When they get the balance right (yes, that reference is from '83) and filter those desires through their own distinct sensibilities, Divine Fits stands with their best work.

If it's not yet clear, Centipede does retain much of the band's earnest, knowing naiveté.

Sun is hardly sloganeering, but its Power to the People ruminations are more potent and topical than you'd expect from a pop record--and certainly one made by Cat Power.

The pink-slime pop of Mature Themes is made to epoxy itself to your ears for days on end.

T.R.U. Story contains few surprises, and one less once you realize that its own opening line--"Cut the top off, call it Amber Rose"--isn't threatening decapitation.

An exciting, impassioned, fuzzed-up, and smartly sticky album that plants a flag for some great forgotten sounds and practically screams promise for better glory days to come.

As defiant as this gang of four wants to be, they can't help but humbly return to their strengths.

It's all willfully abrasive, unflinchingly depressing, occasionally tedious, and intermittently triumphant.

The result is a patchwork approach to nostalgia, cherry-picking sounds from dance music's collective memory and rearranging them into something that's more than the sum of its parts.

Its sound is bright, slick, and micromanaged.

Fleetwood Mac connected with listeners because their perfect songs enclosed personal imperfections--they created an illusion of glossy best-coast living, then punctured that illusion with brutal truth. Hardly anyone on Just Tell Me That You Want Me summons that friction.

You're being pulled close, but thoughtlessly, reflexively. And you only feel further away.

God Forgives is a comedown--sporadically introspective, occasionally rousing, and sort of without purpose.

So, every sha la la-la and wo-o-wo-o still shines, as the brothers McDonald once crooned in Carpenters cover "Yesterday Once More" (which reached No. 45 hit on the charts in England!), or at least sort of shines: Cleaner production might've buried the vocals less.

The trio's new album, Never, is a fleet, fizzy experience with a mixtape-like flow (Levi has created or co-created five of those, as well) and makes earlier Shapes music seem undercooked by comparison.

The contrast between Purity Ring's two halves is special and compelling, but Shrines goes over best when Roddick's reverent sound and James' lustful fury synchronize and break you off properly, womb-stem-style.

The album clicks because beyond the date-stamping visuals and the music's timeless project to unite art and pop, the longtime partnership behind Niki & the Dove has finally found a proper voice, and a proper name.

As a lyricist, Fallon has moved beyond bald cliché to bland commonplace.

For all of the tension in the music, Barrow and his cohorts couldn't sound more relaxed, natural, and at home weird home.

Everything here, though, feels strangely organic and effortlessly joyful.

Producer Karlberg also has expanded his reach and grip, snatching sounds from all over and re-purposing them to serve Mwamwaya's immaculate, coruscating voice.

Channel ORANGE feels like one long, moonlit, air-conditioned ride.

The Offspring's nervousness is palpable in their protestations of relevance and liveliness, but no matter how fast or loud things get, there's no energy or wit, nothing to convince you this band could win, or even prolong, a fight with oblivion.

On Yellow & Green, he [John Baizley] finds the confines of metal itself too limiting; so Baroness dive, dive, dive, dive into '90s commercial alternative harder than a sackful of Yucks and come out smarter and weirder and better than any metal band this year.

Sometimes the best results, though, come when Kelly drops the exercise completely.

The Dirty Projectors' best album by a mile holds that balance, all magnificent wobble, no collapse.

The album's most compelling sounds get saddled with songs either forgettable ("Trumpet Lights") or regrettable ("Mirage," a sinuous reggae fusion that's Nas-boosted but unnecessarily nasty).

All Hell throws up no barriers to access--if you have an abiding interest in great stories told by a great new storyteller, it'll welcome you in.

Stripped of cheap but effective lo-fi tricks, Mysterious Phonk is meandering and moronic.

The unexpected triumph lies not in the spectacle of the singer raw-dogging her emotions, but in her total command of the anarchy that results.

Synthetica manufactures dependable, big-hearted joy straight through, whether it's slightly gloomy or coquettish or just flat-out pop fun.

