Like their best, "SNL"-aired material, these songs get better as they go on, mostly because of the way the lyrics carry the joke to its logical and grotesque endpoint.

Houck's impressive effort nonetheless inevitably sends you back to Nelson's originals, only illuminating their brilliance.

Like most remix comps, Decent Work is ultimately a grab-bag.

Where their earlier records thrived on the tension between Stollsteimer's gut-spilling confessions and the band's raucous, raw-powered attack, on Love, Hate and Then There's You, we get all the pleading, but without the violent, cathartic release.

Yet unlike the more cohesive albums from those aforementioned acts, Immolate is a one-step forward, one-step back proposition, marching in place to an internal setting somewhere between chilly background mood and something more melodic and engaging.

While I certainly can't hold it against Kweller for trying something different and playing dress-up with a Nudie suit, Changing Horses nonetheless finds his half-assed over-countrification and half-assed under-countrification to be equally ineffectual.

If you can look past these cringe-inducing moments, The Good Feeling Music occasionally lives up to its title.

With The Mountain, Heartless Bastards have shown that they have the tools and the talent to take at least tentative steps forward into a more ambitious and diverse sound. But it's surprising that they sound so introspective here when they could, and occasionally do, sound world-beating.

From front to back, the album's an acquired taste, and even if it's not the big paradox that an album mixing punk ethics with rap virtuosity might risk becoming, it doesn't have a universal appeal, especially for heads leery of anything that might approach the misnomer of "emo rap."

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart simply made a slyly confident debut that mixes sparkling melodies with an undercurrent of sad bastard mopery.

The album's bluesy tenor does wonders to mitigate its shortcomings, something that the debut's spacious environs couldn't do. With Fool, the problems mostly reside in the words that Bones sings.

Ladyfinger (ne) are obviously a talented bunch, but they're trying to crack open the rock'n'roll firmament with ball-peen hammers, chiseling grooves without making any real breakthroughs.

More so than stoking the band's current commercial prospects, Tonight is an exciting record for what it could potentially spell for Franz Ferdinand's future.

Neil Young set the template, but Tillman puts his stamp on every note, wringing bare-bones poetry from evocative couplets.

Working on a Dream works hard on sound, but sleeps on actual songs.

Like a Mojave Desert mirage shimmering tantalizingly before disappearing, Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future is ultimately left little more than a string of sweet nothings, there for your fleeting pleasure. It's a pop tease.

The opening Wright sample is a hard look back at a year most people would already rather forget, but it's a perfect intro for Gutter Tactics, an album that draws much of its strength from the same well of outrage and disaffection.

It's Svanangen's record in miniature: It preserves what was fleetingly great about Loney, Noir while proving that Svanangen has more tricks in his bag than most people thought possible.

It also probably means that we'll be getting something new from Nau the next time around. Switching between musical characters is obviously Nau's default setting, and for all of its pleasantness, Paranoid Cocoon, in the context of his career thus far, feels like transition music over a costume change.

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.