The ambition to put out a decent club album is a laudable effort, but Thunderheist falls into many of the same pitfalls that a lot of the genre's output does.

It's more like easy listening with a funk flare, and, like all easy-listening, there are times when it falls decidedly flat.

The second half of Good Evening picks up and runs right off, with the hooks hiding under all the reverb and fuzz starting to scratch at the surface with a fair amount of urgency.

When Dekkar slows things down, it feels like a choice and not a limitation. He and his band never missed with their first three albums, but they've made some necessary discoveries on this one.

Even amidst amazing production by her friends Christoffer Berg and Van Rivers & the Subliminal Kid, the minimally arranged Fever Ray is best swallowed when Andersson distorts her vocal effects.

It essentially exposes Doherty’s biggest weaknesses: his trite lyrics, his less than perfect voice, and his inability to sound interested in anything he’s doing not under the title "Libertines."

Bromst annihilates all the expectations that have come to be expected of Deacon, without abandoning what made him everyone’s favorite dance-party czar.

Where past Decemberists albums rewarded delving deeply into the milieu The Decemberists had created, Hazards of Love fails to provide much worth that probing.

Kicks is less of a cocky triumph, but it still cements 1990s’ position as the torchbearers for no-nonsense Brit-pop.

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.

As a debut, In a Perfect World... does show promise amongst several solid songs and is a proper introduction, but a more distinct line between Hilson as a songwriter and Hilson as an artist will be needed to make the next album more engaging and fresh.

Fuckbook is the best joke fake lo-fi cover album since Pussy Galore’s Exile, except with the added irony of the roasters becoming the roastees.

That the group’s second effort, Enemy Mine, is able to accommodate all three distinct voices in only nine tracks is even more remarkable. But that Enemy Mine is a firm step sideways is less so.

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

Listening to his simple melodies, uncomplicated structures and often disinterested vocals, the cool with which Jay approaches Slow Dance is unmistakable, and it is largely the single element that carries the album.

Part of what makes it so distinctive is also what ultimately frustrates. The songs bleed into one another until the reverb-drenched vocals and phantasmic spirals of sound become heavy-handed, almost overwhelming.

"Majestic" is a word often used to describe Mono, and this record, the band's fifth, will not challenge us to avoid using it.

In reality, Technicolor Health is a remarkably eclectic, dynamic album even in its use of rather obvious launching points.

This clash of the sincere and the facetious that makes Beware such a disconcerting album.

A few tracks here sound less like fully developed songs and more like a college-age kid tinkering with a four-track, but overall, Williams hits more than he misses.

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.

For the most part, Tomorrow Today is a pleasing addition to the ranks of retro-futurist pop records, it just lacks the rough edges that make the best Broadcast, Pram and Stereolab songs resonate so strongly.

There is something else weaving through all of this, that other mysterious thing that some great records have, that keeps you going back even while you know that whatever vocabulary you come up with, whatever modifier you hang on the album, will be inadequate.

Timbaland rose to the challenge of making Chris Cornell a solo star by producing arguably the worst album he’s ever had a hand in.

There’s an emotional heft here that wasn’t present before.

Except for the intense, melodramatic middle mentioned above, every other track on this album could be a successful single.

Yes, it feels like she's lost some of the youthful pop and punch that she had almost a decade ago, but the reason why Mirah's sincerity feels like such a big deal is because her songs are like friends.

while Thank You Very Quickly is not shy about facing the challenges and horrors of certain parts of the world, it is defiant in its love for life in spite of struggle. It proclaims the power of working together and leaning on one another, no matter the circumstances.