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

This is almost selfishly indulgent, and unless you haven't heard the previously released "Dr. Marten's Blues," you have very little to learn from the rest of the album.

Some of the artist's best work to date.

Much of the album feels unfocused, as if Cale has become seduced by the smooth trickery of digital production at the expense of cogent songs built on icy melodies, slippery poetics and true invention -- three of Cale's enduring strengths sadly missing through much of the album's fifty-three minutes.

His offbeat interpretations of tough-guy hip-hop cliches often make for great listening, but on We Are Young Money, Weezy decides that he can’t be bothered to display such originality.

So while this new set of Civil War-era songs is an often beautiful listen, they end up obscuring Kenniff's musical vision rather than illuminating it.

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.

Even if Anti-Flag’s hearts are in the right place, Bright Lights of America is too vague to be impactful.

It's a member of a rock band that plays tightly controlled music stretching his compositional abilities to new instruments and more subtle arrangements. They're not all successes.

As a funk or electro album, As U Were is fun to listen to. A little cheesy, maybe, but it gets the proverbial party started, which is always a clear sign that something's going well. It's when Lyrics Born tries to hang on too tightly to his old roots that things start to get messy.

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.

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

Essentially a funhouse mirror of 2007's far superior "Because of the Times," Only by the Night stumbles under the weight of its ambitions by lacking the songs necessary to support them

When the songs are spare nothing feels left out, and when they're grandiosely band-heavy not one harmony or piano fill comes off as pilled on.

The album is a stunningly lackluster, impersonal anti-work.

Sure, it’s nowhere in the same league as the seminal CrazySexyCool and the innovative concept album FanMail, and the absence of Left Eye--apart from a touching brief posthumous appearance on “Interlude”--is still keenly felt. But there are still a handful of tracks here which can sit comfortably alongside their incredible mid-late 90s canon.

With its shameless pop-punk anthems and wonderfully irreverent lyrics, Donkey finds the members of CSS at the top of their game.

Behind all the artifice, behind the production and underwater effects, is some simple but solid songwriting. The catchy, cheerful melodies combine with the psychedelic production to create a trippy beach-music feel appropriate for their St. Petersburg roots.

Though it’s soothing at times, A Few Steps More doesn’t really boast any kind of bumps, and it’s difficult to discern one track from the next.

It’s encouraging to hear Coldplay finally tackle something timely and weighty, even if’s taken 17 years for them to do so. Kaleidoscope’s other two offerings aren’t quite as essential, but are still worthy of taking a spot on one of the band’s seven studio efforts.

The overall effect is a more diluted sound, in keeping with the watering down of Skinner's diatribes.

Symphony may have more of a cinematic steadiness and flow, but the absence of songs as hauntingly memorable as "Cherry Blossom Girl" or "Surfing on a Rocket" does not make for a better work.

Ross is better when he's more ambitious, when he goes beyond the tired hood-rap/pop-rap divisions.

Although The Cross Of My Calling ostensibly provides an outlet for the band’s Marxist ideologies, its impeccable musicianship, arrangement and production make any political sloganeering irrelevant.

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

And though it's doubtful that any of these qualities will duplicate the success that Moby had in 1999, Last Night is a surprisingly solid and fun listen for anyone who ever gets nostalgic for MTV's Amp.

Paper Tigers proves the Caesars are capable of releasing more than one memorable track.

Time to Die by itself isn’t a bad album, necessarily, but it’s not even close to the same level as Visiter and what made Dodos different to begin with. I hope that on their fourth album, these guys return to their roots.

Thrilling prospect though it may be, the result is a disaster.

Work (work, work) sounds more like a laborious task than a bracing trip into emotional bedlam and sexual anarchy.

It's hard to view Radioactive in any context that doesn't label as it a total artistic failure, to see the totality of Yelawolf's rolling over to commercial demands as anything but truly disheartening.

For every standout near the beginning of the album-most notably the catchy girl group-aping "All Kinds of Guns"-there's a sorta-tedious ballad near the end.

The Outsider shouldn't be framed as the second coming of a masterpiece but as a stepping-stone.

If they want to match the intensity of the singer's emotional performance, the band needs to loosen things up a bit.

