While some of the instrumental workouts (like "Safari Strut") are loose and inspired, it takes a handful of appearances from backpack-friendly rappers Percee P ("Reverse") and Mr. Lif ("The Gift") to keep Earthology from fading into lava-lamp background grooviness.

Even though the lyrics stay hippy-dippy, there are hard-earned moments of musical release.

After 2006's acclaimed debut, Hello Master, this Montreal metal foursome had to cut through a mass of red tape before Fire, their long-gestating follow-up, could get a U.S. release date. Someone should be fired for the delay, because this baby burns.

With Strong Arm Steady's MC trio of Krondon, Phil Da Agony, and Mitchy Slick (plus extended fam like Planet Asia, Phonte, and Fashawn) dropping lyrical barbs ("Telegram") and creatively reheated thug-isms ("Needle in the Haystack"), Madlib chops up loops bubbling with quirky humor and analog soul.

Gainsbourg and Beck generate one catchy track after another without producing much heat, but sometimes canny dabbling is its own reward.

Romance, their third album in 24 months, is more slickly assured -- and far less twee -- than its predecessors.

This Baltimore dream-pop duo, whose dense-fog organs, reverb-y slide guitars, and nodding harmonies feel as lush as a midnight walk in a wet garden. On their third album, those feelings now sound like actual songs, with swelling choruses and an all-encompassing ache.

while he name-checks fiery saxophonist Albert Ayler on "Love Cry," the track's steady, nine-minute crest signals Hebden's return to meticulous melodicism.

Rarely has whimsical weirdness been done with such finesse.

Stunningly blending American country, English folk, and Victorian pomp, the album documents a life resigned to sadness amid a world brimming with beauty both real and fake.

The mournful ballads are achingly pretty, but Rae is most compelling when trying to distract herself from her loss.

Think of this impressive, 25-song double-CD compilation as Singles Going Screaming -- a testament to a Canadian punk institution.

The jams always pull back at just the right moment, and the songs equal their folksy models. There's so much heart here that even the most exacting re-creations of bygone FM wank seem spontaneous.

Her minimal songs--just one guitar and sporadic drums--unfold laboriously, as though forcing themselves from Niblett's clenched mouth and hands.

The change in emphasis is jarring at first, but embrace your inner goth and you'll realize that the band's signifiers--frontman Tom Smith's outsize baritone, a penchant for high drama--remain intact.

Unlike 2007's self-indulgent The Third Hand, here he wisely picks his spots, chirping a few modest ditties. Four albums deep, he's found his comfort zone.

Astro Coast can stand up to online scrutiny--it's girls that keep Surfer Blood's reverbed indie rock jumping out of its skin.

With little more than tense bass, wiry guitar, and that signature uh-AH-uh-uh-AH percussion, the songs (recorded on the quick in Daniel's house) crackle with the freshness of rough-cut demos.

Because every Eels disc feels like a breakup album, this overt and actual one may at first seem redundant, or worse....But this also may be his most universal work, and it's heartfelt and true

The Moroder-indebted tunes on Real Life are more pop-friendly, but the chopped-up vocal samples on opener "Looking for What" are guaranteed to meld minds, while airy centerpiece "Keep It Up" defies gravity via handclaps and delicately chiming bells.

My Dinosaur Life, on which the band strikes a radio-ready balance between mayhem and melody, may well trigger their long-awaited breakthrough.

As usual, though, Willett also tries to showcase his brainpower, clumsily referencing works most commonly studied in AP literature....But the four-song EP is perfectly short; if you focus on the sturdy tunes and ignore the pseudo-smartness, it's plenty sweet, too.

Supergrass' Gaz Coombes and Danny Goffey deliver 12 blasts of stylistic tinkering that never subsume the songs' original intent: to rock.

Contra is more fully formed, a '70s-style record-type record. It's their version of the Talking Heads' "More Songs About Buildings and Food," the disc on which they see how well their gold-star ideas move.