On WIXIW, everything is in its right place.

This is not the sound of settling.

R.I.P. rewards background play just as much as concentrated listening, if not more so.

R.A.P. Music, the sixth album by from Atlanta firebrand Killer Mike, is a stunning anachronism.

The Only Place delivers riveting drama in a rousing pop package, with Brion rescuing Best Coast from the fuzzed-out, lo-fi indie template, cleaning up their sound and enhancing the potential for mainstream appeal exponentially without diminishing their artistic credibility.

The Money Store fits into modern hip-hop like a square peg on fire, a 40-minute straitjacket tantrum of vein-popping, slow-flow barks closer to Helmet's Page Hamilton than Harlem's Charles Hamilton.

The [album] is exuberant and enthusiastic, and its architect bops along with an unapologetically clean-cut strut.

Sometimes trance-inducing, sometimes wildly dynamic, the album is a sumptuous, woozy feast that proudly dances on the lines between nirvana and reality.

Its disorienting aspects actually make it a compelling full-length experience, locking you into a maze of drum and echo.

Little Broken Hearts is exciting because it explores the darkest corners of betrayal, bad love, and jealousy with enough vitality to propel Jones out of the bloodless purgatory of brunch music.

Amid all the fight songs, Santigold's sensitive interludes only bolster her power, her harmonies rendered more invincible for their vulnerability.

Amadou and Mariam were wise to forgo a full-on return-to-roots move: They're no kind of traditionalists, let alone folkies, and if their songs lovingly reimagine Bamako, cosmopolitan Paris is their spiritual, as well as their physical, home.

Like the sugar in hot sauce, all the additional soulful and jazzy flavors - pale blue chords, sax-y loops, mellow piano comping - just bring out the stinging attack of the beats more fiercely.

Somehow they've upped their jubilation game without making too many sonic changes since 2005's self-titled debut.

Pluto wears that influence loosely, without ever feeling formally indebted to it.

Nominal solo debut notwithstanding, Blunderbuss is the sound of a mid-career stride.

Heartbreaking Bravery is both entryway and endpoint, a listening experience that's harrowing and gripping and, no matter how you come at it, moving. In other words, it remains true to its title.

Despite (or maybe because of) his peculiar web of influences, Beal is a strikingly singular performer, synthesizing various muses into something deeply unique.

God's Father is, in that sense, the most fulfilling Lil B release yet.

Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, like a Whitman's Sampler, has something chewy for everyone.

A magic carpet of woven steel, Transverse soars up and out, borne aloft on ghostly vocals and sheets of guitar noise.

Taken as an hourlong whole, though, Noctourniquet really does feel like the band's most accessible effort in years.

Mixed Emotions falls right into place, then, indulging both musical and emotional nostalgia without falling victim to any particular trend.

Maybe the Ting Tings have pulled some sort of Lou Reed maneuver here. Maybe this is their Lulu.

While Mr. M consists of 11 allegedly different songs, the album has the unified feel of a single multi-movement suite.

For every instance that seduces you with K.R.I.T.'s prowess behind the boards, though, the mixtape throws up a song that pushes things back into an unfulfilling zone.

The efficiency of his drollness has grown uncanny, in fact, and the creepiness of its perfection is part of the fun.

The rest of the album can't match that evocative pang on [best track No I Don't]--something like hot coals against cyborg flesh--and is generally more direct.

The problem is that the rantier Bemis gets about poseurs, the more he forgets to write hooks for his invectives, which strive for Real Boy's Broadway-punk propulsive grace, but strain under the weight of unsingable lines.

There are just enough bright spots to make this all worthwhile for those too old to wear BAPE.

The best songs bear the mark of an auteur weirding out, by himself.

The second half of this album is far more earnest; and in related news, far less fun.

This unpredictability -the 25-year-old band's trademark attraction--is what keeps them at the forefront of metal's vanguard, and what makes Koloss, for all its "normalcy" (joke quotes intended), the first real contender for the genre's album of the year.

