The album has its moments, like a nice surprise bridge toward the end of the title track and the slowly building, percussive arc of “Circles.” But You Can’t Take it With You just fails to make a strong case for itself.

There is nothing awful here, but Loose never meets the dizzyingly high expectations it was saddled with.

Complaining about a lack of hooks can be painted as unrefined, but frankly Era Extraña hasn't shown me why it deserves hallowed deconstruction, it may be weightier, but there's absolutely no question which Neon Indian album has the most stick.

For better or for worse, Stephens and Tyson Vogel have thrown in their lot with that angst, and thematically, The Bloom and the Blight is less of the departure it hopes to be.

It's disturbing like a Mike Patton record, with blink-and-you'll-miss-it lyrics that serve as confrontational one-liners.

The album often ventures into the cheesiest territories of pop music, but this is Rihanna's strongest effort to date.

With Consolers of the Lonely, the Raconteurs are still content to play record-collection plunderers, but instead of ripping what they can from the '60s, they spend much of the album as twenty-first-century stand-ins for Grand Funk Railroad, Blue Oyster Cult and Three Dog Night, playing big, limp, calculated rock 'n’ roll.

Novak and company are capable of writing great hooks and snotty lyrics, which prevents this album from being a total waste. This time around, it just seems like they got a little too tied up with exemplifying some sort of glam-rock, don't-care-about-anything attitude.

It is entirely listenable, but this sort of album suggests the power to either break or fortify hearts. To that extent, it does not follow through.

An album of sporadic delights much like Dance Hall at Louse Point , this is a footnote in Harvey’s career, but not one that’s entirely unworthy of investigation.

Just as she was becoming irrelevant, Lil’ Kim returns with her hardest, bravest and most exciting album to date.

The members of Tha Alkaholiks may not have wrapped up their stellar career with the bang many had hoped for, but I'll still drink to this.

This mature Ryan Adams gives us 11 songs on Ashes and Fire that are perfectly fine, a few bumps but most of it is solid with a few that really stand out.

It's simply a case of the repetition and lack of attention to detail exposing that, as pretty as Beach Fossils is, it could be better.

It's the schizophrenic sound of a band starting over a decade later.

Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian is supposed to sound like a DJ set from an extra-terrestrial, but it often comes off as a random smattering of thoughts from an over-stimulated producer.

He clearly yearns to evoke the mixture of fun and grit that made "Get Rich or Die Tryin’" such a remarkable effort, but he’s misguided in his approach.

Both Lights, for all its faults and successes, remains a worthy exploration.

Throughout the album, Crow's vocal melodies are her most ambitious and memorable to date.

Don't let Miller's presence detract you from buying an otherwise perfectly adequate album. Let the rest of the stuff that's wrong with it do that.

Those who enjoy the smooth sounds of inoffensive MOR will find little fault in Keane.

Fate exposes the larger problem with Dr. Dog’s catalog -- namely, that the band have become so comfortable where they are that they are content to merely play to type.

The Magic Position feel[s] more like a missed opportunity than a legitimate breakthrough album.

We're approaching the dead of winter and are in the middle of a recession, and Universal Mind Control isn't helping.

Cinder keeps things reserved, letting the sad-eyed melodies teeter around the room at a drunkard's pace.

On an album where even the guest stars feel like samples worn out from repeated play--the back cover announces the song 'Flashlight Fight (Featuring Chuck D)'--the few innovative tracks offer hope that the Go! Team won't stagnate by its third outing.

A pleasant and inoffensive endeavor, it'll do well to keep any Foxes fan satisfied for the remainder of the season. But don't be surprised if boredom sets in by fall.

With Luppi's influence, the band holds its ground in more sophisticated territory on Grand Animals than it has in the past.

The Dears really do sound a lot like late-'90s Blur.

Unfortunately, Made in Brooklyn doesn't have the same urgency as its predecessor and will likely fall into the middle of the solo-record pack.

It seems they have forgotten that no matter how appealing this concept is to them, nothing is more appealing for the listener than experiencing the artists as they really are, not as they want to be.

Other than on "Answers to Your Questions," it's not real pretty when O'Rourke steps to the microphone. Most of his songs stab at a Tom Waits-style balladry but end up sounding more like schmaltzy Steely Dan castoffs.

