When taking advantage of the opportunity to be as dumb as they need/want to be, West Ryder succeeds, which is another way of saying acoustic guitars have absolutely no reason to be involved.

Like much of Rhett Miller, and unlike much oft-unctuous power pop, it's music seemingly made to softly impress rather than outright inspire.

Ranging from translucent psych-pop to pummeling garage-rock, they're alternately assured and vulnerable, direct and subtle, light and dark.

The debut album by these producers-turned-trio comes after blog-bait remixes galore, including a nice enough Postal Service-ish Vampire Weekend makeover, but there's little of those fine young Columbians' infectious exuberance here.

The shift in perspective necessary to "get" it, though, does work on that level: at the least, it's a fitting testimonial to British Sea Power's partially effective relocation of a classic film into a modern aesthetic scheme.

Kurupt seems so committed to the idea of saying not that much in a very complicated way that it's utterly compelling. Quik, on the other hand, is consistently literal, dealing in the concrete with memorable, loosely connected run-on raps.

Jhelli Beam manages to be a completely cerebral experience and at times overwhelming in a satisfactory way, but then again, you could say the same about ice cream headaches.

When I take The Loud Wars as a justifiably forgotten but enjoyable enough record from a bygone era, I'm soothed; it's a little better than, oh, Fake French or something, and I'm sure as hell not going to dig around to find that one with this thing floating around.

There are sonic Easter Eggs for a thousand listens here, and it would take six pairs of headphones and an equal number of high-grade strains of weed to track them all down. Happy hunting.

Catamawr Yards, then, gets better as it gets more adventurous, and it gets more adventurous as it leans more on that backing band.

Kowalsky's work so far is mostly for hardcore drone-fans, and even they might not be blown away by Tape Chants. But anyone can appreciate Kowalsky's attention to detail.

The Little Match Girl Passion is as much a devotional piece as the Bach Passion it is modeled on, and with it, Lang has produced the most profound and emotionally resonant work of his career.

By being boring on purpose, Iggy ironically proves himself oddly more compelling than on his many past accidents. If it's not an album for the ages so much as for the aged, at least it's one you may want to hold on to a bit and give another shot when you get closer to where Iggy's at himself right now.

At its worst, this is effectively a contemporary acoustic neo-No-Depression record with Costello's signature vocal tics slapped on top.

It would be too easy to dog Hombre Lobo as a case where going back to the well leads to diminishing returns, but the problem is just that Hombre Lobo is too easy.

Certainly Archives' first volume contains enough audio and visual stimuli to keep a Neil Young fan busy till the next edition arrives (presumably) in 2029.

Jay Stay Paid's biggest strengths don't lie in its guest roster, impressive as it is. It's the way these reconstructed, reassembled beats so vividly show off how left-field he was willing to get in the service of finding new ways to make a beat knock.

Franz's music is usually as crisp and tight as its constructivist cover art, and though reformatted, stretched out, and slowed down on Blood, it still maintains a strong pulse.

This is a decently crafted, moderately hooky, fairly vacuous power-pop album, and under the right light, you could do a whole lot worse.

While the whole package is marketed as a "love letter" to fans, true followers will quickly be able to sniff out its inferiorities. If anything, this latest selection from the dwindling Buckley vaults subverts his talents and ultimately insults the same hardcore fans it's aimed at.

It's accomplished and impressive always, but sometimes to the point of verging on an overstuffed din.

Really, in a world far too concerned with backstories and far too lacking in good old dedication to craft, Grizzly Bear's just about as boring as they come: four guys who very quietly set out to make a fantastic record. And so they did.

They're pleasure-pushers, filling tunes with riffs, phrases, and beats a five-year-old could love. But, on Wolfgang, those same songs are unfulfilled--and this band wouldn't have it any other way. There's beauty in a sunset. Phoenix are wringing it out.

"Dandelion Gum" was speckled and silly and high as shit. Eating Us feels more like the baseline: collected, repeatable, respectable.

