It's to the Weakerthans' credit that their lyric-driven songs can be, in a way, useful, at least by helping reassure the sentimental souls with whom Samson's deftly told stories resonate. Still, they're rarely as striking here as on the groups' previous albums.

Yet another standardized LP of glorified Dave Matthews tunes.

There's definitely something new going on, and most of it comes from the seductive voice and lyrics of Ambrogio.

LaVette is a proud interpreter, and even back in her earlier days she was covering David Bowie and Neil Young, but on Scene of the Crime her choices are a little less NPR-friendly than they were on the all-female critics darling roster of "Hell to Raise."

If these songs constitute the Cave Singers' most pronounced attempts at transcending standard folk tropes, it's the gentle, percussion-free lullaby 'Helen' that ultimately proves most successful.

Shocking Pinks' DFA debut is an auspicious one by a young artist who knows as much about loneliness as he does noisy pop classics.

It sounds good--Brown's detached, wispy/gritty voice is pleasing as ever, and I like a pop string arrangement as much as the next guy--but it doesn't add up to much in the end.

Once Upon a Time in the West is pretty dull itself.

Trees Outside the Academy is, in fact, a song-based album--and they're good songs, too.

Spirit If… offers jams that don't really jam, acoustic ballads about fights and lies, and lushly orchestrated songs that come together effortlessly while cracking up hopelessly.

The problem with Asleep at Heaven's Gate is that the second half isn't nearly as strong as the first.

The entire album sounds like a half-hearted compromise between what the group was and what the group wants to become.

Akron/Family have stepped into the light for the first time with Love Is Simple, and the results alternate between gawky and deeply enjoyable; the record is bursting at its seams with lovingly and vividly realized ideas culled from a broad selection of prior works.

It's not Les Savy Fav's most immediate record, nor is it their best.

If you aren't already in the know, though, let this serve as some sort of wakeup call to the Oakland band's best collection to date.

The Last Sucker isn't as huge as "Psalm 69," but it is Ministry's most exciting record since.

Even at its prettiest and most accessible, The Western Lands is still a very insular, sometimes uncomfortably intimate album, and listening to it is akin to sharing a tiny but comfortable space in Talbot's closed little cocoon.

When it comes down to it, there's a very poorly kept secret about this band that will likely determine what you think of Dark On Fire: some of these lyrics are just borderline retarded, combining rhyme-first, ask-questions-never couplets with more arson imagery than a Thursday album.

50's new album is a blatant rehash--a bottom-line sequel that insults the same audience it mindlessly panders to.

The album's second half is slightly more abstract than the catchy pop that precedes it, but these moments are tempered, causing the record to feel more focused.

While it might not be as substantial a record as we're used to hearing from him, it is his greatest leap forward, and further proof that few are as skilled at tracing out the complicated contours of pride, success and ambition as he is.

Proof of Youth mostly recaptures the enthusiasm and unique sensibility of "Thunder Lightning Strike," further filling that niche for lo-fi sample-based old-school-noise-rap we never knew we needed filling.

Much of Happiness Ltd. suffers from one of the cardinal sins of radio-ready rock: stuffing unmemorable verses between overblown choruses.

Bluefinger is the best overall solo record Black has released in a long time, but it's still only good, not great.

'Rue the Blues' is easily the most euphoric thing here, with that banjo-tuned-guitar, um, pickin' up a storm, I guess, and Sullivan opening his throat when he sings.

Rise Above will drop plenty of jaws, and, like Deerhoof, Dirty Projectors are restructuring rock on a compositional level rather than a sonic one.

Wiley has kept his formula mostly intact: skittering, hiccuping bounce rhythms, synths that sound like a turbocharged Super Nintendo with a subwoofer attached, and a manic, borderline-toasting flow that plows through everything in its path.

SMD's excellent debut album as a stand-alone group, Attack Decay Sustain Release, is for dancing, not moshing.