Unlike Beck during his purple-paisley "Midnite Vultures" phase, Damian Kulash employs a soul-freak falsetto that's sincerely accurate, and with the help of Lips producer David Fridmann, he and his power-pop pals master the Okie pranksters' baroque whirls.

As he has for two decades, singer-songwriter Freedy Johnston plays the unreliable narrator in this exquisitely unsettling folk-rock collection.

The result is minor Mary--strong by many standards, a bit tepid by hers.

These guys once flailed like a future-prog version of Slipknot (whose Shawn Crahan served as executive producer on L.D. 50), but now their doomy riff-o-rama comes equipped with mellow-bellow butt-rock choruses.

Last year's Merriweather Post Pavilion, SPIN's 2009 Album of the Year, forwent such formlessness, but the haze returns on this five-track EP. Fortunately, Merriweather's hummable, techno-indebted delirium also returns.

Playing to splintered attention spans, This Is War insistently splices bits of other artists' work into a facile crescendo of mega-angst and ephemeral drama.

The album's most striking moment is "Fallin' Down." Over a ominous guitar riff, the 20-year-old sings, "It's getting heavy / I think I'm getting ready to break down." It's the most honest moment of his short career. The kid sure needs a vacation.

In fact, throughout, older brother gets the best of his carefree little sibling. Breezier doesn't always equal better.

Gucci is not always so reflective; sometimes he's as broad and bracing as a ball-peen hammer....But more often than not, the prolific MC (in 2009, he released more than 100 songs on mix tapes) limits his id, and emphasizes a surprisingly gripping superego. Case closed.

Their petulantly plagiaristic third album--mired in singer Sam Endicott's uncharismatic Robert Smith–in-a-wind-tunnel moan (imagine that hair)--continues to stuff downtown Gotham streets into predictable, rhyming-dictionary couplets.

Last year's remarkably lewd "12 Play: Fourth Quarter" may go down (so to speak) as one of the great unreleased albums in pop history. Fortunately, several of its prime cuts, including the silky-smooth 'Go Low,' surface on Untitled, which contains no shortage of fresh raunch.

As a memorable exploration of the intersection between hip-hop and the blues, it ain't much.

"I want us thinking outside the box," Shakira tells a lover on her third English-language studio disc. And musically, at least, she succeeds throughout the wildly eclectic She Wolf.

Everyone from Lady Gaga to Muse chips in here with perhaps the strongest, most flavorful batch of tunes to reach an AI vet, and Lambert's polymorphous vocal skills unite dancefloor strut and hard-rock pomp in a convincing glam package.

Rated R, Rihanna's first album since her brutal confrontation with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown, wants to recast her as a searing woman scorned. It doesn't quite take.

It's comforting to learn that Lady Gaga's supposed dark side--The Fame Monster offers a flipside to The Fame's sexy fun--is just as fun-loving and club-rousing as the songs that made her famous, because, really, her playful façade is a huge part of her appeal.

Yet even this fits with Kid Sister's vibe of retro irrepressibility. Dream Date's every track virtually dares you to resist her.

The typically droll Video Star includes a cowbell-enhanced rave-up ('Do You Mind'), a bit of Lady Gaga–ish electro-pop ('Last Days of Disco'), and one track named after Transformers ('Deceptacon'). It's a charm offensive with stars and stripes.

Don't Stop boasts gleaming dance-pop production from first-album collaborators Richard X and Timo Kaukolampi, plus Bloc Party/Kate Nash producer Paul Epworth and Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos.

The Fall has been billed as Norah Jones' rock album. In fact, it's something even more surprising: a hot-blooded soul record from the queen of the even keel.

Believe it or not, though, this appealingly lightweight set of funky robo-rock jams actually makes good on Homme's promise.

Too bad that the production here is decidedly mortal.

Before I Self Destruct starts with 50 Cent literally growling, and it ends, on 'Could've Been You,' with Kelly crooning about sniffing his own excrement. Both sound equally laughable.

