Even at just 42 minutes, Tonight is relentless, yet the comedown is exquisite.

The dusty, reverent feel of even the album's wildest rockers gives the sense that he's just a lone wanderer battling solitude with sound.

Bliss isn't the Boss' bag. Without anything to push against, one of rock's most eloquent lyricists is in the awkward position of having little of interest to say.

Sometimes they get stuck in gilded lyrical vagaries, but simpler subject matter serves them best.

Refining Gutter Tactics' murky metal rap with subwoofer bass frequencies and fierce drum programming, MC Dälek and producer the Oktopus still find inspiration amid the noise.

Loney Dear's gauzy pop can be entrancing, but it's also incredibly easy to tune out: Let your mind wander, and the Swedish act's latest goes full blur.

Eye Legacy renames and remixes several Supernova tracks and finishes off some previously unreleased jams with diminished results.

While the rock workouts never transcend their bar-band tropes, on the ballads ("Turn Your Pretty Name Around," "Black Eyes"), Olson & Louris evince real sorrow and regret with little more than a carefully picked acoustic guitar and ghostly organ tracing the tracks of their tears.

Unabashedly upbeat, MC Zumbi compares ghetto life to being a "caged bird," but even when he dismisses haters ("Burning incense, yeah, they tried to call us yoga"), he sounds optimistic.

Unshackled again from the need to craft radio-­ready riffs, the guitarist unfurls long­-winded but beguiling keepers.

Part of what made the Strokes so exciting was the flair they brought to the old trick of sounding hot while looking cool. On his solo debut, bassist Nikolai Fraiture never manages either.

He takes Lambs Anger's used parts and models them compressing keyboard sounds and looped samples into a sci-fi party mix. [Feb 2009, p.82]

Shards of Come With Me suggest Crow has more to offer the metal gods than the intermittently awesome sludgefests served up here.

In years past, Animal Collective have been cast as perpetual Peter Pans, forever stuck in childhood fantasias. But beneath the body-moving throbs and coruscating noises of Merriweather Post Pavilion, themes of domestic duty and devotion abound.

Antony and the Johnsons' third full-length wisely focuses on the frontman's enormous talent, with Nico Muhly's classical arrangements plinking and waltzing but never overpowering.

Get Guilty dwells on the past, and that pensive reflection mutes the second half, turning Newman's boast into a wistful memory.

With his SAT-acing vocabulary, Bird still rocks some of the best rhymes in the game, cobbling together his own foreign language from arcane terms.

Matt and Kim (their real names) come on like a punked-up Mates of State--a couple so cute that you'd walk away from their frantic live shows feeling mushy, if someone hadn't just mushed you. But the love songs on their second album are for their home borough of Brooklyn as much as for each other.

It features another ten songs of standard Pollard-isms--vaguely British, Robyn Hitchcock–esque vocals warped by reverb and Echoplex mazes; surrealistic, first-thought-next-thought lyrics; sudden loud crunches of lo-fi guitar; and melodies that soar but never quite achieve the permanence of his best work.

Bernard Butler, hipster rock's Jerry Bruckheimer, produced this impressive debut, a tsunami of galloping rhythms, lightning-charged guitar lines, and choruses that immediately infect your brain.

Vermont residents Matt Valentine and Erika Elder exhibit signs of creeping dementia on Drone Trailer. With his piercing whine and wheezy harmonica, Valentine suggests a damaged, decomposing clone of acoustic Neil Young.

Here, perhaps his most deft rhythm section (Clutch drummer Jean-Paul Gaster and Rezin bassist Jon Blank) acts as a liberating army -- trad doom, hardcore tempos, mathematic instrumentals, and a Fugazi lope ("Wild Blue Yonder") coexist perfectly with his famously piercing, rounded guitar tone. It's change any hesher could believe in.

The quartet's fervent debut, produced by DJ Erol Alkan, offers a fabulous simulation of '80s new wave, with burping, sputtering synths and sleazy, Bowie-inspired crooning from frontman Sam Eastgate.

Stepping out solo, the energetic multi-instrumentalist--assisted by guests including Dresden Dolls' Brian Viglione--does fine when he keeps things forceful. But when Nicolay decelerates, his weaknesses (cheesy croon, misguided piano) emerge, resulting in over-earnest, loungey balladeering.

