It's the sound of too-clever body-movers merely going through the motions.

Deerhoof's trademark guitar-noise scribbling has been transformed in the studio, resulting in bulky, segmented yet hummable compositions that signify--we think--the triumph of cutesy creativity over grouchiness.

Defying logic, the famously productive Robert Pollard is getting even more prolific with age.

The band recorded in a real New York City studio, with a real producer, Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beach House). And the songs are even better.

Cape Dory establishes an enviable fantasy: two lovers happily adrift. Where Best Coast is too cool for school, Tennis seem (almost) too good to be true.

Her deranged aura aside, the second full-length from this New York group is a brainy and brawny hybrid.

In most of these dozen tracks (not including a ponderous intro regarding the necessity of risk and a slow-jam sequel to Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind") Keys seems uninterested in breaking new ground, snooze-controlling her way through a series of familiar piano-soul platitude.

Lee's take on the feminine id is like the music itself: smooth on the outside, savage within.

There's a pervasive lack of hooks, not to mention an eerie sense of anonymity.

Ten crisp roots-rock tunes in a mere 40 minutes, The King Is Dead finds the Decemberists in serious course-correction mode -- which is a relief, if also kind of sad.

Sounds terrible, yet these guys attack tracks like "Sell Yourself" with so much pent-up energy that Shultz ends up selling his crackpot ideas.

On his third solo effort, the G-Unit rapper is a connoisseur of cars, women, and guns, spinning tight spider webs of syllables that are often so patterned that they obscure individual strands.

The fidelity hasn't improved much from the Calgary foursome's basement-recorded debut, but Public Strain consolidates the clanging drones and subtly hooky flourishes that previously existed only as separate pieces.

On his fifth full-length, this '60s-pop obsessive mostly ditches the balmy homemade chorales of his earlier work for folk-rock verities, crafting his tightest, fullest-sounding record yet.

On their third album, these dizzying British metalcore chemists swing erratically in an effort to shake genre conventions, flirting with dystopic Max Headroom stutter, electro gloom, and tender indie-folk cuddles.

Airtight's Revenge has its soul affectations, but even standard fare like "Little One" bears Bilal's impressively reedy, insistent voice. He sounds like a man unburdening himself.

His return to more intimate recording can't conceal that there's nary a melody worth savoring amid the autumnal folkiness.

Ghostface Killah's ninth album consoles his hardcore constituency: Forty-plus minutes of gritty, soul-sampling beats soundtracking bizarro street tales ("Starkology," "Ghetto"), with lyrical tough-guys Busta Rhymes, Redman, and more than half the Wu Tang Clan tagging along.

His decision to ditch the club and retreat to a more conventionally romantic setting allows him to let his voice take center stage, which is where it should have been all along.

Hart continues to experiment, ensuring that his wide smile never gets tiresome.

Rain in England, a therapy-session testimony that sounds like Soulja Boy having a Damascus moment in the champagne room over a beatless synth tide--is his least accessible.

Slime Flu has its charms, acting as an energetic reminder of insider-y, turn-of-the-century New York hip-hop long gone: sample-laden, ignorant, and wealth-obsessed.

This Virginia duo's debut could double as a hypercompressed essay on post-punk's shift into indie.

Singer-guitarist Jeffrey Novak pulls off a neat stunt on the second Cheap Time album, bringing fresh life to the most timeworn garage-band conventions.

The best parts of this boy-girl duo's second album sound like some obscure '50s act, the kind that ought to list "reverb" as a band member.

Flockaveli's flaw is not Waka's coarseness, but his generosity--25 guest verses from anonymous Brick Squad cronies suck up air instead of letting Waka breathe without mentor Gucci Mane's oxygen tank.

This far less satisfying collection of gussied-up outtakes and posthumously completed tracks shifts the focus back to the packaging that progressively dehumanized Jackson.

More stompers like "White Night" and "123 Stop," bubblegum throwbacks with a Wilson Pickett kick, would be welcome.