The thinness of the sound, the lack of any edge, and the fact that most of these songs start off terribly prove too much to overcome, but Razorlight is not nearly the disaster that it could've been.

Ropechain is sometimes frustrating bordering on indulgent, but it also depicts, without censorship, Adamson’s unique process and point of view.

White Lunar showcases both what can and can't be accomplished by separating musical scores from the visuals that inspired them. Cave and Ellis seem more at home in smaller films. Music that is part of the historic and epic film needs that film in order to makes sense.

What you read is what you get here: an album full of small Scott-Heron samples bolstered by production from a member of the xx. Nothing more, nothing less.

The band does achieve some small strides forward here, and gives us a few great tracks, but mostly Cogleton and crew leave me wondering exactly what it is I should be afraid of.

They are still too tied to their musical ancestors for any serious maturation to take place.

Though not a particularly groundbreaking or remarkable album among post-rock instrumental compositions, A Colores is solid and has a lot of movement, the rhythms and melodies rolling tempestuously between the speaker channels.

If in the future Roderick puts more brain power behind making his music as adventurous as his lyrics, the Long Winters' albums should only get better and better.

Most of The Crane Wife consists of rehashes of Decemberists staples and by-the-books, cookie-cutter indie pop that runs the gamut between pleasant enough ("O, Valencia!") and barely tolerable ("Summersong").

Odyssey is a little late and a touch weaker than its previous counterpart.

Spottily effective gangster posturing.

Metric fails to touch on anything profound.

What's missing, though, is the familiar sense of deft control over the album's arc, the lyrical intrigues, and the instrumental detail that make his other work so indispensible to the indie folk canon of last decade.

The music is cutesy and fun, but the lyrics are subversive.

Many of the songs end up sounding alike, and the somewhat dreamlike lyrics can lose you in a maze of psuedo-poetry, but You & Me is a solid debut. Barker’s strengths are, therefore, those of the record: simple guitar and an often golden voice.

Presenting four or five great songs on any fifty-minute album is a rare gift, and on Leaders of the Free World, these bittersweet Brits prove to be worthy rainy-day companions.

The tunes don’t vary much from the originals, but the band renders them with vigor and style.

Take Me to the Sea [is] a cross between sloppy prog-rock and emo that ends up being less than a sum of its parts.

Despite all his sonic island-hopping over the years, Krug has an aesthetic noticeable as his, and unfortunately his backing band here doesn't quite have the same unique musical vision.

There’s nothing really wrong with a single one of them. The problem is that fans of Johnston’s music have been here before.

Gaga has always been able to anchor her haughty conceptual undertakings with simple, catchy tunes, but with Born This Way, the persona and the message are starting to bleed into the songs. It's not a good look.

Narrow Stairs finds Gibbard more than willing to play to type, offering the same staid character sketches he’s used since his first EP and songs that reiterate his point, that, like, love can be rough on you.

The third album of the formula, the lovely-titled Heart On, shows that the Eagles of Death Metal have reached their limits, but not without a noble effort to keep on rockin’.

He comes across as an unfocused sample artist who is too eager to show off all the cool stuff he can do.

What we're left with feels like a big blur--an entertaining and wacked-out trip to Wonderland, but not one that I feel particularly compelled to return to.

While groping for a consistent aesthetic, Young Prisms provide moments of delightful ascent, only to seemingly let their worse angels drag them back into staid, self-inflicted sludge.

The Long Blondes sophomore album, Couples, is a disappointing follow-up to their sublime 2006 debut, "Someone to Drive You Home," but not as disappointing as it initially appears.

It was made confidently, with no apparent intentions of it being some toss-off or fan-only disc. But by album's end, don't be surprised if you're reaching for "Citrus" to dive back into their dream world.

There's a difference between a damn fine song and the brilliance that made up Stevens's previous two releases, Illinois and Seven Swans. Unfortunately, The Avalanche clunks through track after track of damn fine songs while only rarely hitting these moments that make your body tingle in euphoria.

Like the band members themselves, Alpinisms is full of promise and obvious talent but would benefit from a more clearly defined direction.

If you have the time to dedicate to these genre-bending excursions, the effort can be worth it more often than not.

Clor has a number of entertaining and inviting songs in the final tracks, but nothing that quite lives up to first four tracks.