Sir Paul McCartney has made an utterly forgettable, featherweight record designed primarily to appeal to Sir Paul McCartney.

For all the banging beauty in its beats, Evolve or Be Extinct is too forced and uncomfortable, as though he figured he'd evolve if he just over-thought it enough.

As a whole, though, Careless World is simply mediocre.

The delicate balance of good-then-bad-then-good-again ideas and taste appears rarely on WZRD.

We get big-budget bloat, lifeless lines, and none of the warmth or reality that would cause any label to take interest in the first place.

It's "disappointing" only because it isn't dreadful in funnier, more interesting ways.

The album, as intended to be heard, deftly captures the whiplash mood swings of a volatile relationship, showing how giddy exuberance and bitter despair can intertwine.

Reign of Terror is evidence that these kids never stopped Armageddonit even once they got punk cool.

Interstellar succeeds in expertly appropriating its forebears instead of regurgitating them.

Open Your Heart improves the band's focus even as it widens its range, ditching the harrowing, hacking-death-cough stuff and reaching for something more.

While his 2010 solo debut Mshini Wam (translated as Bring Me My Machine Gun) was promising in a guided-by-M.I.A. kind of way, Father Creeper is downright epic.

Its slightly peculiar over-reliance on technology only makes it more human, more lovable, and more rock and roll.

Synths push this from kraut-psych-cruise-control curiosity to unabashed triumph.

Toward the Low Sun is what the Dirty Three do best: enigmatic instrumentals that redefine the notions of power in a power trio, a three-headed beast that trades off thoughts with nuance and grace, like a Cerebus dancing a waltz, then knocking back a beer at the bar.

Death-metal firebrands still blaze.

Consistently spirited and glowering, a discomforting album that never leaves his narrative comfort zone, equal parts impersonal and important.

The songs are catchy and nuanced, and the rage that defined them a mere seven years ago comes across here as measured, simmering frustration.

Blööz, blahs and mad-stonerpunk.

The pervasive sense on Visions is of a young woman carefully pushing out of her own introversion, which makes the moments where she sings from the gut instead of the throat ("Circumambient"), or strives for human-on-human sensuality ("Skin"), all the more thrilling.

Synth-driven grooves that feel communal and cosmic at the same time.

TEN$ION, by contrast [to $0$], hews a little too close to the fake-gangster thing to be nearly as fun.

Black twists prog and BBC radio samples into hissing, even "hypnagogic" hip-hop, then hands the results over to Brown, who shouts suicidal thoughts and sex boasts with wild abandon.

Lovingly fastidious and packed with special effects.

Deeply felt, gorgeously rendered folk-pop songs.

The man could turn a Sesame Street sing-along into a deathbed confessional. "With piranha teeth / I've been dreaming of you," he moans here with typical cheeriness on opener "The Gravedigger's Song," a throbbing, reverb-heavy swirl that... feels like the sort of love song someone might write just before pushing their lover in front of a train.

The result is a nightmarish mess, but it's no relapse into disarray.

Libraries seems huge, a cathedral of the grandiose emotional desperation that Phil Spector and Brian Wilson once framed so dramatically.

It's not perfect--it's too long by a third, David Lee Roth often sounds like a 2 A.M. drunk doing David Lee Roth at karaoke, and a Kinks cover wouldn't have killed them. But the album clearly aspires to both be part of the canon, and, if need be, serve as an entry point.

Rich Forever, the mixtape teaser for his forthcoming God Forgives, I Don't, is quite successful at doing nothing new at all.

A perfectly pleasant contribution to the mysterious forces driving indie pop these days.

Layers of strings and piano (the droney "Old Statues") or ghostly backing voices (the haunting "As I Lay My Head Down") are usually enough to keep Tamer Animals from feeling too domesticated.

Mogis never allows the arrangements to pull focus from the Söderbergs' vocals.

A 20-minute appetizer that's short, sharp, and impressively tart.

Dawson keeps Thunder Thighs from becoming too precious or intense.