The spontaneous vibe seems fitting, with Darnielle's ordinary-guy vocals, embellished by Bruno's subtle guitars and keyboards, giving their observant tales of sexual misconduct ("How I Left the Ministry") and weary struggle ("Cruiserweights") the punch of vivid short stories.

If there's a flaw on this Alabama duo's debut, it's predictability. T-Bone Burnett and Jack White serve as executive producer and mentor, respectively, with Laura and Lydia Rogers putting a sister-act spin on dusty Americana--bet you can hear it already.

A melodic improvement on their 2007 debut, Return of the Century could pass for breezy escapism, thanks to mellow vocalists Edward Anderson, Caroline Donovan, and Jeanine O'Toole; but the songs' unreliable narrators invariably exhibit dismissive, selfish attitudes toward friends and lovers.

It lands in the same general ballpark as 2003's new-wave homage Rock N Roll, loose-limbed and manic, with Adams indulging his riff-rock-and-holler side.

Nobody gets credited for "echo" on this San Francisco quartet's remarkably mature second album, but that's an oversight. Play It Strange is suffused with a deep, widescreen ambience that assumes an almost physical presence.

Rap's most hotly anticipated debut works best if you don't think of it as a rap album at all.

More than ever, Green is the surreal deal.

Constant club-pop hooks, courtesy of executive producer Dr. Luke (with help from mentor Max Martin plus Benny Blanco, Ammo, and others) render the hypocrisy nearly irrelevant; but if they dry up, yikes.

Fantasy's production is loud and proud, but also poignant and gripping, always hinting at some looming danger.

Sophisticated dance-floor mischief rarely gets this sexy.

This Philly-born belter sounds like a direct reaction against the Auto-Tune era, with Sullivan turning her pain into a performance worthy of a vintage Apollo headlining gig.

Peas leader will.i.am mixes up house and disco beats, Chic and Slick Rick samples, wonky Moog hooks, crunchy guitars, and '70s funk bass into one of the year's wildest sonic stews.

Viva la Vida Familiar.

That Daft Punk's Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter would score Tron: Legacy seems destined.

Ultimately, it's the vocals that carry Endlessly. There's no whitewashing of the singer's eccentricities, which feel more pronounced here--she can be gruffly nasal (the oft-repeated chorus of "Well, Well, Well" never stops sounding like "whale, whale, whale") while remaining wholly beguiling.

Hipsters will hate it, but that's partly the point. Admitting he was "born and raised an Internet hate machine," Deadmau5 knows the power of provocation.

For all her grandiosity, though, McCarthy's meditations on domestic toil ("Housekeeper") and seasonal change ("Hibernation Tales") feel intimately heartfelt, while the wailing "O Mary" blends natural imagery and Christian allusions in stirring fashion.

It's the sound of a man moving to his next stage, unsure how he should make his machines howl. Mournful or loud? Why not both?

This is a more mature nod to the bubbly pop that established her fame. And it's a statement from a woman who's come into her own, and who won't be going anywhere that isn't worth her while. We could all do worse than to follow her lead.

Final statement Funeral Mariachi is a showcase of their lush, accessible side while remaining as peculiar as ever.

Their sophomore effort, the result of a song cycle commissioned by WNYC DJ John Schaefer, shows a thoughtful maturation from winsome debut Taller Children.

Ultimately, it's the stuff of a common nightmare--creepily thrilling, but not worth reliving.

Most everything here is played too fast and mixed too loud, the live instrumentation doesn't swing, and the vocals often suggest karaoke Kylie Minogue. But the songwriting remains period-perfect and consistently well crafted.

Though he sounds slightly out of place on the screeching "Lies X 3," standouts "We Live by the Beat" and "Kontrol Phreak" impressively blend synth-funk and neo-new-wave glamour.

Even emo and chamber music get roped into Sidewalks' exclamatory gush, verifying that there truly is no sound these two won't use to support their almost religious commitment to spreading huge grins.

