While it's certainly enjoyable, it's also a bit more generic than anything they've done before.

All the sounds and ideas emanate from the same sources and desires, and the prismatic contrasts between them illuminate this intriguing and heartfelt album.

That's what's so great about it, though; save the Vaseline-on-lens Fleetwood Mac number that closes things out, there's nary a dull patch or an awkward spot to be found here, just a sublime (if sorta schizoid) trip through the warmest, spaciest parts of your record collection.

Totems Flare regains a measure of hospitality from its predecessor, but it brings only one new idea to the table-- Clark's singing, which is only partially effective.

There is no pretense in their simple arrangements, but you can hear their motor revving, and you know they'll never run out of gas.

The bulk of Gorgeous Johnny is unfortunately too earnest and too patient really to go anywhere in particular, preening like a collection of meticulously cleaned Travis demos or, at their worst, an Adam Green album without any of the dirty bits.

As a first salvo, though, it's pretty hard to fault; if vintage disco, classic house, and gurning Euro house are up your street, this is as happy-making as it gets.

The songs on Horehound don't so much rock as writhe, reinstituting the idea of the blues as a sinister, morally corrupting force that's as much the province of voodoo priests and witch doctors as musicians.

Their latest, ...And the Ever Expanding Universe, gets grandiose in nearly all the right places; it's the singing part of the songs that could use a little beefing up.

Weird to say about a hippie, but it's humanity that's missing in Sharpe's mild but mannered and certainly unmemorable music, which feels focus-grouped, stone-washed, and artificial.

It's musical air-freshener at worst, and inspired homage at best. The dance's themes of infirmity and redemption are writ large in the song titles, but it's Broderick's technique, not the narrative, that captivates.

Their debut album, Embrace, dispenses its earth-quaking riffage in such carefully measured, perfectly spaced-out rations, it tricks you into thinking the band is much heavier than it actually is.

Much of Until the Earth comes off like the narrator from "Windowsill" still telling these damn kids to get off his lawn.

Son Volt's label debut, American Central Dust, is some of the sleepiest protest music ever made: Every song saunters by at a slow tempo, Farrar's voice sounds increasingly inexpressive, and John Agnello's production makes everything sound real purdy but lifeless.

While it lacks the iconic significance of his debut, BLACKsummers'night is a record more than worthy of Maxwell's talents, because it trades the physical sensuality of his earlier work for a deep emotional resonance, the performance of an artist whose focus and attention to detail gives his expression a singular veracity.

Taken as a whole, Life doesn't really depart from "Hands Across the Void" (itself not exactly a cheery record), but rather refines and builds upon it, besting the previous album's runtime by a factor of 1.5 and boasting, as a bonus, a number of melodies that stick like tar in spite of their spareness.

Like the other white rapper he will never escape comparisons to, Cage exhausts the patience of even his faithful followers at times, and Depart From Me almost reads like a plea to whoever might be left checking for him in 2009.

I'm going to let the band off the hook for the holding pattern; in the meantime, we'll simply revel in the general loveliness of these 10 compositions, which utilize the debut's blueprints in the creation of sublime melodies, absorbing lyricism and delicate harmonic interplay.

With more intensely vigorous drumming, more obviously personal lyrics, and a more blatant interest in glossy electro-pop, Edenloff's band carves out their own niche. It is one that masterfully blends the masculine and the feminine, the refined and the coarse, the dark and the bright.

They don't have the lyrical complexity of the bands that they will be compared to (from a young U2 to the aforementioned Frightened Rabbit), but they do have the energy and that's a promising place to start.

Oneida are the only band running that I could tell a listener with a straight face, yes, it's worth three discs, and it's worth your time.

Despite the sparser arrangements and increased focus on direct lyricism, it's every bit as aurally hypnotic as his previous work. It seems like he realized there was someone he really did want to sing to.

Chemical Warfare is a rap version of Speilberg's Minority Report; it draws upon a gritty underground past while embracing more modern craftsmanship, where new smooth edges are balanced by the felt-authenticity of its caliginous vision.

There are plenty of signs that UUVVWWZ are on track to become a better band, but "Castle" is the song that will make you impatient for them to hurry up and get to their next level right away.

jj's full-length debut is as easy to enjoy as whatever the last CD was you brought home with a giant cannabis leaf on the cover. They're as naive as they are cynical-- or is it the other stupid way around?-- and they manage to be pretty, touching, funny, and motivating, in different ways, in all the right places, for nine songs lasting 28 minutes.

This is not the music of men trying to be cool; it is the work of veterans unafraid to express mature emotions with an appropriate level of musical depth and nuance.

It's too listenable overall to be outright dismissed as some sort of flop. But it's too willfully unobtrusive and happy with its lack of ambition to try and sell as good pop, even in a year thin on the mediocre kind.