The Cribs' songs hold up even when slowed down, and they're able to paint outside old lines with the added shadings, nodding to Sonic Youth ("City of Bugs") and the Smiths again ("Save Your Secrets"), while still delivering plenty of their typical Britrock momentum.

Sumner still has a knack for making dopey lyrics sound profound atop guileless Brit-rock jangle and electronic moodiness.

Predictable and immaculately produced, these arena-shakers offer a familiar brand of Jersey cheese, but where Jon Bon Jovi once was kind of quixotic ('Livin' on a Prayer'), he's more contemplative than ever, turning out meditations like 'Live Before You Die' ("There'll come a day when you have to say hello to goodbye").

Straddling the line between street and pop, Attention: Deficit doesn't quite capture the pop zeitgeist. But it sheds light on Wale's evolving personality, and his circuitous story raps reward deep listening.

Produced by power-pop whiz Butch Walker and Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger, Alter the Ending contains no shortage of high-gloss thrills.

The result is a listenable, more conventional version of his primary band. Though refreshing in a solo-career context, we've heard most of this stuff before.

The effect is more Tokyo neon than Lower East Side leather. Surprisingly, the sonic leap forward intensifies Casablancas' greatest gift--melody.

Old-school Weezer fans won't like it, and neither will blog-rock acolytes. But that's the point. Raditude is the murderous revenge of the middlebrow.

Nirvana's headlining gig at the 1992 Reading Festival looms infamously large because of (a) that amazingly creepy photo of Kurt getting wheeled onto the stage looking like Norman Bates' mother, and (b) the show was a mind-blower--sloppy indie rock as stadium-filling psychedelic punk.

Tom Araya's shriek has grown ponderous, and not until rosary-ripping closer 'Not of This God' do the four mid-fortysomethings bypass their rigid polkacore hopscotch for a devastating groove.

The music doesn't always keep up with Bemis' self-absorbed lyrical jujitsu, but there's definite charm in the struggle.

Khan's trashy Sam Cooke and Bo Diddley impersonations are uncannier than ever, but it's Invisible Girl's ratio of 1960s tribute to 21st-century blaspheming that makes it his most immediately enjoyable work yet.

So, backed by melancholic, electronic-tinged production from Dnae Beats, Gab fashions inspired stories out of loquacious speed-raps, ruminating over humanity's foibles. It may not be transporting, but it's still impressively empathetic.

Their unholy fuzz feels less triumphant, and the Helmet impression in opener 'Sound Guardians' is some kind of weird. Still, Lightning Bolt's basement has never sounded bigger.

A big improvement over 2007's ho-hum "Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon," it's also the most consistently satisfying full-length he's made.

Heartache swells from these swooning folk-pop tunes, but the presence of both of the relationship's combatants ensures that they never drown in it.

Tegan and Sara's music may no longer be the stuff of teens, but its strength remains in how much it feels like two people talking.

From the way she sings, in big gulps and Teen Wolf growls, to the mystical art-rock ballads she bedazzles with sleigh bells, harps, and choirs, there's enough drama here for a Broadway musical. But her delivery is so raw that every mess feels genuine.

At times, the forlorn vibe can get oppressive--'Peacetime Resistance' goes one love-as-war metaphor too far--but overall, the album is a welcome return from these princes of the bummer.

E6 can't quite keep it up throughout, though they still sound delighted to mess with sounds both full-throttle ('You're Bored') and loungey ('My Idea of Fun').

Like most comedy albums, this one loses its luster upon repeated hearings.

For the first solo album under his nom de tune, Scott Kannberg eschews the catchy cacophony of his earlier bands--Pavement and Preston School of Industry--for breezily quirky '70s country-pop and late-'60s psychedelia that's two parts Lindsey Buckingham and one part Roky Erickson.

With nods to synth pop, electro, and funk, Sweden's Little Dragon fill their second album with bleeping keyboards and jazzy arpeggios, recalling both Howard Jones and Saint Etienne. But what sets Machine Dreams apart is frontwoman Yukimi Nagano's alternately yelping and cooing voice.