Eno unleashes tempests of breakbeats ("Horse"), electro exotica ("Bone Jump"), even roiling post-rock ("2 Forms of Anger"), creating a perfect storm.

With livelier playing and more memorable tunes, Costello's second straight collaboration with producer T Bone Burnett is a major improvement over last year's ho-hum Secret, Profane & Sugarcane.

Let's have a toast for the ladies who stick it to the douchebags.

Cardiology dials down the sparkle, which is kind of a bummer; plodding fake-U2 anthems such as "Right Where I Belong" are definitely not Good Charlotte's sweet spot.

The 78-minute Spiral Shadow supersizes everything, from song lengths to layers of deep-focus space-rock effects, but the sprawling songs are still built around riffs as sweaty as a south Georgia summer.

The Fool is built on Joy Division's post-punk low end, moody chords, droning vocals, and doomy lyrics, but it's more than a tribute.

Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager, the sequel to The End of Day, is a revelation, boldly reshaping Cudi's sound -- with vivid production by Emile, Plain Pat, the Cool Kids' Chuck Inglish, Jim Jonsin, Diplo, and others.

The result of all this hemming and hawing is a captivating reminder of how much weirder this band is than its reputation.

Yet the cameo-packed Olympia shares far more with Ferry's recent solo stuff than it does with Roxy's early-'70s art rock; lusciously arranged lounge-funk workouts.

What does one call eight songs in 25 minutes? An EP? A mini-LP? Just don't call it a placeholder--there are too many bulldozer riffs here, even in the under-a-minute sketches.

After three consistent, unique albums, the duo only flag when they abandon their sense of humor and mischief -- which is what made them so smart in the first place.

Write About Love also feels monumentally comfortable in its own skin. For a band that made its bones meticulously documenting awkwardness, that's a particularly impressive change.

Disc two works better in theory than fact, compiling disparate song fragments into a single 33-minute mixtape-inspired track, but the group's radiant delight in pure sound is undimmed.

Jones has always savored extremes, and here, she's alternately demonic (the toothy gleam of 'Corporate Cannibal') and angelic (the gloriously autobiographical 'Williams' Blood').

This debut is a different kind of soul music, as meditative as it is evocative.

Stevens sated his jam-band jones in a borderline amusing way on August's All Delighted People EP, but here all the engine-revving too often feels lazy, especially considering how vibrantly he embraces the album's fresh musical direction elsewhere.

Though this is a flawed and scattershot project, Wayne remains an artist who makes music like a patissier--his songs are frivolous, delicious, and meant to be relished for just a moment.

From yellowed headlines, nature-magazine clippings, marker scribblings, torn paper, even Kurt Cobain's visage, Antony extracts a poignancy that beautifully matches his music.

Across two epic, messy tracks, the pair go around the world: classic ambient house, dated trip-hop, thundering drum loops, weird dub, even down-home picking, yet stay nowhere long enough for anything to really take hold.

Despite frontman Rhett Miller's nice-guy tendencies, Old 97's are way more fun when he gives in to his bitchy side--which is large and in charge on The Grand Theatre, runaway-train backbeats and all.

"I know it sounds strange," chirps mullet-rockin' Yo-Landi Vi$$er in "Rich Bitch," "but I used to count change." In fact, that's one of the more credible claims on this South African rave-rap crew's delightfully low-rent debut.

The title of Clinic's sixth album cheekily nods to the surgical-masked Brits' current, revamped sound--a softer spin on indie pop with their usual gritty agitation almost completely scrubbed away.

Thanks to KT Tunstall's compelling whiskey-and-cigarettes voice, everything she tackles demands to be heard -- though not everything here absolutely needs to be.

But what that album [Knowle West Boy] had in abundance--loud guitars, noisy electronics, new ideas--this comparatively minimal one lacks.

