Whatever the case, he and Switch are kicking off summer with an armful of perfect cookout-, top down-ready songs, like the daytime soundtrack equivalent of all of the summertime night's rooftop music that's been coming from Swedes Air France and the Tough Alliance and their new wave of American indie disciples, such as Real Estate and Memory Cassette in the past year-plus.

There is an alarming lack of imagination in evidence on Skeletons, and virtually nothing in the way of strong emotion.

Here, it stands behind so many other newly apparent strengths--a testament to the leaps and bounds Longstreth has made as a songsmith and Dirty Projectors have made as a band.

At the very least, some excellent songs lurk among these 12 tracks, and there's enough potential for debate about which are which to make The Eternal worthy of Sonic Youth's singular canon.

They've jettisoned just about anything that ever made them perversely enjoyable.

Looks like we finally got the Mos Def we were waiting for.

When taking advantage of the opportunity to be as dumb as they need/want to be, West Ryder succeeds, which is another way of saying acoustic guitars have absolutely no reason to be involved.

Like much of Rhett Miller, and unlike much oft-unctuous power pop, it's music seemingly made to softly impress rather than outright inspire.

Ranging from translucent psych-pop to pummeling garage-rock, they're alternately assured and vulnerable, direct and subtle, light and dark.

The debut album by these producers-turned-trio comes after blog-bait remixes galore, including a nice enough Postal Service-ish Vampire Weekend makeover, but there's little of those fine young Columbians' infectious exuberance here.

The shift in perspective necessary to "get" it, though, does work on that level: at the least, it's a fitting testimonial to British Sea Power's partially effective relocation of a classic film into a modern aesthetic scheme.

Kurupt seems so committed to the idea of saying not that much in a very complicated way that it's utterly compelling. Quik, on the other hand, is consistently literal, dealing in the concrete with memorable, loosely connected run-on raps.

Jhelli Beam manages to be a completely cerebral experience and at times overwhelming in a satisfactory way, but then again, you could say the same about ice cream headaches.

When I take The Loud Wars as a justifiably forgotten but enjoyable enough record from a bygone era, I'm soothed; it's a little better than, oh, Fake French or something, and I'm sure as hell not going to dig around to find that one with this thing floating around.

There are sonic Easter Eggs for a thousand listens here, and it would take six pairs of headphones and an equal number of high-grade strains of weed to track them all down. Happy hunting.

Catamawr Yards, then, gets better as it gets more adventurous, and it gets more adventurous as it leans more on that backing band.

Kowalsky's work so far is mostly for hardcore drone-fans, and even they might not be blown away by Tape Chants. But anyone can appreciate Kowalsky's attention to detail.

The Little Match Girl Passion is as much a devotional piece as the Bach Passion it is modeled on, and with it, Lang has produced the most profound and emotionally resonant work of his career.

By being boring on purpose, Iggy ironically proves himself oddly more compelling than on his many past accidents. If it's not an album for the ages so much as for the aged, at least it's one you may want to hold on to a bit and give another shot when you get closer to where Iggy's at himself right now.

At its worst, this is effectively a contemporary acoustic neo-No-Depression record with Costello's signature vocal tics slapped on top.

It would be too easy to dog Hombre Lobo as a case where going back to the well leads to diminishing returns, but the problem is just that Hombre Lobo is too easy.

Certainly Archives' first volume contains enough audio and visual stimuli to keep a Neil Young fan busy till the next edition arrives (presumably) in 2029.

Jay Stay Paid's biggest strengths don't lie in its guest roster, impressive as it is. It's the way these reconstructed, reassembled beats so vividly show off how left-field he was willing to get in the service of finding new ways to make a beat knock.

Franz's music is usually as crisp and tight as its constructivist cover art, and though reformatted, stretched out, and slowed down on Blood, it still maintains a strong pulse.

This is a decently crafted, moderately hooky, fairly vacuous power-pop album, and under the right light, you could do a whole lot worse.

While the whole package is marketed as a "love letter" to fans, true followers will quickly be able to sniff out its inferiorities. If anything, this latest selection from the dwindling Buckley vaults subverts his talents and ultimately insults the same hardcore fans it's aimed at.

It's accomplished and impressive always, but sometimes to the point of verging on an overstuffed din.

Really, in a world far too concerned with backstories and far too lacking in good old dedication to craft, Grizzly Bear's just about as boring as they come: four guys who very quietly set out to make a fantastic record. And so they did.