Here, Clark's role-playing is grounded in emotions that are as cryptic as they are genuine and affecting. And when her voice can't bear it, her guitar does the screaming.

This lyrical simplicity shouldn't obscure the fact that these are sharply constructed songs that take unusual turns. One of Girls' specialities is their willingness to go completely over the top but somehow keep us right there with them.

Mountaintops is the first of their records to grapple with the everyday tribulations and banality of spending your entire adult life in a band-- with your Mate, nonetheless.

It's business as usual: spastic pounding, warp-speed scalar runs, and various math-rock feats of strength.

The songs on Hollow are modest--there's no closing epic, and the choruses are catchy but don't aim to be anthems--but the band seems to have found its true strength here in a sound that's pretty far removed from the implied violence of its name.

Often when an artist gets stronger, the music becomes more universal, and reference points become easier to hear. It may sound paradoxical, but these evocations help make Glacial Glow distinct.

Their experiments don't always yield useful results-- the downcast, acoustic-guitar-powered "Partners in Crime" comes awkwardly decorated with free-form piano rolls that trip up rather than propel the song's momentum. But there are moments when CSS find a way to successfully evolve without alienating their base.

While Why There Are Mountains reminded me of what those records [Perfect From Now On or The Moon and Antarctica] sounded like, Lenses Alien does something more difficult by reminding what it felt like once they were over and you were left to wonder if you just stumbled upon a cosmic, philosophical treatise disguised as an indie rock record.

The confidence in their new record is clear, if only because their vocals sound more boisterous than ever, but for the most part, the experimentation is the problem.

The band's personal choices--to abandon rock iconography for smaller, more fulfilling family units--will be Grace's fate as well: a record without broader narratives, meant for those who grew up with the Rapture, or want to.

Really, though, its the earlier track "Lost in Time" that best sums up the record's appeal--on one level, it's about the dancefloor as an escape, while on another, it winks at the group's time travels.

More than anything, Glazin's sneer'n'strut is just too much of a pretty good thing: One or two at a time, these songs work wonders, but over half an hour, the Boys' retrograde sneer and strut proves a bit too safe and samey.

Like his fusion heroes, Bruner wants it all: the future shock of electronics, the tightly edited pleasures of pop, the love-sick opulence of quiet-storm soul, and the show-stopper instrumental breaks of jazz. The fact that he's mostly pulled it off, with a record that's serious in intent while playful in execution, is pretty astounding.

Obscurities itself is over in less than 40 minutes: It's understated, personal, insular, oddball, and often gorgeous, an unexpectedly coherent collection from an important band.

I'm With You's hip thrusts and gyrations simply go through the motions, the work of a band with all kinds of capital to blow but no incentive to do anything differently.

This is functional music that highlights the simple pleasure of artfully arranged sound, the kind of gorgeous and evocative record that fills up the room and shifts your perception for 37 minutes and then brings you gently back to the surface.

Mostly there's a strong sense of discovery, of someone attempting to make sense of their surroundings, with Brooks cast as a voyager trampling through vast stretches of the British countryside, crisp leaves crinkling underfoot as he expertly funnels everything he sees and feels into song.

From the first beat drop, Fever Dream is obviously informed by the vaporized, off-kilter instrumentals of Flying Lotus and likeminded contemporaries: beats shuffle and scatter, bass hits low and leaves space in its wake, samples hiss and dissipate like the air is being sucked out of them, synth lines falter and wobble.

Ghost is nowhere near his best, most consistent, or most durable album, but that's ultimately not even the right way to measure its modest accomplishment. Instead, it's a surprisingly upbeat retirement album, one that never stoops to self-pity and very modestly reminds you of past triumphs.

If Romans is something of a lateral move where innovation's concerned, it's by no means a step down in quality. In the last couple years, Stallones continues to carve out what feels like uncharted territory; hard to blame him for wanting to survey the scenery a little while longer.

For Smith's first four albums, Outside Society is an abridgement that doesn't really do her justice.

It's still perfectly effective fuzz-metal, but it's coming from a group of guys who have done seriously indelible work with the same ingredients, so it comes off a bit too slight.

Although the outgoing sonics of Endless Now represent a considerable leap in sound, it's those same qualities that could very well repel those drawn in by the burnt-ends glory of Nothing Hurts-- not because that previous record is necessarily better, though.

While Tha Carter IV isn't the first indication that Wayne's finest verses are behind him, it is the most glaring.

Though there's less breathing space on Thursday, and fewer melodic hooks, it still feels of a piece with House of Balloons.

The Ornament's expansiveness owes a fair bit to Olsen's voice, which sounds like it's been given an emotional B12 shot. His lyrics are prettily--albeit somewhat emptily-- evocative, richly textured, and his tonal pronunciation (the "PO-lice cars" of "Hanging Window") adds temporal sentimentality to his words.

Tassili is a very different album from any Tinariwen have recorded before, and they're proving to be a band of considerable range as they build a catalog of varied and excellent albums.

The R.E.D. Album will likely fade into obscurity immediately upon arrival, but if it doesn't raise some eyebrows around major label offices, then this is a failure of not just one person, but also of an entire industry.