A pleasant, atmospheric diversion.

From the first song it sounds rich and original.... It's as major a step as you'd expect-- really, as you'd demand-- from someone like Why?, not only for its sheer inventiveness, but the continuity that turns these lyrical snapshots into moving portraits.

What truly separates Daybreaker from other Orton efforts is its lack of emotional resonance-- moments where Beth just belts it out or where she actually seems engaged with the songs she's singing.

Though their minimalism might sometimes sound like straight distillation, the tunes still hit, and hurt.

Despite some strong ideas and a few memorable songs, Faded Seaside Glamour remains notable mostly for the vocals: the album's ups and downs follow Gilbert's voice almost exactly, best when he's hitting high notes, mundane when he's not.

So Team Boo turns out to be a surprisingly respectable junior-year effort-- one that puts Mates of State in the small minority of indie-pop bands that don't fall under the one-album-and-out rule.

Ultimately, The Equatorial Stars is direct, engaging and modestly unsettling.

Frusciante has finally harnessed the energy and unqualified honesty that pulsed underneath the wandering Syd Barrett-ness of his weird work, and applied them to a reedy, vaguely psychedelic, and consistently melodic collection of songs.

The album does offer the listener the high-quality mix CD that techno purists have long suspected Speedy J could deliver.

Solaris is an anthem for Eurotrash everywhere. Its sins are ultimately sloth and indifference. Eschewing the brilliantly cold futurism of earlier efforts, Photek has crafted a dull excursion into the sunnier latitudes of electronic music: a tropical cocktail of salt-rimmed drum n' bass, faux-sexual bedroom ambient and lifeless house.

Throughout The Inspiration, Jeezy shows a muddled desire to transcend the clichés he helped create, to create further complexity without ever resolving it.

If these songs constitute the Cave Singers' most pronounced attempts at transcending standard folk tropes, it's the gentle, percussion-free lullaby 'Helen' that ultimately proves most successful.

Mostly, Something lives up to its everyman title by removing the truly heart-pounding moments of a BSS record and replacing them with a sense of community, easy friendship, and a kickass guitar pedal collection.

Chimeric sounds like the product of less tense and more spacious recording sessions. The band considers the record raw, broken, and unpolished, but they have nothing to be apologetic about. By loosening up they sound invigorated.

Foreign Landscapes enters a deadly boring lull before its second half and never recovers. The result has the energy of a cup of tea slowly going tepid in the Sunday afternoon sun.

Even when Helioscope offers a more traditionally post-rock track, such as "The Trap", Vessels' way with arrangements and sonics produces something refreshingly out of the ordinary.

Grieves is more than game to match his collaborator's slick, itchy Okayplayerisms, switching between rapping and singing as his partner stacks up the soul chords and funk flourishes.

Nightlands have created something that's utterly self-contained.

Truth is, it usually works the other way; next to this rich, peculiar music, Nicolaus' reticence to reveal too much leaves Golden Suits' story feeling a little unfinished.

The word "caramel" is most readily embodied by this music's sensual, flirtatious leanings. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems to just mean "slow", i.e. the pace of swimming through caramel.

Too often Favorite Waitress sounds too too clever to accommodate something as visceral as a groove.

It’s been fussed over so much that any spark that may have spurred it has been smothered.

While Year of the Hare offers nice sounds and concepts, it essentially works best as background music.

Most of Hermits on Holiday is pretty spontaneous and free-form, but it rarely lapses into the stuff of jam-band nightmares.

Even with Drake’s lazy punchlines, though, both he and Future are still great rap artists in their primes, and sometimes they figure things out just based on sheer talent. What the tape lacks in congruence, it makes up for in glimmering Metro Boomin production.

He's a skilled enough songwriter that he could probably pull off an entire sobering album about this stuff. Instead he made a really fun, self-effacing one.

Sometimes the hooks on Genesis get wonky, there are portions of the record that feel unfinished (like the second half of "Wanderer"), and every now and then Domo will sneak in a groaner. But for the most part, Genesis is a revelation.

It works in part because of the surprise factor (who knew Lewis had this kind of record in her?) but mostly because Lewis does what she always does: She sells the material.