It is the most realized of their albums to date, and it showcases the group fully exploring the possibilities of the niche that they created for themselves two records ago.

Some are sure to hate it, but unlike any Melvins album since "Houdini," Nude With Boots certainly demands your attention.

It seems Smith and Shields simply both did what they are best at, and in the process uncovered some common ground that few thought existed. Fortunately, the results are riveting.

Sure there’s a lot of questionable ethical implications with The Black Ghosts mixed in with a good ones, but a goth band with a rock conscious is successful even if their success in breaking through the mold of navel-gazing is Pyrrhic.

Like the return of Portishead and My Bloody Valentine, Leila’s reemergence is another welcome surprise in a year that’s been full of them.

Brevity is the buzzword throughout Skeleton. No track goes over four minutes, and five don’t even hit two minutes. But brilliance emerges within those constraints.

Make no mistake, though--the music of Hymn and Her is good, and the songs are almost always uniformly excellent examples of finely-honed pop songcraft. But when each excellent song sounds just like the slow, rainy Sunday pulse of a track that just preceded it, well, a few less hymns and a few more songs for rocking are in order.

Hercules & Love Affair is a testament to the great foresight and control is required in a disco producer to keep the track from lunging into an abyss of low-blow kitsch, and to be able to stimulate the ears and feet at the same time.

This is not his best record, but it does have a couple songs that rank with his best.

At times, Party Intellectuals is as close to a straight raw rock sound as Ribot has come, though this record is all about uncorking a heavy dose of his improv/punk/soul/noise/free-jazz vocabulary, with some drone, some Moog, a little Latin, and a little blues tossed in.

There’s not much here that will elevate the band beyond their current status. Bermanites will still revel in his idiosyncratic lyrics, and they can even play along thanks to an insert that lists all the chords used on the record.

But what this offering lacks in mirth, it more than makes up for in transcendence as well as dissonance.

There’s not much here that will surprise longtime fans of Krug and Boeckner’s work, although they have slowly turned the wheel and moved the Wolf Parade sound on from "Apologies to the Queen Mary."

Though at times difficult to listen to, the effect is a clear view of an artist's process. Herein lies the true value of Dennis Wilson's legacy: an open invitation to simply listen.

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.

Ultimately, though, this is a definite misfire in an otherwise impeccable career.

On Off to Business, he accomplishes another step toward canonization, making a late-period album that removes any semblance of what made him great in the first place and is a largely uninspired trip down memory lane.

Tha Carter III soars because of Wayne’s to-date under-appreciated ability to turn himself down.

Keep trying N.E.R.D., you’re not even close to blowing us away here.

Wasser’s a collaborator at heart (she was a charter member of the Dambuilders and worked with Lou Reed, Antony & the Johnsons and Rufus Wainwright, who guests on “To America”), and she sounds most natural when she’s backed by horns and keys and backing vox and slinky grooves.

The album is all over the place, with traces of Queen pop excesses flowing seamlessly with crunching, almost hardcore-punk-tinged guitar rockers and some weird stuff, too. Yet each of the tracks keeps Sloan’s Big Star-sounding power-pop roots intact.

It does manage a nice arc in terms of overall pacing, with some interesting though not entirely successful vocal works at the end (“Testament” and “Infinitum”). Yet the album feels a bit too similar for how crowded it is.

Sure, this is a relatively slight effort--those in search of adventure had best look elsewhere--but for the aural equivalent of a fluffy blanket, this is your crack rock.

As a four-track EP, this would have made for an indelibly catchy collection; as an album, it plays like four lone meatballs awash in a pot of bland noodles.

Takes could have used a few more experiments of this nature, because while his versions of the Breeders’ 'Invisible Man' and Yo La Tengo’s 'Tears Are in Your Eyes' are tasteful enough, there’s no real sense of adventure, no real feeling that these songs needed to be covered in this way, no real attempt at making this anything other than a stopgap between records.

Not that every track here needs to be radio-ready, it's just that with the themes being so dense, another morsel to take with you would have been welcome.

The album showcases the band's pop proclivities while preserving the dark, often harsh, atmospherics that makes their sound so distinct.

If Red Album’s songs were formulaic, shiny, and easily digestible like everything on Green or Maladroit, the vacuity of the new songs wouldn't be as big a problem. But 'Heart Songs,' 'Thought I Knew'--these are just plain bad.