The follow-up to an album celebrating the African roots of the banjo, Pentatonic Wars is a sprawling folk and jazz set featuring everything from cornet to cello to djembe drums as backing for Taylor’s resilient rasp.

Roan coaxes with an almost deliriously euphoric art-rock swagger, while O'Connor infuses every track with hedonistic energy. Amazing Baby are desperate to dazzle--and they often do.

These Brits--featuring two members of Mclusky, a great band that died in 2005--spit fiery, trebly guitar­rock venom with such lusty glee that following them to hell actually sounds inviting.

It's wittier than it is moving or insightful, but give McGuinness time.

Murdoch pipes up now and again, but he's mostly content to play puppet master in his own lush­pop cabaret and revel in the fact that he only has to write and produce these brilliantly classic­ sounding songs, and not warble them.

The Guilty Office recalls its predecessors, with better engineering focusing the details.

Their debut suffers from Morello's uneven arrangements, which vacillate between rousing hardcore funk and predictable hard-rock crunch.

The shotgun rhythms, spaghetti western guitars, and dubstep explosions intertwine with lover's rock, roots reggae, and other island styles to impressively evoke the pair’s genre-splicing DJ sets.

The Brooklyn siblings forgo their 2007 album’s rock star cameos (Karen O, Gibby Haynes, Fred Schneider) and funnel their adolescent aggravations into nippy punk rousers, where closet monsters and rich kids alike get served a scuzzy skewering.

She might be Hank’s granddaughter, but Holly Williams doesn’t let the lovesick blues get her down on this twangy-yet-smooth sophomore effort.

Longstreth's prickly surface belies a bright pop center: tart, sweet, and gushing all at once.

Lacking lyrics as memorable as 2006's "Meds," Battle for the Sun is heavier but duller, with the gap between Molko's spindly melodies and the fatter, newly Americanized riffs widening.

The Ecstatic is easily his finest full-length since "Black on Both Sides," his 1999 solo debut.

Th Peas keep it exuberantly funky.

Between the groovier tracks, the album rarely keeps its feet or focus for long, getting lost in mazes of mangy Stones riffs or acoustic roundabouts with little purpose or pulse.

Like Robert Earl Keen, he has a way with a punch line and the frat-boy fans to prove it--they're gonna love 'America's Favorite Pastime,' which recounts the 1970 no-hitter Dock Ellis pitched on LSD. The rest of us will admire 'Bring 'Em Home,' a spirited call to get our troops the hell out of harm's way.

A few tracks seem unfinished, but Deerhunter's obsession with oblivion remains as intact as always.

Both the production and Wyatt's shape-shifting croon are so butter-smooth that it takes repeated plays to sense the hurt that hides behind these dance-floor lullabies.

Flowers, a collection of mystical-seeming noise collages, absurdist dirges, and Pavement soundalikes, is as listenable as it is difficult to pin down.

Extraordinarily irrational and willfully convoluted, Jhelli Beam is avant-rap as quantum physics. Hopefully, his choir gets it.

Their first full-length collaboration since 1991's stellar "Mavericks" is a beautiful set of grown-up pop, meshing Holsapple's emotional directness with Stamey's headier approach.

Adam Freeland--the nu­skool breaks vet who broke through in 2003 with "We Want Your Soul"--dons a suit jacket and hires guns (Brody Dalle, the Pixies’ Joey Santiago, Tommy Lee) for the carefully concocted, pleasantly thumping Cope.

Nosaj’s remarkable, entrancing debut album gathers sundry influences, from U.K. dubstep to Aphex Twin-styled IDM, into a 36-minute computerized symphony.

The results feel tossed-off at times, but Iggy still flashes his charm and humor.

Pairing with producer T-Bone Burnett (who helmed 1986's rootsy antecedent "King of America") and a distinguished pickup band of country heavyweights, he gives his typically fussed-over tunes a tent-revival authority.

A fond, funky farewell.

Frontman Adam Lazzara's temper tantrums sound more sore- than full-throated, but they still freeze blood for short stretches, while the revolving choruses are as enormous and polished as Boeings.

The gentler E distances himself from his lycanthropic alter ego, searching for Ms. Right backed by a familiar arsenal of winsome melodies and elegant string arrangements.

The sunny brutalism of Rancid's East Bay ska-thrash has lost nary a step and their ethical-emotional rigor is as sweet as it is pure.

With peaks and valleys, Stay Paid is patchwork, but Dilla's brilliance remains stunningly apparent.

Even skeptics should find Bingham's second album, embellished with a bit more pop and politics, a convincing step beyond his promisingly earthy 2007 debut.

Front-loaded with buzzy riffs and cutting vocals, the third studio album from this Swedish band is bracingly ambitious, clearly designed to be heard in arenas and stadiums.

Even as they feature orchestras, women's choirs, and Beach House singer Victoria Legrand on Veckatimest, the album is still an intimate, ascetic affair.

