As far as listening experiences go, you can certainly do a lot worse than sitting back in your chair, being consistently affected by Asobi Seksu's sunlit wandering. Unfortunately, it would probably be better for Hush if the band stepped into the shadows every once in a while.

The fact that this debut hews closer to the Noel we know certainly shouldn't be a disappointment.

It's quiet but it gets your attention, surrounds you, and makes you feel a part of it all the way through.

12 Desperate Straight Lines is Lerner's second LP under the Telekinesis moniker, and it finds his introspection all the more labyrinthine, but his chops as a genuine architect nothing if not totally satisfying.

Traces of other San Diego bands like Pinback and LaValle's own Tristeza and the Black Heart Procession are distinctly here, culminating in mellow harmonies, relaxed bass lines and subtle ambient effects.

So while High Places have neatly avoided getting stuck in a rut on Original Colors, daring to reinvent themselves into a more motion-friendly group, fans of their first couple of albums should still find the overall mood sufficiently low-key to provide easy access.

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.

CAMP is an imperfect album, to be sure, one that both succeeds on its incongruities and occasionally stumbles on them.

Mostly, Hysterical is lost in a hazy cloud that is more Dan Bejar than it is David Byrne.

Nothing new.

Mojave 3's new material isn't an abandonment of any strengths; it's an embrace of the simple pleasures of the classic '60s garage-pop style of songwriting.

The only major drawback with Come Back to the Five and Dime, Bobby Dee Bobby Dee is that Ferree throws so much of his energy into writing about Driscoll that the songs don’t work nearly as well outside of the collection.

This is stadium schlock of the highest pedigree, the kind of thing that can make you feel desperately cynical about rock music.

This is a heavy-metal record in the classic style, stealing bones from the open graves of Black Sabbath.

The results are beautifully solemn.

While the slog through the mostly interchangeable mid-tempo, spoken-verse tracks on the first twenty two minutes of the album is a lot of saminess to deal with, a couple genuine pleasures await anyone patient enough to make it through to the album's final moments.

Some of the better songs on Dreams and Nightmares--"In God We Trust" and "Believe It" being prominent examples--are the ones that let Meek hit the track hard and tear it apart.... But ultimately songs like these are in the minority on Dreams and Nightmares. There are many notable stylistic missteps.

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.

Smokey Rolls down Thunder Canyon may be his best so far.

Sunday at Devil Dirt, for all the dark imagery and surgically perfect string arrangements, works best when Lanegan and Campbell involve themselves with simpler sentiments.

They could have retread the same musical territory, but instead they deliver a record that’s remarkable in its maturity and--most of all--its ability to be replayed again and again.

They tend to stay in their most comfortable wheelhouse -- bluesy roots rock -- but, as before, their incredible vocal harmonies carry the day.

Though heavy-handed lyrics and ominous proclamations can be tiresome and often too taxing on the arms of music that bears them, the sheer artistry of SMZ makes the band’s messages endurable.

It’s tighter, and incredibly, more intimate and intense than the first, this is a band that functions as a whole, not merely a threadbare net of musicians straining to support the singer.

With Not Yet, Monotonix delivers a tight half hour of intensely likable scuzz rock that gives a solid kick to the lizard part of the brain.

It remains to be seen if the loose, congenial vibe of Sun Bronzed Greek Gods can be sustained for more than this EP's 19 minutes, but betting against Dom might be foolhardy.

The album's true stumbling block lies in the Friedbergers' inability to follow many of their ideas to any sort of logical conclusion.

Banhart clearly gets bogged down in that freedom, as the amount of sheer hokiness on some of his albums can attest to. But with What Will We Be, Banhart gets back to earning that right for total creative freedom.