It's hard to figure out what exactly the concept is behind this concept album.

Aphrodite is everything you expect it to be: inspiring, motivating and celebratory.

The Submarines are at their best when toying with charmed synth-pop.

Survival Skills is a call to arms, and a poetic, uncompromising one at that.

They manage to make the grandest songs imaginable seem like they were composed with only you in mind.

With this album, Lytle has established himself as a solo artist who does not so much distance himself from his previous band as successfully scratch an itch for sounds that have been missing from the music landscape for quite some time.

While the frequent use of echo and the isolation of each instrument lend the record a spare quality, Strange Weather, Isn't It? is hardly akin to Bowie and Eno's emotionally stark Berlin Trilogy. Instead, the album sounds like a band trying to regain its footing by returning to its fundamentals.

As with all covers records, the crucial issue is whether these renditions bring anything new to these songs. The answer is a resounding no.

Coming on Strong is one smooth record; even with all the glitch, all the bleeps and bloops, and all of the genre bending, it never leaves any residue behind.

Less than half of the eighteen tracks are worthwhile additions to Sean Paul's catalogue.

Like OMNI, this record seems a bit trite.

The album lacks the central focus that defined Yorn's earlier work, at times feeling like a grab-bag of style and sound.

Anything that was either subtle or complicated has been erased to provide ready-made heart-on-sleeve love songs.

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.

In the end, though, this is an unnecessary album that only clutters Folds's discography.

It's clear that Young Magic have all the tools and instincts down pat; even without meaning to, this album delves happily, though briefly, into pop excellence.

About seven tracks in, 119 settles into a series of mid-tempo jogs that fail to really go anywhere.

It’s this awareness that makes Living on the Other Side--on one level a pretty basic rock album that doesn’t surpass any of its predecessors--seem like something much, much more.

The overall result is pleasant yet hardly exceptional.

Diamond Hoo Ha is by no means a return to the band’s glory days, but it at least offers a simple reminder of their talent for writing energetic, hook-laden pop songs.

For most of I Am Not a Human Being, it seems like Wayne has forgotten how to write a verse. He's all about couplets now.

The music may not always be easily accessible, but it is almost always interesting.

This is a live recording that stays true to the night.

Her melodies sound tired and her deliveries sound rushed.

Despite Rogove’s contribution and support from the likes of the Strokes’ Fabrizio Moretti among others, Surfing illuminates the problems that have dogged Banhart since the jump: He can make really great pieces of ‘60s folk and pop homage, but has terrible self-editing skills and has trouble avoiding lameness, sad attempts at humor and bad taste.

Although Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy has the dizzy invigoration and winning enthusiasm of an excellent first album, it also suffers from a kind of first-disc immaturity, an urge to pack everything in at once and as early as possible, rendering it top-heavy and inconsistent.

To be certain, the push and pull is lost through most of The State vs. Radric Davis, replaced by a straddling of the line between commercial and street rap.

The album's midsection gets bogged down in songs that sound too similar: more lovely piano, more soft cooing, too many gimmicky studio effects.... To Espinoza's credit, he gets Mentor Tormentor back on track.