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.