A glut of midtempo dithering mostly takes up the second half, and while some of the songs situated there are decent on their own, together they congeal into an asymmetrical mess, exposing Reptilians' front-loaded wiring.

Callahan has nothing to add to the general conversation about music in 2011 but is making the best albums of his career.

While the instrumentation of When Life Gives You Lemons signaled a wealth of potential new directions for Atmosphere's production, The Family Sign runs almost entirely on gloomy ballads heavy on maudlin piano chords and keening guitar riffs.

As long as the Low Anthem discount the idea that this music was once meant to stir the blood, rile the soul, and actually be exciting, it's always going to be historically inaccurate in a way no amount of sepia-toned ambience can overcome.

C'mon feels more like a collection drawn from throughout the last decade than a completely cohesive album.

Nine Types of Light is unquestionably TV on the Radio's most patient, positive recording to date, taking its cues as much from Dear Science's serene ballads as its brassy workouts.

Here, the Feelies simply dig up The Good Earth's pastoral, post-Velvets power-pop -- a sound that ruled college radio airwaves in the mid-80s but which boasts few notable contemporary adherents -- and blissfully strum away as if they were performing in hammocks.

This self-titled album gives the impression that they're constantly aware of holding back. Such restraint is ultimately unwarranted: Diane is a strong enough presence as a singer and as a songwriter that she can more than hold her own.

That sense of focus on making emotionally redolent material, and keeping the overall thrust of the project in view despite having many hands on the tiller, are ultimately what makes Harbors solidify into a satisfyingly cohesive whole.

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.

Although he's now logged as much time as a solo artist as he did with his former band, Isbell sounds he's still finding his voice.

As it is, it feels like dead patches make up almost half of Chopped & Screwed. Shelve it next to the Knife's Tomorrow, in a Year as an effort that hearteningly shows an inspired artist staking out bold terrain, but one that only fitfully delivers the impact of the artist's previous, pop-focused work.

Maritime's musical development has become a compelling narrative of its own, each subsequent record in many ways both improving upon and elucidating the last.

At its best, One Nation sounds like a beat tape left to crackle for a decade in somebody's garage, a kind of post-Chronic spin on one of those far-out late 70s dub-inflected collaborative krautrock LPs. But other times it feels like a series of conceptual curios that seems to think holding the listener at arm's length might even be too close.

It's easy to see Share the Joy's place in the Vivian Girls discography, but their place in indie rock as a whole is becoming less clear.

Despite good intentions, the wincing lyrics border on pandering and even exploitative, revealing little in the way of insight or palpable compassion

Tomboy is a much more considered record, with thickly layered psych-style production.

What makes this whole thing work in an album context is that all the thematic and sonic pieces fit together-- these weird, morning-after tales of lust, hurt, and over-indulgence ("Bring the drugs, baby, I can bring my pain," goes one refrain) are matched by this incredibly lush, downcast music.

Call it mood music for the mindless.

The untangled pop of In and Out of Control has been reconfigured and dipped in black eyeliner as the Raveonettes veer toward 1980s goth.

More than many of Snoop's recent efforts, Doggumentary has something of a sonic identity.

As slippery and elusive as this album's thrills can be, they'll eventually fall into place, one track at a time.

Twenty-odd years ago, when Poly-Rythmo last made a studio album, they were at their lowest ebb. Cotonou Club finds them at another high.

It's a strange combination-- big, lush beats and stories about small victories-- but it turns songs that are celebratory of simple things (a girl sending sexy cell-phone pictures, visiting Paris for the first time) or full of thoughtful sentiments (supporting family, helping community) into something epic.

The new album feels at once a return to the Kills' beatbox-blues origins as well an attempt to broaden their palette with more sensitive, intimate turns.

The lyrics are wrung out with the same shaved-down discipline as the music, where nothing ever topples over into over-wrought emoting. Despite this rigid adherence to restraint, much of this material proves to be emotionally affecting.

There's nothing truly transgressive or illuminating or innovative about Last of the Country Gentlemen.

Matched to this sophisticated, admirably restrained music, Turner's Submarine songs have a backwards-looking quality, a guy who's been through it calmly reexamining the scars and renavigating the pitfalls.