Something you might say about even the best stuff on Invisible Girl. Khan and Sultan move between the trappings of doo-wop to skid rock so fitfully it's easy to miss that some of these tunes aren't all there lyrically.

Guests reinforces its inessential nature by presenting, for the most part, a one-dimensional rendering of DOOM as a lyricist.

It is an alluring collection that hints at greatness but halts at achieving it, instead teasing listeners for its sequel.

As appealing as it is challenging, Extended Vacation is the sort of album that might even make those Wilco fans who can sing only "Kingpin" believe it.

Like those first-wave rave producers, Arbez wants to have it all: to make listeners smile, shake their shit, and still walk away a little shaken by the music's intensity. Flashmob pulls off this near-impossible combo with more skill than even Vitalic's fans may have expected.

Now, by denigrating this Ya-Ya's reissue as a commodity and by questioning the album's canonization in general, I don't mean to imply this set doesn't cook. Even if it's not larded with 20-minute workouts, Ya-Ya's is manna for guitar freaks, thanks to the fiery interplay between the immortal Keith Richards and inarguably the greatest lead guitarist the Stones ever boasted, Mick Taylor.

As a compilation, Greatest Hits offers few surprises other than that Grohl somehow resisted the temptation to title this thing The Best of Foo. Though the record conspicuously lacks the band's breakthrough single, "I'll Stick Around", the first 13 tracks make good on the promise of the title and provide a relentless hit parade of modern rock radio staples.

Night Music's rawness--Jaumet even manages to make a saxophone, that treacly emblem of kitschy synth-pop cocktail bar culture--sound visceral and disturbing on "At the Crack of Dawn"--is what separates the album from the glut of 80s jackers.

The first half of Boys has all of the action, and the second side can't help but drag a bit.

Virtually every track on You Are the One I Pick showcases Felix's remarkable instinct for knowing when to ramp up their instrumentation and when to hold back. Yet when an album is this carefully arranged, there are also moments when all the fingerprints on a given track become distracting.

Yes, the high points of the previous record are duplicated here-- but so too are the same problems that occasionally bogged down that record.

Earthly Delights shows their career is less a series of sprints than one exhilarating marathon.

More focused on offering Banhart's international and oddball bona fides than crafting songs that feel at all like home, What Will We Be finds Banhart in need of direction and editing.

The tracks don't sound forced or awkward as they follow well-trod lyrical roads littered with wounded "you"s and "I"s, they sound honest, and an honest love song as always is hard to resist.

The album's infectious, but with enough edge to temper its undeniable desire to connect.

The notion of a 2xCD set of rehearsal recordings smacks of unnecessary indulgence, but whether you take this as an alternative canon of R.E.M. music or a document of a band working hard to find its future by revisiting its past, the album is successful in providing a new perspective on a classic group desperately in need of a new narrative thread.

Hudson can definitely do tweaked, but he has work to do before being transcendent.

Divest the Smashing Pumpkins or Hum of their singers, give the bands room to jam, and this album might have ensued. Without vocals, it feels slightly empty.

Ay Ay Ay is a sticky-sweet, unbounded mess, but only the priggish and unimaginative will hold that against it.

Witch Cults is like the sound of Broadcast and the Focus Group trying to cast their spells at the same time: Some of the record is great, plenty of it is cross-chatter.

Goldstein's voice could use a little shaking up. Even in the first-person stories Goldstein feels like an observer, albeit one with a negative bias. Still, ARMS makes for an interesting contrast to Harlem Shakes' eternal optimism.

Heavy Trash never get too heavy on Midnight Soul Serenade. It might be Spencer's lightest and breeziest album to date, a testimony to his stick-to-it-iveness despite the advancing years and changing trends.

So while two straight discs of Fela is exhausting, it's probably the most suitable way to digest him.

Fits feels like the band's formal first LP--lots of what makes them unique, and then those somewhat awkward "growth" points. That initial itchiness, in other words, never really goes away.

Lungs is a cloud-headed introduction to Welch's world, where It Girl hype, coffins, violence, and ambition combust on impact; it's a platinum-shellacked demo reel drunk on its own hi-fi-ness.

Perhaps unintentionally, Turning the Mind feels chemical itself--it's a cheap buzz that ultimately should have no problem finding its way into the wheelhouse of people who just can't get enough whooshy sound effects.

"Street Horrrsing" was a great record, but Tarot Sport is a cut above. Perhaps surprisingly, it's also a welcoming album--and one of the best of this already fruitful year.

Logos feels familiar and assuring, another affecting dispatch from a corner of indie music that is increasingly starting to seem like one Cox pretty much owns.