The songs on the Dark End of the Street EP are well-sung and nicely arranged, but they are missing that vital thing that turns a song into a necessary document of feeling and experience.

You have to applaud these guys for jumping out on a limb with this strange trip of a record, but they probably shouldn’t take up the ‘60s-revival cause full time.

After that highpoint ["Video Games"] things head downhill quickly.

Glowing Mouth isn't the ultimate revelation it sets out to be, but Milagres put on a charming show.

It's unfair to saddle Dead Confederate with the burden of the entire Athens tradition, or look for it to be anything other than a band making a record. But Sugar would have been much more interesting if these guys had focused on that instead of trying to be five or six bands at once.

The Looks is prevented from achieving classic status due to its derivative nature, but its finds success in the Daft Punk formula all the same.

Metal Moon could be the soundtrack to an hour from now.

On Three's Co., Rademaker's songwriting has matured, which combined with the bigger production, makes for a thoroughly enjoyable and satisfying listen.

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

Yes, believe it or not, The Get Up Kids have produced the first truly surprising album of 2011.

All the Why? hallmarks are there, but the album just lacks effusive energy or emotional rawness needed to bring it all to life.

The result is album of beats and grooves, alternately plodding and engaging, punctuated by the occasional bursts of Black Dice's signature sonic playfulness.

Even with him covering just about every lyric here, this album never stagnates.

This irresistible combination of intelligent production combined with a simple four-four tempo guarantees that this music isn’t just for spiky-haired kids with their fingernails painted black.

Things jump back and forth from there, and never seem to build to very much. Shadow may want to cross back.

As with any Teddy Bears release, this is all meant to be a sort of pastiche; lots of genre jumping, lots of smooth transitions, lots of hooky goodness mixed with a plethora of guest stars and vocalists.

Kratitude is dense, urgent and filled with inherent contradictions.

The twelve songs here drip with coatings of sentiment and sparkly instrumentation that are saccharine and plastic.

Weak and vanilla.

This approach has certainly made Shaw’s music more palatable, but his tinkering in the studio (he’s an accomplished tech head; just check out this interview and try to stay awake) has mostly drained his music of any emotional resonance.

What Untitled lacks, is focus. In the world in which R. Kelly operates, what's required of a great or even pretty good album is either several singles or a feeling of overwhelming personality from the artist. Most of the time, the two things accompany each other.

For those who never liked That Guy Who Plays Acoustic Guitar At The Party, Babel's gonna sound like the dentist's drill. For others, this still may be the point at which you put down your makeshift tambourine, get up from the half-circle and find a better room in the party house.

There's not a truly objectionable moment on the album, but neither are there many memorable ones, making it an album as difficult to genuinely like as to dislike.

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.

Nothing sticks. The only times you’ll be tempted to rewind is when Jones says something stupid, which is often.

Paralytic Stalks is a record made by a genius or a hoity-toity psychopath depending on your perspective--call it whatever you want, but it certainly isn't boring.

Save for the unnecessary interludes, the strength of Press Play is in its ability to employ so many different styles, sounds, influences and mold them into one extremely coherent package.

Turin Brakes’ expansive and more daring previous work held an encouraging arc that promised risks and excitement, but JackInABox, while a pleasant listen, fails to cash in on that potential, and is unfortunately a step back for the talented duo.

The Good Feeling Music Of...is good for a few plays and might raise a few smiles along the way.

The Beautiful New Born Children is the rawest of the Stokes mixed with the youthful punk energy of early Replacements.

There's a deep sincerity here among the saccharine, and no amount of painstakingly throwback falsetto harmonies can shroud May's songwriting from its fluttering, well-intentioned heart.

Mastered by Nilesh Patel (Daft Punk, Depeche Mode), Robotique Majestique has the Austin-based Ghostland Observatory throwing down a solid, synth-heavy version of their stateside electro-punk, making their third release less guitar influenced than the occasional rock moments of "Paparazzi Lightning" (the duo's 2006 debut) and 2007's "Delete. Delete. I. Eat. Meat."

Pepper finds the band attacking a multitude of oddball genres--the disc spins from post-rock to electronica to rock to sheer noise--with a frightening focus for such sonic stream-of-consciousness exploits.

It's sad to see a band that touts itself as experimental sounding like a watered-down, unfocused version of its younger self.