His debut solo album sports lyrics of the sort Loudon Wainwright III has been writing for decades, set to harp, oboe, strings, and horns. Lacerating sentiments clash with pretty sounds as Kasher holds forth on his "death wish," detailing the foibles of prodigal husbands.

Singer Michael Vidal owns his gloominess and the band delivers arrangements that are plenty tricky, but their arty '80s excavation rarely finds the gooey, glittering choruses that would truly elevate their stylistic shift.

Lonely Avenue's two knights of music nerd-dom use their disarming pop smarts to wryly sympathize with the hapless Playgirl cover boy. The empathy and humor run throughout.

Wisely, the album flows like a mixtape rather than a stab at artistic self-definition, with Brooklyn funk band the Dap Kings laying down a unifying groove and Ronson's love of vintage '80s synthesizers providing a stylistic through line.

Everything in Between is nearly 40 minutes long, which is epic for a band whose last two full-lengths were triumphs of brevity. And while 2008's Nouns alternated between rave-ups and bliss-outs, here the band spends more time, well, in between.

From bracing opener "Precious Stone" to the chugging fan appreciation "Rock Crowd" to a heartfelt version of Gram Parsons' "Wheels," Yorn emerges with his most purposeful, affecting album yet.

Hip-hop-style braggadocio doesn't quite jibe with the band's relentlessly earnest outlook, which comes packaged here in songs no less hooky or propulsive than usual. It might have provided a jolt of excitement, though; even the amped-up standouts (like "Coffee and Cigarettes") are beginning to feel a bit by the numbers.

are a few new wrinkles--the manic push-pull of "Meeting of the Minds" could almost pass for System of a Down--but it's generally overdrive-guitar heaven.

Seedy, feel-bad music. Half-dead, sometimes gorgeous, and willfully dumb beyond repair. Call it alienation porn. Sound awful? Well, it is kind of awful--and rivetingly so.

Le Noise, produced by Daniel Lanois and recorded solo with a reverb-swathed electric guitar, is all about doubt and desperation, and Young is never better than when he's unsure of himself.

It's also in those nature-obsessed lyrics, delivered in tones so dulcet and hypnotic that the inclination to don a robe and commune with Vespertine-era Bjork is overwhelming.

At his best, he sounds like he's sweating it out in a kitchen with flypaper dangling from the ceiling. But on The Appeal, he could be anywhere.

Pompadoured George Taylor Jr. has more than enough melodic grace and pretty-boy swag to nail the sound.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's first album in 14 years--and first in 24 to feature the lineup that recorded the bulk of their hits--meticulously returns to the ostensibly perky sound and pensive sensibility of the Merseyside quartet's early-to-mid-'80s heyday.

On this solo-ish debut, though, he gives that funk factor full reign, recruiting pals Karen O and David Byrne to sing over synthed-up disco-rock that's brighter and bouncier than his main band's anxious throb. Maximum Balloon deflates when Sitek switches into avant-cabaret mode.

Imperfect Harmonies plays as if Frank Zappa had lived to experience the glories of the Crystal Method, Ozzfest, George W. Bush, and Final Fantasy X.

The results don't always play to the singer's melodic strengths; ?uestlove sounds a bit reined-in, too. Occasionally, though, they send up some serious sparks, as with a raw garage-funk take on Baby Huey's "Hard Times."

Recognizable shapes of jazz and post-rock often accompany Gira's baritone croon, but they're always delivered between passages of fastidiously crafted clamor that's as cauterizing as ever.

Shorn of its usual grime trappings, Manuva's deep, gruff lyricism sounds playfully inspired on catalog highlights like "Proper Tings Juggled."

The detached aesthetic can turn anesthetic when the tunes occasionally falter or the overdubbed grooves fail to generate frisson, but the sweetly twitchy one-two punch of "Dressed in Dresden" and "Last City" brings this studiously chic debut to a sweaty climax.

Caressed by gentle guitars and synths, her elegantly serene voice and airy melodies impart a sense of stubborn, reassuring endurance in the face of soul-crushing melancholy.