Time of the Assassins could have used a few more trips to the Rolodex to bring in a ringer of a singer or two, since Fraiture doesn't seem up to the task, or necessarily even into it.

There's that unmistakable "side project" air surrounding this record, the sense that this is just an enjoyable way to wile away time during hiatuses in other endeavors.

It's of the moment and feels new, but it's also striking in its immediacy and comes across as friendly and welcoming.

Simultaneously sparse and rich, The Crying Light mines maximum intensity from a relatively minimal mix of basic melodies, pithy lyrics, and understated arrangements.

Like Wonder, Guilty has its share of up-tempo tracks, yet its real pleasures are idiosyncratic, revealing themselves the more attentively and often you listen.

The sometimes drifting song structures, frequent tonal shifts, odd lyrics, and interludes presented a stuffed canvas full of interesting sounds that didn't seem to have a focal point, didn't seem to have a place where you were supposed to enter the composition. Eventually, however, everything fell into place.

Luckily, Grand features not only some of the band's most personal lyrics, but also some of its most universal.

Blood Bank certainly dispels concerns that Vernon's accomplishment was somehow environmental--that "For Emma's" poetic circumstances, and not its contents, were responsible for its success.

Mercer's able to fill cavern-like spaces with the might of his many soliloquies. Easy listening or not at all, it's why Skin of Evil--here and gone in just 30 minutes--remains so gripping: Some turns are capable of provoking a physical reaction.

Never has that rift between Pollard the songwriter and Tobias the arranger been more transparent-- and more problematic-- than on the formless, often dull The Crawling Distance, a particularly blank batch of Pollard tunes dressed to the nines in Tobias' perfunctory sheen.

In their slightly glib mastery of pop-song forms, and their apparent belief that great pop music can be forged through sheer force of will, Cut Off Your Hands sometimes recall Bloc Party. The difference, thankfully, is that Nick Johnston seems far more appraochable and grounded.

Drone Trailer arrives--after numerous CD-Rs and tapes of cross-cultural, relentlessly unconventional music to stargaze by--bearing principally unthreatening, old-fashioned rock'n'roll.

Not everything here fails in such catastrophic fashion, but because the band noodles its way through Mirror Eye's druggy, sitar-laced exercises without any thought towards coherence (or completion), even its few promising tracks feel slapdash and unfinished.

The collection is a timely, if at times exhaustive, introduction to the Six Organs origin myth.

At its best moments, the debut sounds like an A.V. club president's wet dream, unabashedly nerdy and technically proficient. Sadly though, the record is peppered with aesthetically dubious nu-rave moments, making LOTP sound less like sympathetic revenging nerds and more like party-crazed dude-bros who just happen to own synths.

Apart from those ['Hey Dad!,' 'World/Inferno vs. the End of the Evening,' 'Dead Sailors'] and the relatively slight 'Do We Not Live in Dreams?,' though, Major General hits some massive highs and nary a single crushing low.

In their rush to be the UK's most important band, they seem to have ignored restraint, charisma, and charm--the qualities that made them Next Big Thing candidates in the first place.

Haymaker! is a typically witty, rambunctious album that shuffles up the band members like a deck of cards.

Every synth setting and drum sound and vocal technique on I Think We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat is a pastiche of a sort of thing you've heard before.

The rest of the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack consists of Rahman's evocative score, which meshes pounding technoid percussive-heavy pieces (such as "Riots" or "Mausam And Escape") and slightly less forceful cues (such as "Ringa Ringa"), some of which seem designed to bring to mind specific moments in the film, some to evoke more general emotions.

Anyone who buys this without owning Ironman, Supreme Clientele or Fishscale is going to miss the bigger picture, and anyone who buys it while already owning those albums isn't gaining much at all.

Universal Mind Control is a painful misstep from a talented rapper who's decided to be as nasty as he wants to be--which turns out to be much, much nastier than we'd like.

A Cross the Universe isn't close to anyone's definitive idea of what a document of a live Justice show should be, but it's a diverting, sometimes-bizarre look into the first phase of fame for an aughts-era cult pop phenomenon.

Her own versions aim at some druggily evocative conception of 60s soul, which makes them pale next to the originals.

If Brighten the Corners signaled a turn to the serious, the 32 outtakes and radio-session cuts compiled here give Pavement plenty of room to, as one B-side aptly puts it, "fuck around."

The guests regularly outshine the hosts, but each has a variation on the sort of rugged, gruff flow that doesn't leave Erick or Parrish gasping.

And yet, that Emeritus often seems more righteous than cynical or hopeless (the latter two are a bit soft) is a testament to Scarface strengthening his flow in age.