Glasgow quartet Glasvegas are a product of this world--frontman James Allen is even a former semipro footballer--and their remarkable debut gives voice to its fears, frustrations, and heartaches without succumbing to its cliches.

Iggy Pop's deadpan delivery on "He's Frank" sets the tone for an album that sometimes gets a little goofy, while the danceable "Toe Jam" pairs David Byrne with Dizzee Rascal (finally!). The lesser-known guests offer more misses than hits.

If the band could bring themselves to record with anything resembling subtlety, they might win over some skeptics. But they also might end up hanging with Lightspeed Champion. I suspect they'll take the trade-off.

Working with Good Charlotte producer Eric Valentine, the Rejects trick out their hook-jammed anthems with sweet strings, zippy disco beats, and the occasional bit of Gary Glitter bleacher stomp.

While we're used to Common in the role of poetic prophet or self-righteous rhyme slayer, Universal Mind Control is primarily a rhythmic celebration, paying tribute to Afrika Bambaataa and Jonzun Crew jams.

Favoring excessive computer and crowd noise over the pair's concise hooks, the relentlessly bombastic concert CD accompanying the DVD combusts as if it were one 66-minute, fireworks-spewing finale.

Her vamping can't touch their steamy-windowed originals.

This odds-and-ends comp is unusually straightforward.

Despite some truly awful lyrics--"Don't make me get mad and Barack O-bomb-ya" is particularly wince-worthy--both Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith sound reenergized, boosted by spirited cameos from Redman, Method Man, and Keith Murray.

The second duo record by the former Talking Heads frontman and his experimental producing partner is a thoughtful singer-songwriter exercise. [Oct 2008, p.104]

Seasoned yet no less hyper--there's still plenty of shouting in unison -- the band lays down a more stable foundation for the lyrical zingers of singer-lyricist Gareth Campesinos.

A few late-album glow-stick groovers abruptly shift the vibe to rave-era bliss, but until then, turn off your mind and float downstream.

Though the content--our hero purging his heart, a la Marvin Gaye's "Here, My Dear"--ordinarily would be the focus of discussion for a platinum rapper, the musical structure overshadows his attempts at introspection.

With intervention from the boys of No Doubt and production help from Steve Albini, this sprawling album earns a fair hearing.

What Tapes lacks in classic names, it makes up for in flow.

They remain fascinated by heartland mythos, but by becoming more comfortable with their glitzy roots, they've actually found the pulse of something more authentic.

Don't call these noisy Swedes a nostalgia act. Reuniting with producer Rick Rubin, whose low-gloss production emphasizes the quartet's adrenaline rush, the Conspiracy unleash a barrage of topical bulletins.

An outrageously overblown pop-metal extravaganza, Chinese Democracy feels like a perfect epitaph for all the absurdity and nonsense of the George W. Bush era--one final blowout before Principal Obama takes our idiocy away.

His deceptively fragile vocal style and skewed lyrical genius were already evident at age 22 in these 13 acoustic songs recorded over two nights at a Michigan Episcopal church.

Sasha is an intriguing but diluted direction.

A familiar blend of big-riff rockers and pseudo-sensitive power ballads, Dark Horse won't win the Canadian band any new fans--or will its hearty endorsements of oral sex disappoint the devoted.

Dido's third solo album reveals an unyielding fear of intimacy, her mellow trip-pop (coproduced by Jon Brion) buckling underneath sadness and alienation.

The initial 1996 sessions emphasize the droll felicity of essential early songs 'The State I Am In' and 'The Stars of Track and Field,' tightening the comedic timing and ramping up the tension, making their adolescent trauma both funnier and scarier.

Nearly every song on their second collaboration--but particularly the brooding 'Salvation' and sweetly melancholy 'Trouble'--reveals gorgeous comfort in the juxtaposition.

Though Day by Day doesn't include any tracks as memorable as 1999's 'Beng Beng Beng,' Kuti still shines.

The duo's virtuosic picture of the 21st-century city feels so alive it might convince Escape From New York's Snake Plissken to return.