It plays more like an album reminiscent of the days when hip-hop was something to catch a head nod instead of breaking new ground or shaking the dance floor.

Far too often [Karin's] voice is put through a vocoder, multi-tracked, and treated by various other electronic procedures. The result is that one of the group's main talents is stifled and limited.

For dedicated adherents, A Friend Of A Friend is an essential part of the Rawlings-Welch story, but casual listeners should stick with 2001’s high water-mark "Time (The Revelator)."

While there are some great moments and promising songs, the album is hindered by its refusal to either commit to a sound or commit to trying new things. The tone of the album seems indecisive, and Ghost ends up marginalizing its own strengths.

When the record's not playing, it's hard to miss it, and the tracks that aren't standouts are simply boring.

Had this been Dilated's second album, I probably would have found it a lot more entertaining. But it's not, and the moments of originality were few.

Wild Young Hearts shows a young band still unsure of what to do with itself (Brit-pop, Motown, electroclash, something else?) but sure that its lead singer is pretty great. And for now, that’s working well enough.

The most impressive part of this album is that, throughout its entire tuneless, dissonant thirty-three-minute duration, Human Animal is rarely boring; it's filled with cool sounds.

Not quite poppy and not quite moody, there's just not enough feeling in any direction to really make it stick.

Charmed and Strange, however, is a collection of interesting guitar playing with a few lyrics thrown in for pop legitimacy.

A polite, undemanding excursion--frustratingly stuck to its own sonic landscape.

Everything Now doesn’t stretch out so much as it spreads itself thin, which is why it won’t ripple out like other Arcade Fire records. In the end, the band that made neighborhoods sound endless makes Everything into a cul-de-sac.

Champ might have its fair share of weak spots (basically the back third), yet it's another proficient album from one of the more (still) promising young bands around.

If that presentation doesn't always hit the mark, the sentiment behind it often does, and the album never completely derails.

The Back Room has the feeling of an album cobbled together too quickly.

The perfectly pleasant Traffic and Weather is inarguably diminished returns.

Most of Death by Sexy plays like the hard-rock equivalent to Ying Yang Twins or a stripped-down version of anything in Motley Crue's catalog.

Backed by Archer's stark soundtrack, Bohm remains as cool as the proverbial cucumber; her pretty-yet-monotone voice never betraying her stoic front.

The sing-alongs abound and the keyboard definitely calls for some attention from the dance floor, but the redundancy of these twelve songs is bound to induce a few headaches.

The Lemonheads is a harmless, melodic album that brings familiar material to longtime fans and new audiences alike.

On their third full-length album, Alive As You Are, the members of Darker My Love drop the whole neo-shoegaze, Jesus And Mary Chain worship of their first two albums and instead engage in a sampling of different '60s sounds.

On the whole, the jams and spaced-out scuzz rock of circa-Sweet Sixteen Royal Trux might most closely represent the vibe of Black Bananas' debut.

This is a solid set of songs that’s mannered and restrained to a fault.

On My Way to Absence could have been such a moving album, had Jurado employed some quality control.

Volume Two feels better than it could be, but it's still missing that something that would make it great.

It's almost as if Fantastic Playroom is trying to do too much. With so many agendas, it's a miracle that New Young Pony Club ended up all on the same page at all. Such ambition makes Fantastic Playroom a disjointed experience, but its triumphs are worth delighting in.

Imagine Manu Chao, Serge Gainsbourg and the Cars all caramelized together.

Vessel States' uncanny familiarity is its central disappointment.

When It Hugs Back do get loud, like on album highlight 'Back Down,' they show flashes of talent and vitality that they never let show between the purposefully considered and quiet haze that dominates way too much of Inside Your Guitar.

Into the Blue Again is not essential, but its beauty is familiar and intimate.

Oasis has given us another album chock-full of jangley Brit-pop numbers and stadium-rockers, and the result is a formulaic rock record.

Where many electronica artists choose to mine vintage soul and hip-hop, very few have looked to 1960s folk-rock and guitar-driven anthems for inspiration. The results are quite astounding - if unexpected - and the change is definitely welcome.

Other posses succeeded because all members contributed to a central sensibility and ethos that made the whole greater that the sum of its parts. G.O.O.D. Music just obscures the greatness already there.

In the end, 4:13 Dream is nothing but a solid to shaky late period album from a band that’s due can’t really be understated.