While Sean obviously lacks his mentor's star power or ambition, he shows more heart than he typically gets credit for.

This sort of alternate-universe intimacy with songs we've already come to love makes Versions a wild success, proving that something wemusic once coveted for its desolate nature can be just as warm and familiar when flipped into something else entirely.

The music might be prime kicking-back fare, but that doesn't mean Braids can't sneak some gentle urgency into the mix as well.

Pretty great for mindless pop-punk, in other words.

He's struggling to reconcile the unease of his past with the confusion of his present, but Doris proves that Earl's future is secure.

Overall, though, the absence of pretense does more good than harm here. By emphasizing his singing rather than the usual wailing walls of distortion, Segall expertly treads the fine line separating rockist classicism from lo-fi innovation.

There's nothing on Trap Lord to suggest Ferg will follow A$AP Rocky onto the pop charts, but it's a rewardingly dark and grounded listen.

Like Gigi herself, it is a work of perpetual self-invention, an extended state of becoming. Have pity on the inquisitory birds, because it's impossible to look away.

The Luca Brasi Story was more ambitious, but Stranger Than Fiction does moves Gates closer to a larger audience.

Most of the music is fiercely restrained, characterized by short songs, skeletal atmospheres, and performances that have a mechanistic, flatlined intensity. Bad? No, but stiff, and sapped of the dynamism the twosome seemed to come by so naturally in the past.

Superchunk clearly trust their music to hold up under all the heaviness of life's big questions, and trust us to hold up, too.

The album has a studied looseness that's never contrived, and it shows a poise and clarity of vision which her earlier efforts barely suggested

This is the album that Justin Timberlake is too famous to make in 2013, its musical scope and track lengths modest, its sexual appetite and commercial ambition immodest, its star willing to offer up whatever cheesy line, vocal acrobatic, pop hook or funk groove or electro flourish that it takes to keep you listening.

Each track bleeds into the next with seamless precision, borrowing each other's fantastical effects from both mid-century analog plug-ins and modern digital tricks.

This polite Americana mistakes solemnity for seriousness.

At its best, Home is a sumptuous, thrilling experience on a purely sonic level. There are absolutely zero boring moments here, and the details are often transcendent.

Humor and mirth best define this voracious multicultural outfit, no matter how many tunes are set in minor keys.

Body Music, the full-length debut from British duo AlunaGeorge, could have made an excellent EP.

Tennant and Lowe's rueful melodies and vocals dilute the euphoria. Classic Pet Shop Boys, in other words.

As clever as Fuck Buttons are at cobbling together unlikely juxtapositions, they're master builders when it comes to tension and release.

On record, though--and particularly this one, which presents churchy performances in mixes both realistic and surreal--these same Up With People tropes don't work as well, particularly with prolonged exposure, as inferior follow-ups to promising debuts by the Polyphonic Spree and I'm From Barcelona have proven.

Walk Through Exits Only might not be a comeback in the way we're used to hearing one, but damn if it doesn't feel like comeuppance.

This one is way, way, way better [than her last album], not least thanks to a quaint little ditty called "Body Party."

It's a lovely place that Soft Will fashions here, but it sounds hesitant about pulling you in, perhaps because its creators are secretly concerned that you'll realize you aren't really going anywhere.

The DJ's fleet-fingered precision and explosive, intimidating drum-machine attacks are a distinct form of performance art, and one that's hard to fully appreciate through headphones alone; Remixes is simply no substitute for his live act. But these tracks are still a crucial part of his identity.

The result has to feel like a studio adventure! Whereas Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories was lavishly rich, Smith’s treatment of his session players manages to flatten all human serendipity and rhythmic nuance.

Overall the young rapper's glorious flare of an introduction has not been brightening. His latest, Summer Knights continues this trend.

The melodies and rhythmic accents here hang together as decent hooks, if not poppy ones.