With a hot guest list (Ciara, T.I.), this is bound to bump the clubs, but beyond that, it's clown time.

On his fourth album, Luomo (a.k.a. Sasu Ripatti, the Finnish electronic minimalist who also records as Vladislav Delay) stays true to the course he began with 2000's "Vocalcity."

They seem less confident introducing more distinctive elements into the flow on their debut, which features six original songs and five remixes.

Josephine Olausson's Ono-esque delivery remains an acquired taste, but that's surely by design: If she sang any sweeter, Love Is All's songs might evaporate like cotton candy.

Even when he's bumming, though, Walker still finds comfort in a good groove or a tart horn chart.

Here they dial down the Black Flag–derived chaos of "The Bronx (I)" and "(II)," unleashing sharper melodies and boogie rhythms that Axl Rose might've admired before getting cornrows.

Gimmicky yet compelling, the delicate second album by Miami's Postmarks presents 11 numerically titled covers in ascending order, plus Sesame Street's cute 'Pinball Number Count.'

At his most excitable ('No Direction'), yearning frontman Steve Schiltz aims for the stadium's back row, Bono-style, though the dogged pursuit of spiritual uplift generates more fatigue than enlightenment.

Despite refreshingly brief songs, frontman Fran Healy can't resist self-conscious vocal flourishes that insist he's imparting great truths (shades of Bono), and the bombastic arrangements encourage Andy Dunlop to uncork cheesy, stadium-seeking guitar riffs.

Up-tempo and uplifting, this largely self-produced record blurs distinctions between accessibility and avant-gardism.

Though sometimes courting sleepiness, the debut's barbershop harmonies, Hawaiian strumming, and lovesick melodies transform rock-club jadedness into an aesthetic fit for honeymoons, holidays, and other occasions where you savor small pleasures, even if they're quaintly recycled.

of whether the dance-punk grooves and elusive, histrionic hooks resonate, Thorpe has a point he's determined to make: Even the most sensitive fop can be a hormonal horndog.

With Gwen Stefani sidelined by motherhood, Canada's Dragonette fills the No Doubt void by walking a similar line between girly electro pop and boyish new wave.

Even as Intimacy gets sonically or lyrically precarious--'Zephyrus' recalls 'Jesus Walks,' for Christ's sake--it does so while reaching hard toward something exhilarating.

These trebly, trenchant Brits have truly gone pear-shaped.

QOTSA may be rock at the edge of the abyss, but Heart On vaults right over, taking flight on an updraft of woozy audacity and shuddering riffs.

Even if he never wins back the Interpol/Bright Eyes bystanders he lost with 2004's overly heavy, underachieving self-titled punt, Smith finally rewards longtime fans with a proper Cure album, not a quasi-solo-project facsimile.

It's not a radical departure--there's no 'Kid A' in their future--but rather an engaging sidestep for a band that does triumphantly normal better than almost anyone.

Whether struggling with sobriety or confronting her own meanness, Pink has never been less cool: She's hot-blooded throughout, and it suits both her pipes and a female pop genre that rarely embraces this much tangible pain.

Where Cox's Atlas Sound output is scattered and eclectic, Microcastle, Deerhunter's third album, is focused and consistent.

Mixing the lawlessness of Hank Williams with the Gypsy fervor of Gogol Bordello, the band's second album is a scrappy, vaguely deranged, country-punk mélange that goes down like an impeccably mixed mint julep: sweet until it burns.

Though he's unlikely to encounter much trouble selling these romantic conceits to his female-heavy fan base, some of the scenarios on John Legend's third studio album could be fresher

Like "Tiger," Cardinology is long on midtempo country-rock shuffles that sound comfortable with their own familiarity; Adams isn't straining to reinvent the Great Art of American Songwriting, and that allows you to focus on what he and the cardinals are actually playing, as opposed to what they're thinking about playing.

Ultimately, Just a Souvenir is the awesome, but hardly mind-bending, spectacle of an electronica wizard buying a fuzz box.

Alpinisms' sweeping, ethereal pop owes a stylistic debt to My Bloody Valentine and the Cocteau Twins, but the debut album by former Secret Machines guitarist Ben Curtis' new project reveals a range of influences and a sophisticated approach to arrangement that sets the trio well apart from less imaginative latter-day shoegazers.