A dark lark, but worth a listen.

Almost every tune on Mo Beauty equals or betters those on CYHSY's lauded 2005 debut.

Embryonic finds these wild-eyed Okies sounding even more adventurous and less eager to please than at any time since 1997's four-CD experimental sonic goof, "Zaireeka."

Producer Parallel Thought supports the storytelling (and saves the duo from dissolving into navel-gazing) with sharp loops.

The "neon" in the name is both a hint and a misnomer: This Austin, Texas duo's debut emanates bright colors even while the glow is muted by lo-fi haze.

Her lazily smoky voice has its bitterly harsh moments, but her coolly analytical self-awareness stings the most.

Ditto's huge voice can't do soft, so it shoots skyward on 'ove Long Distance,' and coupled with a mechanical piano and canned beat, the band starts to sound a bit catatonic. But the rest of Music for Men is a tightly wound disco-punk conjugation.

"African Velvet"? "Eat My Beat"? Gauche titling aside, Jean-Benoit Dunckel and Nicolas Godin offer no shake-ups on Love 2. Instead, more than a decade into their career, the duo have nearly perfected their wistfully melodic synth- and vocoder-driven easy-listening jams.

Four albums in, this nourish duo are still unwavering in their approach: Chilly, disturbing lyrics emerge from a dense fog of blissful Spector harmonies and squalling Jesus and Mary Chain surf and strings. Only now, those lyrics are more bizarre.

Led by effects-pedal guru Oliver Ackermann (the Edge is a customer), this Brooklyn trio further their rep for insane volume on their first proper studio album.

Drawing from a syllabus of 100 essential country tunes compiled by dad Johnny in the 1970s, Rosanne Cash delivers the most enjoyable history lesson imaginable.

Milking the quiet-LOUD dynamic a drop more, this four-song EP's title track morphs a gentle guitar bath into a fuzz-pedal masterpiece.

Though Bonfires' pacing is erratic, the band keeps winsome romance close.

Its finest moments ('Let It Die,' 'Sunrise/Sunset,' and the beautifully tortured opener 'Hands')--featuring the duo's heartaching harmonizing--capture a uniquely tender gloom amid the droning atmospherics.

Hollywood brooder Ryan Gosling doesn't reverse the rule that actors make dubious pop musicians (see Keanu, Jared Leto, ScarJo), but his rickety collaboration with budding thespian Zach Shields has an undeniable dark charm.

The album's best cut, 'I Hate People,' is an unexpectedly bubbly May-December duet with Iggy Pop, but all of Break It Up ripples with raw power.

The trio’s official debut further expands their musical palette to include triumphant synth rock (“Chalo”) and woozy G-funk (“Julia”).

The writing still can be vividly evocative, but the uninspired, folky arrangements make her words too easy to ignore.

Often brilliant, occasionally creepy songs such as the bitter toe-tapper "Without You" and the optimistic six-minute epic "Light of Day" aren't appreciably improved by the trappings, but still cut deeply

Sinister remixes of cuts fronted by Martina Topley-Bird and Elbow's Guy Garvey reconnect Massive to their stylistic descendants, while further refining their calm on the verge of chaos.

On their sixth, the band's sound finally matches their romantic ambitions.

It's a breath of fiery air, then, that their latest is as close to a return to classic form as anyone could reasonably expect.

It all looks backward unabashedly--fitting for a band formed 30-plus years ago--but no less resonant.

Lambert is still at her bubbliest playing a guntoting, wisecracking, catfighting gal next door who cusses like a sailor, or at least brags that she does, plotting revenge on lying boyfriends and town hypocrites--preferably at cowpunk tempo.

The upgrade is one of focus and intensity.

AFI may not be breaking new ground, but they never forget who listens hardest.

As with latter efforts Jar of Flies and Alice in Chains, Black's most tender moments ('Private Hell') are its most essential. And while William DuVall is a serviceable Staley impressionist, this comeback would register with more purpose had guitarist Jerry Cantrell assumed the vocal lead.