It's mellow and smooth and relaxing, sure, but it's also unpredictable and full of little revelations and turns of sound that make it one of space disco's crowning recent achievements.

Under and Under dispatches the charge of repetition and "samey" songcraft very quickly.

Per Sunn O)))'s long-standing dogma, "Maximum volume [still] yields maximum results." But this time, there's enough musical range and temperance to usher even the most resolute naysayer into this intricate wonderland.

Although Alpers has found a winning sound, she's still scrambling to gather her notes and draft a theme she can deliver with conviction.

Fake Surfers doesn't continue these new adventures in hi-fi. Rather, it plays to the Intelligence's extremes, casting a more pronounced British Invasion pop influence in warped, peak-level lo-fi sonics, emphasizing a connection between post-punk and psychedelia that stretches from Clinic and Guided by Voices through the deconstructionist pop of Swell Maps and Wire and back to the whimsical wordsmithery of Syd Barrett and Skip Spence.

Created in mere weeks, it doesn't sound fussy or fussed over, and manages the tricky balance of audible intimacy without crappy bedroom acoustics.

Tiga's still not a dancefloor chameleon like Basement Jaxx and he's not yet as pop-oriented and clever as say, the Pet Shop Boys, but Ciao! at least sees him glancing in those directions.

There's something almost voyeuristic in listening to such an intimate musical relationship built on exchanging confidential messages to one another, but it's this warmth that gives the record its spirit.

Blackshaw's musical ideas are interesting enough that it's easy to see his piano pieces progressing as his technique comes along, opening another avenue to explore his musical concepts.

Ultimately, it's the dynamic between melodic resonance ('Young Diamond') and found-sound obfuscation (the four minutes of 'You Are a Force' are pregnant with stay amp hum) that defines a debut that I'd call "promising."

Yet like last time, there are plenty of sturdy, major-key melodies that go straight for the jugular. But whatever sing-along quality they have, their effectiveness is almost always determined by context.

The music is so immaculately tasteful that it's hard to figure out how they chose such a silly band name. (It's from a song by the Belgian band dEUS, which makes it no less silly.) But they got the album title right--they've arrived.

For the moment, cherry-pick the highlights from this album, and cross your fingers for her sophomore release.

Relapse can be an intermittently thrilling sonic experience until you realize everything sounds like a variation of 'What's the Difference,' 'If I Can't,' or even fucking '30 Something.'

The script might contain plenty of familiar elements, but they're ably, and occasionally superbly, shuffled and recast.

Manners is deceptively consistent even beyond its singles--if you like one Passion Pit song, you'll probably like them all.

Around the Well is a great retrospective that heps fans to a lot of difficult-to-locate material from one of this decade's finest songwriters. While there is some fairly flat stuff on the first disc, it really gives the listener the sweep of his development as a writer, musician, and arranger.

As with previous albums, Yours Truly benefits from creative sequencing that winks at expectations.

While his songwriting remains funny and incisive at 45, ostensibly ballsier numbers like 'Fuckingsong' and 'Angela' veer dangerously close to bar-band boneheadedness.

It's also quite good, despite the possible failure of nerve on its creator's part.

Vanderslice hasn't made a bad record, but he's only made a couple that are this good. If you've never dipped an ear into his world before, Romanian Names is a great place to do it.

The band's egalitarian and mutually supportive dynamic pays off on the harmonious Still Night, Still Light, their third and best album.

A good deal more Lange and a good deal less Muns would have brought out the best in Scott Herren.

So 'Em Are I is a frontloaded album. But anyone who ever bought a Sebadoh record despite really liking only Lou Barlow's songs should still consider checking it out.

The album spends nearly its entirety trying to revive a sound prevalent in 1994.

There may be some excellent tracks on this record, but it mostly hints at better things to come down the line.

Where Deacon infuses his day-glo riots with brainy intent, EAR PWR recycle the worst tendencies of electroclash: the lackluster rapping and willful inanity. It's frustrating because there's ample evidence that EAR PWR aren't compensating for being shitty at music, they're just dumbing down.

