With his band's fourth studio album, frontman Will Sheff stakes a claim here for the right to be called the best songwriter working right now.

Finding Forever, then, is Common's snapshot of hip-hop's awkward middle age--an album that is neither here nor there.

Any other attempt at describing Khan's sound of Renaissance antiquity cross-pollinating with postmodernity--the trip-hop bass of 'Trophy' that riptides into the autoharp lilt of the spectral 'Tahiti,' for instance--falls woefully short of music so cleverly askew and oddly beautiful.

With only the faintest hint of retracing his past successes, Prince is still on top of his game.

The Con is a mostly mature collection of solid songs.

These songs are so direct that they lack the depth and texture that more sonic detail would deliver.

While managing to side-step both preciousness and predictability, The Broken String pulls together the long-anticipated and full-fledged follow-up that fans deserve, at the same time aptly defining where Bishop Allen is now: all over the map.

With Luppi's influence, the band holds its ground in more sophisticated territory on Grand Animals than it has in the past.

On We Are the Night, Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons pull out all their tricks, delivering an album of euphoric psychedelic electronica, quirky guest appearances, and danceable grooves.

They are still too tied to their musical ancestors for any serious maturation to take place.

In the end, Calling the World left me bored as hell.

This record improves on the band's earlier work and might even score them a stateside breakthrough.

Interpol's third LP sounds more or less like the last two, and that's its biggest problem.

They've found the blueprint to the instantly memorable rock song - and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga contains several - and continued to follow the instructions.

Perhaps the most successful aspect of Cross is its appeal on both the dance floor and the headphones, the pounding rhythms complemented by the nuanced detail of the arrangements and unified flow of mood.

Most of these songs are only pleasant for thirty seconds or so.

Clark never seems able to strip away all the orchestration to show true emotion on Marry Me.

It's almost as if Fantastic Playroom is trying to do too much. With so many agendas, it's a miracle that New Young Pony Club ended up all on the same page at all. Such ambition makes Fantastic Playroom a disjointed experience, but its triumphs are worth delighting in.

It's the most cohesive and listenable record he's made to date.

The album is a tightrope walker, constantly straddling the line between sincerity and unapologetic rocking.

Dylanesque is a mess. Nearly every album has a few bright spots, but this is a lazy collection of covers that offers no insight into the catalog of one of the twentieth century's foremost songwriters.

The Fragile Army is the Polyphonic Spree's most consistent album, and it thunders with an assurance that was missing from "Together We're Heavy."

Like the White Album, Exile on Mainstreet, or Wowee Zowee, this album's risky lack of sonic cohesion becomes the very through line that binds the work as a whole. Unlike those albums, however, not all of the experiments here are uniformly excellent or thrilling, nor do they all live up to the promise of the wonderful, muted Satan.

More so than the debut's, these songs fare like standup comedy on repeated listens: Once the punch lines are spoiled, who wants to listen to a joke again?

Arthur & Yu may be too grounded in the past to alter the future of pop music. But if they make songs this lovely, there's no shame in that.

They seem to have packed up that cleverness with their Scotchgard bongs and headed straight for the wishy-washy world of adult contemporary without even knowing it.

Like many within Iceland's post-rock movement, these musicians have not quite mastered the ability to rein in some of their more excessive tendencies. But Kurr exceeds both the promise of Amiina's distinct instrumental premise and the musical and physical landscape from which the band originates.

You can hear the band rediscovering its footing as one of the strangest, funniest, and best acts of the decade.