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.

Miller has the voice to support the songs and the talent to write a whole sturdy catalog of them. But with the bravado and confidence he’s shown in the past, the problem is one of volume. With so much to say, much of Rhett Miller feels muted.

Sure, he can hide his identity, but there's no denying his sudden emergence as one of dance music's notable producers, very well steeped in his own layered aesthetic, yet open enough to welcome other musical influences into the fold.

Robyn could've put together a single album filled with all-knockout jams, but it's better than she got to exercise her brain trying to fit in everything she wanted.

The album is filled with well-conceived, well-executed pop pieces, but it would be silly to pretend that the musical landscape, including Top 40, isn't occupied by songwriters who make reasonably innocent songs about boys at least as well as Best Coast does.

Without question, part of Shocking Pinks' charm is the intimacy of its unpolished production values, but, with a little more patience and rigorous revision, it's easy to see Harte's best songs being even better.

Balf Quarry, their first album for Drag City, isn’t going to put a halt to those Sonic Youth comparisons. They’ve steadfastly stuck with the sound created on the Boss album for most of this venture.

Jacobs works in a peerless vacuum located in a hazy plot point on the pop timeline, located somewhere in-between outright sugary pop and nerdy bedroom electronica.

Keeping the music simultaneously lush and light is a good choice for songs that prominently feature people moving too fast and making weighty decisions that would seem reckless if they weren't so endearingly passionate.

Despite these head-scratching derailments, 200 Tons of Bad Luck brings the gloom in Biblical doses.

The result is a confident, tight batch of tracks that beautifully encompass a prosaic kind of ache.

The Indigo Girls prove themselves, again, to be artists whose metaphoric turns of phrases evoke a hard-up world and invoke a more meaningful existence.

Like their creator, the 10 songs that make up We Live in Rented Rooms won't demand you listen to them. But the more these songs play, the more layers they reveal.

Errors have built a subdued and often gorgeous album with very little that needs deciphering.

He's here to entertain, and to interpret the memories of his childhood. As such, the music is a gentle stroll, like an idyll walk through the Rothaargebirge, the deep green mountain range adjacent to his hometown for which the Ferndorf is named.

The Future Crayon... succeeds in being just as captivating as the band's proper albums -- or perhaps even more so.

A barnstorming, kiwi-pop-delicate album that is Reatard’s best album-length statement to date.

Why?’s ability to write so prolifically, that holds Eskimo Snow together. It keeps us looking forward to what the collective will present us with next, even if the quality of Yoni Wolf's vocals are up for debate.

Where Love and Life limped from song to song, The Breakthrough zips confidently through its sixteen tracks.

Ultimately Dalek's fragmented drone makes [rapper] dalek's tired wordplay obsolete, thereby redeeming Abandoned Languages.

It's a bit more playful and pop than its predecessor, but it retains Tiga’s signature finely tuned electrohouse sensibilities.

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

It has sunshine in its music that isn't clichéd, a range of songs that never let the progression slow down or stagnate, and an array of emotional explorations that are refreshing and accomplished.

Cape Dory is not the kind of album that heralds the emergence of some great new talent, necessarily. It just does what it set out to do, and it does so perfectly.

Class Clown Spots a UFO is a fine record, but now two records into their return, it feels like this "classic" version of Guided By Voices is following too closely to a script.

Guster manage to let out a bit of their inner Oasis without sacrificing any of their "I-knew-them-first" credibility.

The skills Barthel and Carter possess at creating this kind of sound with just a keyboard and guitar, as well as the two bandmate's longtime personal chemistry, points to a promising future. Professionally, however, Eyelid Moves is something of a stumble out of the gate.

Meadow features Buckner's most focused work in years.