Brooklyn's Crystal Stilts filter trembling surf guitar and tambourine shakes through echoing chambers of effects until their wistful, barely-there tunes seem to dramatically float out of murky, cavernous depths.

Love letters, brief smiles, a touch on the arm, friends, and pets abound; throughout, Russell poignantly captures and echoes life's ephemeral delights.

Thankfully, their debut album does little to clarify the group's intriguingly eclectic sound.

Reliably excellent but emotionally detached, the Sea and Cake's eighth album is of a piece with their first seven.

When the band wraps itself around singer Lizzie Bougatsos' singular shrieks, they ascend to vertiginous heights on 'Holy Communion' and 'Dust Storm,' creating something truly transformative.

When they stay focused and sweet (as on the sparingly orchestral 'Berlin Heart'), they soar. But when Lightburn adds spoken-word bits and überwanky guitar solos ('Lights Off'), ending with an 11-minute, church-inspired requiem ('Saviour'), you may be ready to follow his former band members out the door.

Damn Right Rebel Proud, typically, raises less convincing hell than plenty of current mainstream Nashville product.

Much of the record satirizes plastic surgery and oversexed macho men, but despite the ironic humor, there’s a compassion in the music that’s unexpected coming from a band best known for a Taco Bell–referencing novelty hit.

Singing en español, clear-voiced Andrea Echeverri ponders subjects like immigration ('Bandera') and pregnancy ('28'), projecting unflappable confidence.

Grainger's solo efforts are more restrained than DFA 1979's sweaty frenzy, and ultimately, his blues-frilled rock would be pretty pallid if not for the playfully sarcastic undercurrents.

Scattered predictability aside, AC/DC still sound strong and hungry 35 years on, as if they could pulverize riffs in perpetuity.

Favoring a bright, treble-heavy guitar attack, the group skew their arrangements in ways that feel more canny than contrived.

On album three, Keane trick out their pretty piano melodies with tasty synths ('The Lovers Are Losing'), booming rap beats ('Spiralling'), and fuzzy new-wave guitars ('You Haven’t Told Me Anything').

The result is her finest record since "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," the decade-old masterpiece by which her career will always be judged.

Well respected for sparse, plaintive bummer folk since his 2004 debut, LaMontagne gets a bit more expansive here, gently juking his earthy rasp with Stax-y horns, guitar twang, and lilting lady backup vocals.

On Pebble to a Pearl--an authoritative, refreshingly organic pop-funk manifesto featuring musicians who've played with Al Green and Stevie Wonder--the exhilaration of liberation literally screams from R&B workout 'Can't Please Everybody.'

Adding electronic gurgles to heavy, prog-rock power chords, The Secret Machines recalls Rush and Black Sabbath at one end of the sonic spectrum ('The Fire Is Waiting') and David Bowie’s spazzier, punk-era edge at the other ('Atomic Heels'). In between those far-flung atmospheric poles, the band proves they’re more than just the sum of their seamless influences.

Peace Queer includes an acoustic antiwar rant and a ghostly reading of Creedence’s 'Fortunate Son' (with Patty Griffin on backup vocals). But the high point is a ragged bar-band jam about the dissolution of the middle-class dream ('Stuck on the Corner [Prelude to a Heart Attack]').

Touching on elemental fears and desires, Changing of the Seasons rewards intimate listening--in the final verse of the title track, a lover’s embrace suddenly silences any thoughts of straying.

There’s still sunshine (check the gleefully voyeuristic 'Paper Planes'), but frequently it’s obscured by autumnal clouds.

Like the good postmodern thrashers they are, Gojira blend blast beats ('Adoration for None'), sludge stomp ('Yama's Messengers'), and death-and-doom riff spirals (take your pick) with unexpected quirks, like the solid minute of stick taps that open 'The Art of Dying' and the math rock of 'Toxic Garbage Island.'

The ballads tend to turn murky, but the rockers are terrifically drunken reveries.

Over inventive arrangements that feature more live instrumentation than on any other Streets album, Skinner gives maturity a fresh coat of meaning.