These arch Frenchmen make precision-tooled pop that somehow retains a sense of urgency and playfulness--an impressive balancing act consistently slam-dunked by effortlessly ingratiating choruses.

While it's still easy to dismiss his shock tactics as puerile and insensitive (if you're gonna sing about someone "pretty as a swastika," they'd better be really ugly), he hasn't sounded this vital--and tuneful--since "Mechanical Animals."

Woozy, smoked-out hooks are strewn like cigarette butts--a Black Moth specialty that Fridmann dials up throughout this consistently twisted half-hour and change.

II feels like the dance-music equivalent of a compost heap: warm, organic, funky, but a tad squishy.

Just seven of the 15 songs here break three minutes, which is smart, as Sniper turns rubbery bass lines and thin synths into goth-flavored bubblegum pop.

Well known as purveyors of viscous guitar sludge, the duo of Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson expand their ambitions and make some startling jazz-ensemble noises on their seventh album.

The fifth album from this Portland, Oregon quartet (recently expanded from a married duo) is swathed in misty silver-and-blue atmospherics, but it's the songwriting, hooks, and escalating thrum of a capable rock band that pull listeners from each twinkling vista to the next.

At the piano bench for the poignant ballad 'Fix' and the stunning, assured finale 'Arc,' Blackshaw makes you forget all about his guitar and your earthly cares.

Relapse is really just another overlong summer blockbuster. We sit through it, then go look at pictures of kittens on the Internet, and wait until our souls snap back into place.

Ignore (or embrace) the similarities [to Spoon] and there’s plenty to love about songs as lightly brooding and likably grabby as these.

Poptimist Michael Angelakos tried to hold onto his girlfriend with Passion Pit's first EP. That didn't work (blame the self-obsessed lyrics), but on his band's debut full-length, their squeaky indie-pop theatrics are more convincing.

Unfortunately, these hook-starved arrangements tend toward a static brand of ambient cabaret, which makes Amos' lyrics easy to tune out. Too many little earthquakes, not enough seismic jolts.

Sam Beam's breathy croon is as soothing as a lullaby, but just as limited--which becomes an issue over two discs and 23 songs. Yet that very sameness helps this patchwork of singles, soundtrack cuts, and unreleased tracks cohere.

Yours Truly occasionally provides pummeling feedback rock ('It's the Weekend'), but when Lytle's lullaby vocals suggest, "You should hold my hand / While everything blows away / And we'll run to a brand-new sun," it's like Bruce Springsteen's open highway finally reached a melancholy kid from Modesto.

Neither Cocker's chewy structures nor his voice's subtle shadings are particularly well suited to Albini's you-are-there engineering. Fortunately, this collection of surging and reeling tunes is the former Pulp frontman's strongest since "Different Class."

Swedish electronic dance producer Axel Willner consistently finds the sweet spot between breathlessness and breathing too hard on his follow-up to 2007's acclaimed "From Here We Go Sublime."

As a sequel, Blackout 2 fails to move things forward; but as a revival, it’s a welcome blast.

Opener 'Another Likely Story' sets the mood, dovetailing chilly lunar textures with hushed vocal harmonies to often nap-worthy effect.

But two decades deep in the game, Busta is still beholden to a style that ping-pongs between silly and steroidal, making his stabs at honesty fall awkwardly flat.

He also lightens his fifth album with sweet, sincere interludes.

Smart, left-field parodies such as 'Hardcore Gentlemen,' which sends up early-'90s horrorcore, prove that Tanya Morgan may go hard in pursuit of rap dreams, but they haven't lost their infectious sense of humor.

Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tré Cool push Idiot's conceits even further on 21st Century Breakdown, a slick, class-obsessed, 70-minute, 18-song, three-act cycle that trades Bush-era indignation for Obama-era resignation.

While Earle's brawny attack might seem ill-suited to Van Zandt's wistful angst, he does his idol justice on this vibrant covers set, delivering supersonic bluegrass and starry-eyed ballads with the same thoughtful finesse.

He may have kept his lyrical gift hidden, but he didn't lose it.

Embrace Maximo for being smarter than most or just shimmy along. Either works.

It's patient, pretty music, tinged with a cozy claustrophobia.

Here's the Crystal Method with a not-so-fresh batch of rave-rock jock jams seemingly designed to advertise a car you can no longer afford.

That penchant for swollen, cathedral­size arrangements--particularly on Coldplay­like cuts 'Late of Camera' and 'In a Look'--is a weakness, but hopefully, Enigk will learn to shake it off in favor of leaner renditions of his winning, winsome tunes.

After mucking about for more than a decade, spacey Norwegian producer Rune Lindbaek teams up with London disco pranksters the Idjut Boys to create this surprisingly focused debut, and the results are nothing less than total sun-soaked beatitude.

She's always juxtaposed the cruel and the kind, and here, the baroque arrangements are even more complex and her voice even prettier, with both only underlining the dark currents running through her songs.

Like most extreme acts, this trash-talking MC's strengths are best showcased in wham-bam singles. To sustain interest between fourth-album climaxes, the Berlin-based sleaze queen collaborates with London's Simian Mobile Disco.

