even sucky jobs serve some cosmic purpose, she generally cuts through the crap without pretending to have easy answers.

Watch Me Fall is neither a reinvention nor a holding pattern for Reatard--walking the line between them is tricky, but he continues to make doing so look easy.

Benson emphasizes the raw power of his riffs instead of polishing them into a smooth sheen. It's not as DIY charming as his earlier works, but it's pretty darned effective.

The Cave Singers' mild, moseying tunes aren't without their minor charms, and they're unfailingly good at conjuring images of wide-open fields and dust-caked lanes, but nobody wants to walk down the same road all the time if they can help it.

Hospice answers silliness with solemnity, jitters with nerve. Their band name simply describes their music: a delicately branching instrument of force.

King of Jeans successfully consolidates these two strengths, harnessing the earlier record's sometimes directionless fire-extinguisher splatter into shake-appealing rock action, and cohering Korvette's ramblings into a more complete picture of wage-slave misanthropy and alpha-male inadequacy.

Luminous Night doesn't challenge "School of the Flower" or "The Sun Awakens" for Six Organs' best albums, but it is a solid addition to a big catalog that gets more interesting all the time.

Phil has moved well beyond the often formless experiments of the early Microphones releases--this is still by no means a record to be digested lightly. And thank goodness for that.

As overblown as You Can't Take It With You is musically, Nigro's not one to be upstaged by guitar pedals.

They're like a combination of Where the Wild Things Are, a fever dream, a pagan woodland ceremony, and a notebook doodle. The music is worth taking in, too, over and over again.

I'd assume Bay of Pigs' disco diversion to be just that in the long run, but after the relatively wagon-gathering summary of "Trouble in Dreams," this certainly feels like a break and, perhaps, the first blush of something new. Cheers to that.

Season Dreaming is the sort of record that could, in the wrong hands, easily drift off into formless bedlam, but the group's employment of simple melodies and tunefulness when needed keeps that from happening.

It's chewing up something familiar and making it weird again. Life gives you lemons, so you make Alien in a Garbage Dump.

Too often its soundtrack atmosphere is too thick, its arrangements as obvious as a painted backdrop.

It creates an album weighed toward showcasing masterful execution that leaves a pretty muted general impression. Unless you're predisposed toward technical prowess and solo bass recordings, it's probably going to come off as more of a clinic than a collection of great songs.

The Bachelor most damningly lacks the charm attendant with any of those character descriptions, continuing Wolf's ability to please one's inner music critic, but too often ignoring any sort of pleasure principle.

Pop singers certainly don't need to reinvent music production to be gripping, but Esser's debut doesn't strain or stretch creative boundaries or hit that perfect balance between playful and experimental in the same way that contemporaries like Micachu and the Shapes do.

There are other moments of inspiration--maybe about a CD's worth, all told.

Elephant Jokes just has a good feeling about it, as if Pollard really liked this batch, so that's why he deigned to play an instrument on it, maybe, and why he slips a little intro in and closes it out with the very final-sounding 'Architectural Nightmare Man.'

Waxing Gibbous is a good, if occasionally overdone, album that proves that his musical imagination is still a fertile one.

Nisennenmondai maintain grooves until they reach a sort of anxious frenzy, then move to the next buildup. For all the repetitious melodies and rhythms that form the core of the record, they don't sacrifice subtlety or surprise.

Love and Curses sounds as much a product of the present as of the past, and the new songs attack with goblin force but vampire sophistication, thanks to another new line-up.

Alice and Friends doesn't produce often in that department [solid hooks], relying instead on the kind of raw energy that fuels a good house party.

Snow Blindness isn't essential listening for anyone but VanGaalen's most dedicated fans, but it is an enjoyable, occasionally even great record.

Slaughterhouse­'s biggest weakness is what brought us here in the first place--for a record that's supposed to be so lyrically godbody that aspiring rapsters will retreat to a lifetime of Auto-Tune in fear, the lyrics display no real wit or inspirational spark.

This is terminally catchy music played with punk's enthusiasm and velocity, and maybe it's the fact that there's only two dudes in this band that makes you feel like joining in to bash along.

It's a feel-good album for an era that could use a little happiness, a sweaty collection of heady, hedonistic tunes just in time for the hottest days of the year.

I don't know what exactly it says about Paul Banks, but the most borderline-embarrassing tracks on Skyscraper are, in fact, the strongest--it's the safe, formulaic moments that fall flat and, unfortunately, make up a substantial portion of the record.

Given its years-spanning tracklist, No One's First obviously has a retrospective flavor, but it also seems to point the way ahead for Modest Mouse, if only to suggest that the band will continue moving in opposite directions--backwards and forwards--all at once.

It's not that Tribute To isn't on some level deeply felt, but it's just not deeply considered, and while it's nice to hear James focused and playing to his strengths after the scattered "Evil Urges," his tribute eventually loses the one thread it sets out to carry on its cover.

