Stone Rollin's rhythm-and-blues revival can't obscure Saadiq's songwriting talents.

Is the entire thing about 20 minutes too long? Probably. But the obvious lack of outside meddling proves that Tyler's auteur status remains intact. He is, in the parlance of our times, still swaggin'. Now maybe he can get to work on winning that Grammy.

Gang Gang Dance are back to testing boundaries. For them, it's a return to the future.

Compared to the band's clever early hits, the songwriting too often lapses into clunkiness.

A quick dip into glitch seems like a novice move, but all that slide guitar and glockenspiel give Sea of Bees a seasoned sorrow.

Much of the rest recalls '90s rave and jungle at its most shamelessly glossy.

The playing is deceptively forceful, and the songs cut surprisingly deep.

Musically, the hooks are softer, the arrangements more ambitious, and 1960s British psychedelic folk (Fairport Convention, Vashti Bunyan, Pentangle) a far more palpable influence than the Americana that fueled the band's 2008 debut.

Lyrically, he's back to his old tricks--shitting on haters, shouting out himself, somehow rhyming "orange" and having "diamonds like kablooie."

On their second album, this Aussie duo's buzzy guitar pop is more hyper and gripping than ever, as she breathlessly spews dramatic tales that have the immediacy of crazed Twitter posts.

Whether he's drunk on optimism or writhing in psychic pain, his relentless quest for enlightenment is gripping and inspiring.

Although frontman Mikel Jollet still falls on life's thorns, the band's second album supports his weighty themes with more instrumental muscle.

T-Bone Burnett's understated production suggests an aqueous atmosphere, with a few actual sea shanties.

While occasionally meandering or drifting into tempests of digital noise, Herren focuses on a path of rapturous melancholy.

Unfortunately, those songs are slight, unfocused things.

The songs are more consistent, too, flashing a certain lyrical swagger, careening from terrific sex to celebratory violence to uncomfortable cultural realities.

Her street-smart squeak and plastic-fantastic perspective are undimmed, now buoyed by a heartfelt bene-ficence.

Among those still cranking out shambolic odes to the suburban bored, these reformed shitgazers rule.

Whether driving a military tank through Glastonbury or recording a synth-pop tribute to playboy '80s auto mogul John Delorean, Super Furry Animals' frontman makes the gimmicky sublime.

With subtle sonic shifts (such as chanting on the almost-poppy "Trembling Hands"), the songs are reliably dynamic, turning hushed beats and lightly scratched guitar into overwhelming drama.

Coffey is the star, and on tracks like "Plutonius" and "Space Traveller," his monstrously psychedelic groove still kills.

Wit's End is even more hushed and sluggish than 2009's Catacombs, leaving lighter Dylanesque fare for depressive Leonard Cohen depths.

The songs appear to take chances--sweeping chord changes, symphonic progressions, darts into electronic sound--but there's little at stake.

His beat-poet spiel is more character-actorly than ever, but hyphenated-man is also more accessible than you'd think, thanks to Watt's skittery bass lines.

If Diane's songs are more accessible, they're still not easy, creating the Inception-like sensation of wandering around in someone's overheated brain, where urgency and a lack of clarity intertwine to disorienting effect.

Blankly drawn out, they are as unlike expressive human speech as anything in rock.

Chopped gives a thrilling, real-time glimpse into one of indie's true adventurers creating her legacy on the fly.

From the stark black-and-white artwork to the sounds within, Panda Bear's fourth album scales back, proffering succinctness rather than sprawl, exchanging samplers for sequencers, in favor of added warmth and intimacy.