The most fascinating Bob-project in years.

After its auspicious start, The Dew Last an Hour tries to convey similar sentiments amid agreeable, midtempo synth-pop that skimps on the pop and piles on the twinkling, harmonized guitars and vaporous melodies. What begins as a cooling blast of fresh air dissipates into pleasant ambience.

The shame of it is that somewhere in here there's an album that could've done more to revive the mostly moribund idea of 80s pop tropes in contemporary music.

Black Pudding might not be High Plains Drifter, but it’s a suitably entertaining bad-ass diversion a la The Gauntlet.

These ["Maria," "Sick of Sittin’" and "Fall in Line"] are sturdy moments on an album that feels less like an end in itself than a promising first step toward a genuine pop rebirth—moments that are strong enough to inspire hope for Aguilera’s own The Velvet Rope or, at least, My Love Is Your Love. She has certainly still got the range.

Unlike its creators' best prior accomplishments, Broken Bells doesn't seem prepared, or even attempting, to cross over. Nor does it feel like a new direction or outlet for either artist-- it's more of a nice detour.

Coliseum stacks everything in the right place, and it’s all executed with the usual precision, so why doesn’t the album dazzle quite like the last few? Like the four albums before it, the Besnards self-recorded and self-produced this one at Breakglass, and more than its predecessors, it begs for an outside collaborator, somebody to shake up the band’s routine and perhaps lend some new tricks to their shrinking playbook.

With all the work to try and incorporate these far-afield guest vocalists aside, it's worth noting that the production itself is more reliant on them than ever. Underneath them, the music is often flat and unadventurous, tasteful where it could stand to be raucous and rigid where it needs to be limber.

Crystal Antlers' proper debut is, more than their EP, the sound of a band still with more potential than goods.

Most of these songs are really pretty damn good. Tanlines have never had a problem with the set-up, but it's in the delivery where the occasionally falter.

The Chuck Berry template rears its head, for better and worse, throughout Chuck.

This band is still nearly as big, as slow, as lumberingly loud as they were in the days Kurt Cobain was trying out for a spot on bass.

The diluted authorship leaves him floundering amid songs that manage to be overly complex and fiercely indistinct at the same time.

Even if the new album can be cheaply on-the-nose and opportunistic at times, it's hard to root against Lily Allen.

A Hundred Days Off is enjoyably uninspired; it defines both "pleasant" and "unremarkable".

If you can make it past the album's frustrating layout, Hocus Pocus proves a fine collection of songs by pretty much anyone's standards.

Paling in comparison to the Pixies is expected (and it would be unrealistic to expect otherwise), but Tears isn't even a good Catholics album.

Has its inspired moments but ultimately comes off like something of a vanity project.

The biggest hitch is that Electric President seemingly achieve all of their humble goals by mid-album, and so spend almost half their time with pencils down, repeating the day's assignments silently to themselves.

The band's longtime devotees will find plenty to love here, but the album isn't memorable enough to make its way into most people's heavy rotation.

Hair finds Imperial Teen in full-bore navel gazing mode, talking both obliquely and directly about where they are and, more importantly, how they got there.

While the first 20 minutes supply an appropriately cocaine-like high (with the requisite comedown), what's really missing is the debut they somehow skipped over, one where they could've showed where their passion comes from, rather than merely being actors in a Hills-hop hybrid.

Despite it all, Reefer is Thorburn's best album of the year, and it is so successful because it feels tossed off, like he's not trying so hard.

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

Tellingly, the best songs on Blue Giant are also the simplest, pointing to what this record could and perhaps should have been.

As their odd tics, off notes, and bevy of stops and starts build up, the logic of their approach becomes clearer and more addictive. In that sense Napa Asylum, with 22 songs stretched over 45 minutes, is probably the best Sic Alps full-length so far.

Hastily assembled, thoughtlessly sequenced minutes of vivid beats and incredible rapping.

Add it all up, and you get one of Tejada's most varied records to date.