So obviously the biggest difference between the Last Shadow Puppets and Turner's main gig is in the lyrics. Though less immediately noticeable than the majestic production, the change in the scale of Turner's songwriting is ultimately more profound.

Nouns is so cacophonous, so fertile, and so ripe with sound that parsing out the samples and effects and various layers of guitar is nearly impossible; besides, it's way more satisfying to just close your eyes and just enjoy it.

In the end, those appearances [by Keith Fullerton Whitman, Jay Lesser, and Sun Ra Arkestra's Marshall Allen] point to the album's only downside, which is the nagging sense that there's too much straight homage/pastiche and not enough of Matmos' considerable cleverness on display. Ultimately, though, it's a minor quibble.

While Water Curses is plenty enjoyable on its own, it also sets you dreaming about where Animal Collective will go next.

At four songs, Ringer is economical, but the diversity within its half-hour run time makes it surprisingly robust as well.

Post-rock's forte is letting instruments speak for vocals. Russian Circles speak articulately, but could stand to roar a bit.

Lambency's lack of contrast and its vacuum of irresolution are only symptomatic of the record's holistic problem: there's not much memorable to grab onto.

Shine's lingering impression is that of several talented cooks crammed into a tiny kitchen, each crafting something delicious with little regard for the meal as a whole.

Released today, it instead feels like a staggering transformation and a return to form that was never lost, an ideal adaptation by a group that many people didn't know they needed to hear again.

Their jangly melodies claw their way inside your brain just the same, making them latest in a long line of Glasgow bands to effortlessly combine celebratory sonics and miserablist lyrics into something singular.

No doubt that the best halves of this and "Tournament of Hearts" would equal a breakthrough album for the group, but taken as a whole, Kensington Heights sounds like a decisive break in the band's stride.

This is an album by an artist getting comfortable with his softer side. It's another welcome surprise.

Her pop fun is a bit knowing-- she's 26 after all. But trust the Swedes. They know what they're doing with this sort of thing.

Timbaland's productions are the weaker links on this frustratingly ordinary album.

Santogold might try to separate formula and art, but her album catches fire when she blasts that distinction into irrelevance.

Rising Down isn't always an easy listen, but it's an exciting one, and its abrasiveness never gets in the way of a good throw-your-hands-up beat or a well-crafted lyric.

Smile is their exquisite-corpse sequel, a near-automatic exercise in drawing inspiration from anybody but themselves.

It's not fair to Forster, of course, who rose to the occasion with his warmest and most welcoming solo album. But even beyond the imherant emotional baggage, songs such as 'Did She Overtake You' or the slightly bombastic 'Don't Touch Anything' still sound like they could have used a pass through someone else's filter.

After the Balls Drop manages to make the most of these potential shortcomings, offering listeners a charming, warts-and-all portrait of the group.

But even with 9th's craftsmanship, the melodies, like Buckshot's lyrics are vacuum-sealed. There's a pianissimo modesty that positively sucks the album dry.

While Imperial Wax Solvent has all the buzzy, crunchy sonic hallmarks of great Fall, it also doesn't quite rank with their highest highs, an admittedly tall order when that includes albums recorded twenty-five years ago by a completely different set of musicians.

The rest of The Colourful Life is, ahem, less colorful. Most of the blame shouldn't go to Butler, but to these not-so-ragin' non-Cajuns.

The ebb and flow of the disc feels like it's advancing some unknowable plot, always the sign of a well sequenced disc but also the bridge between songs like the lovely 'Mirrorball' and the bluesy (in the get-the-Led-out sense) 'Grounds for Divorce.'

But with only two weak tracks and some deletable skits outweighed by a dozen good-to-great cuts, Everywhere at Once is one of the best albums to come from a Solesides alumnus in a long time.

Mr. Love & Justice isn't exactly the musical equivalent of dropping flowers down the barrels of rifles, but there is a certain passivity to the disc, a characteristic magnified by the rootsy approach of Bragg's trusty band the Blokes, who channel the bucolic bent of the Band rather than the edge of the Clash.

After nailing the rapid-fire EP format with tracks that constantly threatened to disintegrate themselves from the inside-out, TPC psyche themselves out on their first full-length, over-cooking songs made from otherwise spectacular ingredients.

In other words: Sure they're funny, but are these songs supposed to be any good? Surprisingly, yes.

More energy and less uniformly drab scenery might have kept these well-intentioned stories from blurring into each other.