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.