A Scottish singer-songwriter with a number of spare and lovely folk albums, Alasdair Roberts goes for the mad prophetic gusto on the strange and visionary Spoils.

It mostly works: Shave a couple of the non-Conor tracks and it'd sit comfortably with his best.

Here they expand their primarily folky sound, importing rhythms from abroad and morphing electronic ticks and stutters into a field of chirping crickets.

The fact that the album's best moments are in the details--a fiery lick, a wailing vocal ad-lib--speaks to the singer-guitarist's recurring problems: secondhand song structures and little to say beyond self-helpy reiterations of lyrical beatitudes.

Sez So doesn't particularly benefit from the brighter light. It's all fun and harmless garage blooze--the bottom-heavy slow-burn 'My World' is a standout--but it's ultimately as trifling as their '73 debut was essential.

The surface-heavy results suggest painstakingly remixed outtakes.

The result boasts an admirably moody menace, but lacks the debut's darkly comic drive.

Though McBean, who also leads Vancouver spliff-rockers Black Mountain, invites a slew of guests with diverse musical associations (Jackie-O Motherfucker, Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Whiskeytown), the album still yawns with homogeneous campfire acoustics.

Songs are still suite-sized, but this is the toughest and catchiest Isis record since their 1999 debut full-length, "Celestial."

More ambitious than on past efforts, Watson slips through quiet night spaces, and like Sendak's Max, puts on his wolf suit, making mischief of one kind, then another, until Wooden Arms flares with his vibrant energy.

She renders a sad refrain from a lotto ad on 'State Numbers,' slags CSNY on 'The Lighter Side of...Hippies,' and howls that "a loving woman can have the Devil's face" on the acerbic 'Don't Talk in Your Sleep,' making this the duo's most shambolic effort to date.

On cuts like "How Do I Maintain Pt. 1," the rhythmic interplay gets weighed down by its own excess, but the more expansive clouds of synth exhaust in wordless bookends "Run" and "Reintegration Time" offer more rewarding highs.

Amid spoken-word interludes and I'd-like- to-buy-the-world-a-Coke-style choirs, only Lee's innate melodic gift saves him from total embarrassment.

Beguiling, gorgeous stuff--and smartly funny, too.

Having long since traded abstraction for irascibility and wistfulness, Dylan still offers flashes of black humor (“Hell is my wife’s hometown”) over the ten songs, but the fatalism that’s marked much of his recent work is in short supply.

Over 34 irresistible minutes, Summer of Hate has as many barbed, house-party hooks as nihilistic blasts.

Unfortunately, the newfound confidence doesn't extend to lyrics rife with nonspecific, mixed-metaphorical angst that smacks of the overwrought youth demo they've otherwise outgrown.

While there are still a couple of Jam-like snarlers on album two, the aping of Oasis’ more bloated days sinks things quickly.

In the grand, elegiac 'Legacy,' singer Neil Tennant delivers what's either a farewell kiss or simply a cheeky end to the most thoroughly heartfelt chapter in the pair's 25-year story.

Flashes of fun appear--dig the glam-Sabbath stomp of 'Inconvenience'--but most of Dark could use more color.

Tinted Windows' debut is even less left-field; these hook-crammed power-pop jams are safe and bouncy enough for Jo Bros fans and Stacy's mom alike.

Sounds of the Universe comes on a bit softer, with less industrial guitar clang and more of chief songwriter Martin Gore's dreamy atmospherics.

These Englishmen have learned impulse control. Frontman Eamon Hamilton's playful yelp has given way to a sturdier sound.

The erstwhile pixies preacher takes compliant care of Art Brut's ludicrous good name--rock-fanboy allusions and cheeky declaratives are well repped.

Unburdened by Kanye's melancholia or Eminem's vertiginousness, Roth is perfectly likable, and perfectly bland.

Their major-label debut gets by on smarmy-smooth suburban- pop melodies, cheeky genre mash-ups, and good bad jokes.

On their fourth album, this Scottish indie-pop band's fondness for woeful heartache and Phil Spector–esque production reaches a poignant peak.

If it sounds about as much fun as, say, watching CNBC, rest assured, dude's got a tighter flow than Larry Kudlow.

Cryptacize's latest squanders the band's natural resource: singer Nedelle Torrisi.

Ida Maria throws herself into every song as if it's all a big finale, which makes for an auspicious beginning.

Goofy if not guileless, Telepathe seem intentionally designed as a guilty pleasure.

Boasting enough sugary banjos, glockenspiels, and handclaps to give a Teletubby diabetes, The Boy Least Likely To animate their softly sung indie twang with nonstop hooks, bright production, and gently acknowledged adult anxieties. Beneath lyrics celebrating balloons and whiskers lie bittersweet longings.

Fantasies is a welcome return, but it's not without flaws.

The Pickups also pile on the sophomore-album enhancements here, deepening a sound that scarcely wanted for depth beforehand.