Even after a six-year siesta, the Notwist's approach to pop music-- exploiting both its formal properties and endless possibilities-- is no less captivating and visionary than before.

At Mount Zoomer is fractured and spastic, and at times, the band's ambition eclipses its strengths. Still, there's something about Wolf Parade's fragility that's profoundly relatable, and the sense that the entire operation could fall apart at any second--that we're all tottering on the brink of total dissolution--is as thrilling as it terrifying.

Frustratingly, what should be the album's best song isn't on the album.... A creative chameleon with endless wells of technical skill, Worden stuffs Shark's Teeth with studied know-how.

It's also a meditation on a complex world, one devoid of the nostalgic innocence preached by the Mike Love-fronted Beach Boys of late, and its remastered, 2xCD Legacy Recordings release- the first CD release of the album since 1991--is astoundingly refreshing.

Despite the evolution of their sound, Tilly and the Wall haven't forgotten about what made them appealing in the first place: bright co-ed harmonies, rousing choruses, and their overall open-hearted good nature.

With J Robbins producing and the vastly improved sonics, you have a much clearer idea of what everyone is doing. Little things are important with this band, and here, you can actually make them out.

Strength in Numbers is far from unlistenable--I don't know if your free time is spent sorting through stacks and stacks of charmless indie rock CDs that have the nerve to call themselves "pop," but when the chorus of the title track hits with the subtlety of a latter-day Nas album title, it's damn refreshing to hear a group bound for glory as shamelessly as the Music.

Diamond Hoo Ha does seem like an apt description of the glittery nonsense contained within.

It's difficult to determine whether You Cross My Path is a victim of the times or its own merits; it's the sort of thing that's so competent that it's more likely to be defined by its failures than its success.

Wainwright does lean pretty heavily on this formula of mild, occasionally rocky folk-pop doused with generous measures of vocal swooping and diving.

There are few fiery guitar freakouts, folk-influenced melodies, soaring space-rock bridges, or psychedelic flourishes here; instead, the empty space is mostly filled with serviceable falsetto funk and glassy-eyed yacht-pop.

Although Business ultimately ranks as yet another less-than-legendary offering from a living indie legend, its shortcomings are much more nuanced than typical Pollard releases.

Instead of hiding his bootleg-bred quirks in anticipation of the big-budget spotlight, he distills the myriad metaphors, convulsing flows, and vein-splitting emotions into a commercially gratifying package that's as weird as it wants to be; he eventually finds his guitar but keeps the strumming in check.

The Fratellis have comfortably nestled themselves among the ranks of British rock's most besotted, but even relative to their contemporaries they still manage to come off sounding bored, tired, and downright silly.

Like its unexpected stylistic kin My Morning Jacket's Evil Urges, Seeing Sounds finds its creators partaking in the subversively phallocentric narcissism of staring at their CD collections, confusing music listening with music understanding rather than enjoyment.

It starts strong (with the pensive 'Honor Wishes'), and ends on a high note (with the title track leading into 'To America,' Wasser's duet with Wainwright). Unfortunately, the middle of the album, burdened with turgid low points.

Ultimately, this particular dream is less one of flight or past glories, and more one of going to work and finding you've forgotten your trousers.

Even those accustomed to Sloan's effortlessness will find the first half of Parallel Play almost flawless. There's still little in the way of artifice or innovation, but it's still easy to admire the architecture.

With its accomplished fusion of debris and warmth in a place somewhere between b-boy head-nod and laptopper experimentalism, Los Angeles is a big step forward for a still-young career, an album well worth revisiting years from now--preferably on vinyl, where the pops and clicks can only multiply.

Dead Deer is druggy and sexy and arty and pretty, but never pretentious.

Virtually every song enunciates its central joke, then repeats it and repeats it and repeats it. And repeats it. And repeats it. And so on, with the repeating. (And repeating.)

The brio of an amateur would almost have to be preferably to the overzealous professionalism of Beautiful Lie, whose frilly "classicist" pop gets all dressed up to go absolutely nowhere.

Maybe once the Ting Tings stop trying so hard to convince everyone they're having a good time and start actually having a good time, these cute little ballads will no longer be their sole redeeming quality.

His evident love of his source material and the material's alternative-era continuity make Takes a vanity project that's much better and more universally appealing than what we usually mean by the term.

While neither as frenetic as the group's debut or as stylistically curious as Tributes, World boasts smart pop sensibilities all the same.

The album boasts the most opaque lyrics in Subtle's catalog. But put the record and the website together, and the big themes become clear.

Even with a somewhat diminished speaker-filling capability and a couple of songs that seem to have less actual energy than they should, Velocifero's subtlety will eventually reward further listens.

Like the YouTube culture the "Pork and Beans" video depicts so well, the song--and this album--relies on a high quantity of short-lived pretty good ideas to distract from a shortage of great ones.