There are no ham-fisted reggae rubs or overreaching rock moments; instead, the band simply plays with nuance and purpose, elaborating the lyrics by first understanding them.

These guys are capable musicians and studio heads, and mechanically speaking, these are fine pop songs-- well crafted, ably produced, everything in its right place-- but they don't particularly move you.

Telling the Truth has its moments of deeply felt poignancy, but its real value lies in its highly creative and endlessly listenable assimilation of soul, pop, rock, and folk signifiers.

This is one of the reasons it's important to approach Discontinued Perfume as a full album, intentionally put together in a certain order. The Caribbean have never been what you'd call a singles act anyway, but here you need to take in the whole picture the band is painting.

When this sound is done with edge and freakiness, it can be a unique surprise, which is exactly what You Think You Really Know Me was. Electric Endicott is too often the opposite--predictable and numbing, even when it's good.

If you value the merits of a singular flow, then what Monch does on this album can redeem nearly anything. Or at least make something likable out of an album that could've been just mediocre.

Dolphins is both hypnotic and staggering at times, but it lacks the extraordinary stamina that those earlier Mi Ami long-players kept from end to end.

Clearly a children's song, it's an autobiographical account of the slowed process of overcoming loss--a big idea written for small people but, like a good portion of Tear the Fences Down, one that registers across the board.

Though this band was routinely slapped with claims of 1970s plagiarism upon their arrival, it's unlikely that many people have ever mistaken a Strokes song for one by Lou Reed or Television. So it's ironic that their mimicry can be uncanny on Angles.

This is an album that sounds invigoratingly abrasive when you're moving and pins you to your seat when you're not, a study in pushing the limits of distortion that works as just plain good club music.

Boys and Diamonds bustles with African, Indian, and Caribbean rhythms, and boasts some genuinely interesting production in places. But the songwriting is ultimately too blocky and dull and slapped together for it to succeed as the thing it most wants to be-- a pop record.

It's no slight to say the record's distinguishing quality is the one Elbow has had since the beginning, an honest humanity that's imperfect but can be appreciated if you live with it.

Several Shades of Why gives us that softer, gentler J Mascis. But it's not kids' stuff -- these are lullabies for adults, offered up with a compassion that doesn't come easy.

They were and continue to be first-wave, American indie rock survivors whose legacy has become, at this point, less about their music and more about surviving. Riot Now!, the veteran outfit's first full-length in five years is a meat-and-potatoes rock record that goes one step further in explaining why that it is.

Though they'd likely be the first to tell you how much they still have to learn, Cervantine's ravishing exploration of sound is another step towards mastery.

Ultimately, Blessed has the feel of a transitional album-- from lonely to married, from troubled to contented, from regretful to joyful.

Lupe often has enough trouble staying out of his own way, yet Lasers doesn't suffer for that reason; it just feels like the flaming wreckage of a project that never had a prayer.

They're more interested in following intuition than patterns, and II is way more physical than mental. Its density, pace, and exuberance are, for anyone that likes to get lost in sound, basically a sonic amusement park.

Ultimately, Mind Spiders is tailor-made for those of us who value that four-on-the-floor reverie above all else.

Lyrically, No Color is a step in a new direction for Dodos -- for mostly better.

It'll be interesting to see where Beach Fossils go from here, because What a Pleasure is the type of release that shows they're talented, but still have a little work to do fully capitalize on it.

The record, then, turns out to be a fairly bloodless experience, a trait that suggests the Luyas should take heed of otherwise dangerous advice: A little violence never hurt anybody.

Few rappers could bring such an engaging sense of energy to a project so focused on preaching to the converted.

While the music on Land and Fixed revels in this newfound clarity, the vocals are still processed and manipulated. Where that juxtaposition worked on earlier recordings (when the two sides were still on the same playing field), it doesn't coalesce nearly as well here.

Even at their best, though, Noah and the Whale struggle to overcome a trying-too-hard odor that permeates everything they do right down to that ill-advised band name.

Rare is the EP that sounds so crucial to an artist's catalog and narrative, but it won't be surprising to look back on this release in a few years and see it as pivotal in Dum Dum Girls' career.

Sometimes the fervor gets to be too much for them: the grating but mercifully brief "Blood for You" is little more than the junkyard clang of the rhythm section and Sollee's stuck-pig shout, and the verses "Cradle on Fire" seem to get away from Sollee, who loses the melody somewhere in the back of his throat. But there's few moments when they don't seem to be throwing everything they've got into these performances, and that furious intensity drives them past both rough patches and easy comparisons.

With a sense of organizational purpose and of local music history, the first disc depicts Cash an artist hungry for success and willing to sell venetian blinds to get there....The portrait of Cash on this second disc is, unfortunately, fuzzy and poorly defined. It showcases everything we know about him and very little we don't know.