Unfortunately, it takes quite a bit of effort to sift through 30 such songs to find the more immediately arresting moments. The sugar-rush aesthetic grows tiresome over the course of the record and threatens to overshadow the more sublime moments.

Throughout the course of Quicken the Heart, Maximo Park prove they still haven’t rectified their quivering post-punk with the anthems they are concurrently and desperately trying to craft. But despite that conflict, they can still occasionally pull it together long enough to bang out some good ones.

The up-tempo songs don’t show much variation or excitement, but the real fire comes when the band slows it way down or steps out of the garage.

Songs that range from energetic, immature guitar hacking (“Dispenser”) to tedious slow-churners (“Icebreakers”) to just plain awfulness (“I Thought There’d Be More Than This,” “The Knowledgeable Hasbeens”).

Their discography may be sparse, but Mirror Eye, released on the always-intriguing Social Registry label, is the finest embodiment of their drone-adelic sound to date.

Discipline, is nowhere near the high point of her career, but it is better than its predecessor.

It’s great headphone music and would make a suitably dense soundtrack for a drunken stroll through the Lower East Side, where much of the inspiration for NYC was found.

They seem to have packed up that cleverness with their Scotchgard bongs and headed straight for the wishy-washy world of adult contemporary without even knowing it.

Help Wanted Nights lacks the cohesion of "Blackout" or "Album of the Year," but it seems excusable to have a loose collection of songs--good songs, at least--that accompanies an as-yet-unseen movie or play, especially in the wake of the super-cohesive "Happy Hollow."

This album will sway neither the faithful nor the unbelievers from their positions along the borders of her stalled momentum.

OX 2010 lacks a clear vision and focus.

It just goes to show that on a DJ Khaled album, you can't be Eddie Van Halen. You've got to be David Lee Roth.

Legendary Weapons is fine enough for diehards, but doesn't reduce the general desire for an actual Wu-Tang album.

Even if this EP is the byproduct of a band that's working out the kinks, it's still a promising glimpse into what to expect from How to Destroy Angels' 2011 full-length.

Unfortunately, the bad tracks merely remind us that for all Cut Your Hands Off’s brazen energy, towering sound, and melodious verse-chorus one-two punch attack, it’s the subject of the songs that ultimately bores. Which is a shame, because most of the time, these guys get everything else so damn right.

Consistency is not Yo Majesty’s strong suit, and Futuristically suffers from an uneven and unfocused approach. Despite this there is plenty to enjoy here.

If the members of Rye Coalition had at least done a masterful job of impersonating their muses, we could call Curses a tribute album. Sadly, they fail even in that.

Waiting for the Sunrise doesn’t signal the end of Vandervelde’s party, but one hopes he gets his second wind rather than becoming satisfied and heading off to bed.

My Guilty Pleasure is more cohesive, its production more varied, its songwriting more effective.

Malice N Wonderland is not, by and large, very ambitious.

It may be the weakest album in their catalog.

Here, Friedberger has once again proven his capabilities. At times they impress, but too often they confound, and it's beginning to seem as if he's too comfortable in his distance.

Despite all the stupid records he's put out before, The Return of Dr. Octagon is the first one that plunges wholly into self-parody. He's now a fully realized clown, a prop, a joke and, most disappointingly, a sub-par rapper whose forced ideas and personality obstacles have devolved into flimsy, uninspired character sketches.

Although these songs of attempted triumph comprise the band’s strongest material yet, they still lack the originality that will shed them of the “underrated” label they’ve worn for the last decade.

Invisible Ones stands steadily as an encouraging signpost in Fink's career.

Spine Hits feels too spacious, lacking the depth that both [newly-departed singer] Fannan's swelling vocals and improvised jams filled the band's two previous releases [with]. Regardless, Spine Hits is an enjoyable listen.

It’s disappointing that a duo this good on paper could be responsible for an album as uninspired as A.M. Even the album’s better songs (the piano-led 'And I Wonder' and the sauntering 'The Wrong Turning') are limp and tedious at best.

It's the most cohesive and listenable record he's made to date.

The band plays its own game of seduction throughout the album, giving us danceable, practically glandular beats while singing lyrics of fear and loathing.