As the next step in Kittin's conflicted evolution, Two is not that much different from (or more enjoyable than) what's preceded it. As a supposed remembrance of the heyday of electroclash, it's a nostalgia trip that's best left untaken.

As a whole, Eats Darkness feels haphazard in a way that shades into self-indulgence.

Druggy records are never all that good when they don't convey anything about the experience other than the blur. That's not to say you couldn't get swept up in The Mirror Explodes' churn under the right influence, but it's not something to inspire the formation of many new memories.

With only six songs on offer--one of which is a 75-second interlude called 'The Curlew'--it's hard to feel like this is the assertive, confident statement Fake has it in him to make. As a strategic move out from the ghetto of nostalgic IDM Nowheresville, though, it'll suit just fine.

The performances are blandly professional, because any major-label rock band of Green Day's abilities could shit this stuff out in their sleep, and emotionally inert. This is the crafting of a modern epic as a dreary day-job routine.

Townes, though well intended, shows neither of these formidable artists in his best light.

Crime Pays has a lonely, defensive, and vaguely desperate Kirk Van Houten vibe--more noticeable than a lack of breakout bangers or guest spots is a palpable and inexcusable lack of excitement and spark.

The painstaking introspection here seems to stem from a need to use their success and exposure to deliver some definitive, U2-sized message when really they're so much more relatable when they're awkwardly sorting out their psychological messes on the fly.

So Sewn Together is gently rustic, occasionally (a bit) heavier than you might expect, and ready for any adult-leaning-but-alternative-friendly playlist. It's also pretty bland, and at worst banally melodramatic in ways that suggest the unfortunate arrival of the Meat Puppets power ballad.

For those who like their music brief and stupid-simple (and appreciate the various strains of the punk canon Mika Miko are drawing upon), We Be Xuxa can be plenty of fun.

Like much of Magnolia before it, the songs lope along quiet, lazy rhythms in no particular hurry to get where they're going. But while the Wooden Birds never quite arrive anywhere special, that's not to say Kenny isn't pointed that general direction.

The Church are still producing at a high level, and Untitled #23 is a must for anyone who's followed them this far.

Willis still viciously circumnavigates his drumkit with authority and adventure. Warren still manhandles a viscous bass tone that he funnels into heavy themes. Kasai adds texture and dimension, augmenting what's there instead of adulterating it.

This is a singer's album, highlighting Hukkelberg's voice above all else.

OK Bear is a good album--it won't blow you away, but I get the sense from listening that Enigk is confident enough in his music not to need to blow you away.

Barring the occasional mid-song bridge that might have you checking your watch, most of it works, too: Even when Desire Lines slows, it's because it's wandering or straggling, not because it's hamming out same-y minutes in some ill-forged notion of filling up a 12".

Call it retro in service of sweat and smiles, celebrating the ridiculousness of dance music at its loudest and most unmannered.

Street produces again, and Robyn Hitchcock is among the guests, but even they can't make up for repetitive, one-dimensional songs--mostly sleepy folk, occasionally fuzzy psych.

With that in mind, the album is perfectly titled, as Actor proves St. Vincent as an artist capable of crafting believable, complicated characters with compassion, insight, and exacting skill.

Ultimately, even when she veers into previously unexplored aesthetic territory, every track feels just like Peaches, which is rather remarkable given how rigid and predictable she had been in the recent past.

The way Roberts' often high-pitched brogue wraps itself around sentences is pretty as hell; his voice has never sounded better, nor has it been recorded this clearly before.

Perhaps it's partly a factor of Oberst's essential attention-grabbing nature, but none of these gentlemen offers up a composition that snags the ear better than the most mundane effort from their fearless leader.

The band's now-routine gospel-like chanting grows tiresome by album end (they miss Vanderhoof's vocals), and, as was expected, Set ‘Em Wild doesn't necessarily expand the band's sound so much as further splinter their interest.