A few good hooks, in fact, would go a considerable way toward redeeming Blank's largely forgettable debut, I Love You.

All this means that Fruit Bats, like their contemporaries, could unfortunately be passed over due to sheer familiarity. That'd be a shame, because The Ruminant Band only gets more rewarding as it settles in.

Creaturesque is an easy enough listen with a few moments that stand at attention, but even the best bits can't compare to Moonbeams', and the lesser stuff's far lesser indeed.

Ultimately this is a question of taste--and plenty of folks like their music slow-moving and somber--but the general avoidance of rhythm on some of these cuts poses a problem for me.

Infinite Light is solid. And its overall quality owes more than a small debt to the fact that Webber and Wells have the good taste and modesty to keep it at 10 songs.

As it stands right now, though, it's a nice bit of gauzy, gray-hued racket to throw on when you've only got so much attention to give.

Apple's Acre sounds homemade in the best possible way. It is a quality that speaks to not only the intimacy of the recording, but also the confidence and comfort that Nurses now have in their delicately shambolic sound.

If It Feels So Good When I Stop expands his abilities as a writer, it'd be at least interesting to hear a record of his that does the same for his skills as a musician.

Sometimes wars are won with persistence and numbers alone, after all. And in any case, when you're cruising along in a pleasure craft as nice and reliable as this one, it's all right to tread a little water.

Yep, it's the face of a guy who just recorded an accomplished, cohesive debut, one that should please fans of "blog house" and Swedish pop alike. Now if only he owned a razor.

Despite the cries about careerism, they rarely settled into one spot for long, and even when they were correctly perceived to have done so--about one half of The Great Escape really is a Parklife retread--they were still spreading their collective wings on album tracks and B-sides.

Drug Rug have allowed a bit of the drawl of their early work to carry over here, and even when they're playing it fairly straight, there's something slightly twisted about their melodies.

The Fiery Furnaces will always be arty and precious, but they definitely know their way around a good tune. Have a drink and sing along.

There are real, new stylistic portents here. But Josephine mostly suggests new directions rather than moving in them, and the traceless ache of its muddy middle-third ('Hope Dies Last,' 'The Handing Down,' 'Map of the Falling Sky') is burdensome.

Riceboy Sleeps can keep you company in your cubicle or gridlock traffic.

Songs rarely pick up from a crawl. Sustained guitar chords fan out and crush whatever momentum the band gets going. The bursts of distortion that colored If Children are almost pornographically expanded.

Blue Roses makes it clear that Groves is inordinately talented and working with big portions of audacity and acumen.

While it's certainly enjoyable, it's also a bit more generic than anything they've done before.

All the sounds and ideas emanate from the same sources and desires, and the prismatic contrasts between them illuminate this intriguing and heartfelt album.

That's what's so great about it, though; save the Vaseline-on-lens Fleetwood Mac number that closes things out, there's nary a dull patch or an awkward spot to be found here, just a sublime (if sorta schizoid) trip through the warmest, spaciest parts of your record collection.

Totems Flare regains a measure of hospitality from its predecessor, but it brings only one new idea to the table-- Clark's singing, which is only partially effective.

There is no pretense in their simple arrangements, but you can hear their motor revving, and you know they'll never run out of gas.

The bulk of Gorgeous Johnny is unfortunately too earnest and too patient really to go anywhere in particular, preening like a collection of meticulously cleaned Travis demos or, at their worst, an Adam Green album without any of the dirty bits.

As a first salvo, though, it's pretty hard to fault; if vintage disco, classic house, and gurning Euro house are up your street, this is as happy-making as it gets.

The songs on Horehound don't so much rock as writhe, reinstituting the idea of the blues as a sinister, morally corrupting force that's as much the province of voodoo priests and witch doctors as musicians.

Their latest, ...And the Ever Expanding Universe, gets grandiose in nearly all the right places; it's the singing part of the songs that could use a little beefing up.

Weird to say about a hippie, but it's humanity that's missing in Sharpe's mild but mannered and certainly unmemorable music, which feels focus-grouped, stone-washed, and artificial.

It's musical air-freshener at worst, and inspired homage at best. The dance's themes of infirmity and redemption are writ large in the song titles, but it's Broderick's technique, not the narrative, that captivates.

Their debut album, Embrace, dispenses its earth-quaking riffage in such carefully measured, perfectly spaced-out rations, it tricks you into thinking the band is much heavier than it actually is.

Much of Until the Earth comes off like the narrator from "Windowsill" still telling these damn kids to get off his lawn.

Son Volt's label debut, American Central Dust, is some of the sleepiest protest music ever made: Every song saunters by at a slow tempo, Farrar's voice sounds increasingly inexpressive, and John Agnello's production makes everything sound real purdy but lifeless.