Mostly, though, the LP does a good job keeping Gucci's culty selling points intact on a larger stage.

Every strength this record holds draws off the symbiotic relationship between Martin's beats and Robinson's voice, which adapt to each other in a way that the last two people in a barren environment might.

While it's somewhat difficult to reconcile their whole career in one live disc, the material remains unpredictable even as it gets a little more cerebral. For those who had even a passing interest in Trans Am's music over the years, this set is a fine reminder of why you likely tuned into them in the first place.

Florine feels bracingly intimate and original, in its hieroglyphic way.

Someone clinically extracts whatever trace of messy humanity made it through the first time the Bravery worked the nu-wave shtick, on their debut; Stir the Blood is a parodoxically bloodless listen.

As with nearly every R. Kelly album, sex is Untitled's raison d'être. But too often here he trips over trends.

Even if the lame parts of BlakRoc are more noticeable than the enjoyable, what really sticks out is how easy this all feels--- not once does anything feel like awkward ambassadorship.

For many listeners, his mannered delivery may prove as off-putting as Oberst's own vibrato, but for these songs, it sounds fittingly evocative, as if only he could sing them.

Oh No knows just what he's got to work with on this album, and in finding every angle he can for an incredible array of source material, he's made that much more of a case for his own style, too.

Based on Rated R, Rihanna's artistic aspirations are currently loftier than her abilities. Then again, her tenacity in the face of the unimaginable public humiliation this year is beyond brave.

Glitter and Doom Live is not simply a souvenir of a tour most fans didn't attend but a de facto greatest hits of Waits' fourth decade of music, during which his gnarly adventurousness didn't wane but only intensified.

Instead of shoehorning references to celebrity into some tracks, she's borrowing elements and templates and simply focusing on quality control. The weird result is that, despite her flitting between personalities and personas, her music feels more like her own here than it did on her debut LP.

If you've ever wanted to hear classic cuts from the dawn of hip hop turned into hallucinogenic setpieces that knock and clang like glitched-up King Tubby, Echo Party should justify whatever the hell it is Edan's been doing with his time over the past four years.

I's a 40-minute, 12-track dance-rap full-length without a single hard punchline or trenchant moment, the sort of thing that sounds like it could've been banged out in a couple of weeks.

Not every song on Don't Stop or its bonus All Night EP is a classic, but Annie's good taste has yielded another fine crop of pop tunes.

Beak> is as full of odd, compulsive energy as you'd expect from something cranked out in two weeks, made by a guy who probably had creative fuel to burn, considering that his day job took 11 years between their second and third albums.

Them Crooked Vultures still feels like a record to be checked off a list rather than one to live with and fully invest in.

Despite the summery song titles and the beach balling associations that might follow these guys around, this music transcends the notion of seasons.

Where the music in Good Evening manages to mostly please without much compromise, the visual documentation of said music bends over backwards to make itself palatable to only the most fervent of fans.

This album still falls way short of what it could be, and I have to wonder how this even happened.

The sub-demo quality's most annoying attribute is the blocky digital clipping that happens whenever the voice recorder is overloaded, which is often. So if you don't have a tolerance for cut-rate sonics--and this isn't even the warm analog stuff--forget about it. But if you do, the best songs on BiRd-BrAiNs can sneak up on you.

Many tracks from these shows have been released before, but on this box you can listen to them bootleg-style, with all the repeated songs, tuning breaks, and banter with the audience.

With Aesop Rock on production, Felt becomes a triangulation that canvasses almost the entirety of U.S. undie rap in terms of geography and affiliation. So why is this thing kind of a bummer?

After initially promising a return to form, 50 doesn't have the ability or initiative to hold the listener's interest over the long run.

Compared to Morrissey's oblique but resonant lyricism, the Jarmans deal in provocative sound-bite slogans, but the Cribs prove themselves worthy successors to a lineage of cheekily erudite Britpop that spans David Bowie through to the Smiths to Pulp.

This record meanders through a set of passable songs that ultimately decline to move or enthrall you.

Ultimately, The Fountain is an echo of an echo, inessential to all but the band's most devoted followers.

Internal rhyme schemes, halting phrasing, thoughtful self-exploration; this is Wale at his best. Not as a preening star filling in the gaps for a king-making debut. A regular person, with doubts and sadness, joy and confidence. There's just not enough of it on Attention Deficit.