A few brilliant left turns that feel almost accidental mixed in with a sort of end-times hunger for a top-40 audience that doesn't seem to exist anymore.

So Entertainment might be music for their performances, it might be for others' dance performances, but it's not for the dance floor.

The Horrors' shoegazer makeover aside, the real story here is Badwan's growing confidence as a singer, and his willingness to sound more scared than scary. Primary Colours loses its radiance when he reverts back to bogeyman type.

With Outside Love, McBean takes this theme on an adventurous journey to surprising heights, and the fully realized sound allows his ideas more room to breathe.

Easily the band's most accessible effort, hipsters and headbangers will likely agree it's also their most intricately imagined.

With their dirty mouths and pretty faces, pop perspicacity and knack for making a bloody racket, there's no question the Vaselines were worth rescuing from obscurity.

Patrick Watson doesn't do foundation work exceedingly well. Yet this is not to say that there aren't moments on Wooden that suggest songcraft was the foremost urge.

It takes only a few listens to realize that this album is its own beast. Even with healthy doses of unruliness and a few far-off wanderings, this is Magik Markers' most coherent, self-contained effort to date.

Awe is in the ear of the beholder, sure, but after being predictably pounded into the ground for half an hour by Rodriguez-Lopez/Hill et al. and their bag of heavy tricks, it's hard to tell if we're meant to walk away impressed or oppressed.

Replica Sun Machine is an exceedingly simple thing--with tunes so familiar-feeling to be easily ignorable--but it's presented with a false sense of intricacy, gussied up and disguised as something more than it really is.

A Ways Away, O'Neil's fifth solo album and first on the K imprint, draws together her considerable experience as a producer, singer, and songwriter in a fleetingly beautiful 36 minutes that washes over the listener in an introspective haze.

Invisible Cities serves as something of a breath-catching moment for a band that's taken a giant leap on each of its albums, bringing some of the thunder back while further elaborating on the progress made on Ghost Rock.

Colonia is mostly careful to use its expanded palette of sounds for subtle shading rather than gratuitous effect.

Together Through Life isn't without its charms--Dylan never is. It's just very minor, especially by his standards.

Instead of focusing on one idea and shaping it into something unique, though, the album tries its hand at everything that is "now" (noise-pop, dance rock, etc.) and owns none of it.

The band's music is spot-on for soundtrack work precisely because it's moody yet unobtrusive, evocative of something, yet noncommittal enough to conceivably fit any emotional tableaux.

A letdown after Fables; whether haughty, homesick, or ha-ha, on the way toward frankness, the album gets bogged down in simplicity.

Given its one-off status and unique format, Are You In? is probably a diversion rather than a reinvention, a mixtape-style curio given big business backing, but hopefully some of its reinvigorated sonics find their way to the next proper De La Soul album.

For one reason or another, Modeselektor seem unwilling to trim the fat and here again, are a handful of just-okay songs that probably should have been lopped off. Cut some of them and you've got a great record instead of just a darn good one.

On When I See the Sun, they seem to want to prove they also recognize great songwriting, and it turns out they not only have impeccable taste, they also have an instinctive understanding of the type of songs that tend to increase in mystery and intimacy when swaddled in an impenetrable fog of guitars.

If you're a lifelong garage-rock purist or just enjoy the occasional Jay Reatard track, there's a good chance you'll get a lot of mileage out of Help. It's hard not to: This is like meat and potatoes prepared by a master chef--totally familiar but utterly delicious.

Frenetic, mercurial, and of wildly variable listenability, theFREEHoudini feels like a retrospective and a retrenchment of forces, but it also serves as yet another step in Anticon's breathless, never-ending push forward.

Although Empire tries mightily, they collapse underneath too many ideas before the record is even half over.

Tennant slaps his heart on his sleeve and gets on with things. The result isn't awful, although none of it is as spooky and playful as the cover of the Passions 'I'm In Love With a German Film Star' that the Boys produced for Sam Taylor-Wood last year.