This album is infectious.

Glossy and palatable, but also decidedly sophisticated.

It’s just solid, classic Dolls, with all the swagger, muscle, righteous kitsch, and ballsy defiance you expect, plus some new twists.

So the first-listen impact has been lessened, but the growing affection ends up in the same place as always.

The group often stretch their net too wide for their own good. Rolling Blackouts is more indecisive mixtape than flowing album.

For a proper introduction, Cloud Nothings leaves much to be desired. But talk about highlights: if you can get through the sing-along chorus of "Should Have" without a big, dumb smile on your face, you might just be a heartless bastard after all.

On their debut, the young Beach Fossils separate themselves from the rest of the pack by coloring the ubiquitous surf-pop sound with a listlessness that makes them seem like weary veterans.

As Unknown Mortal Orchestra wears on, there is some loosening of the pop reins, ending the album on a wandering psychedelic journey reminiscent of Grizzly Bear. A nice trip indeed.

Think of it as rock-and-roll comfort food.

Chalk up at least some of this disconnect to Brendan O’Brien’s production, which is often so slicked down and smooshed together that it doesn’t just airbrush the band’s jagged edges, it sandblasts them.

It's a crucial listen and one of the most rewarding releases of 2012.

Every song here showcases Linkus's gift for pinpointing little benchmarks in hopelessness with brittle gestures of melody and ambiance. It's also another reminder of Danger Mouse's ability to whittle lean pop shivs from gnarly splinters.

The surgical-mask costumes help in that regard: coupled with their herky-jerky brain-scan riffs and malevolent aura, Clinic look more likely to perform torture surgery on your ass in some water-logged basement than give a concert.

You won’t care that it’s gleefully empty, shamelessly primitive, pre-rational, lo-fi. You’ll be too busy dancing.

Too many of the songs rely on a stilted, march-like rhythm that makes them sound formal and restrained, especially when paired with Newman's arch lyrical delivery.

Cosmically in tune and harmony-rich, they excel in presenting their colorful, kaleidoscopic view of the world.

Although the occasional inspired lyrical hook pokes through, all too often the need to match the amped-up production leads to generic blah in the words department.

The finished product is a cobbled-together dazzle that contorts your mouth into a 50-minute succession of grins and wows.

His inaugural gathering of bona-fide solo work summons an aura of full-blown tranquility.

The disc's six tracks clock in at less than 40 minutes, so there isn't really time to screw things up on a royal scale, making Grace/Confusion a fine listen.

[Their] strange blend of influences can be fascinating... but Instinct - clocking in at a bloated 14 tracks and 56 total minutes - runs out of gas way before reaching the finish line.

It isn't new indie-rock territory, and spring is certainly an odd time to release such a puzzling (and puzzled) record, but I couldn't stop listening to it.

This is a trick the band deploy again and again, using darkness of tone and lyrical bent as a foil for their almost overbearingly ebullient trill.

Their loping AM-radio psychedelia--like later Stereolab or lighter Dungen--engages with enough noise (if not complex rhythms) to keep the band out of mawkish territory.

Welcome Oblivion tracks like techno-folk haunter "Ice Age" and the doom-pop jaunt "How Long?" make uncredited cameo appearances in your nightmares until you go insane and eat your own hands.

Dark, spry pop that’s thick with synths and noir guitars and indebted to OMD, Roxy Music, the Human League, and “Let’s Go to Bed”–era Cure.

Yet if the title is straightforward, the music often isn’t, with LaVette teasing out new emotional details from songs that seemed to have given up all their secrets decades ago.

Ear Drum doesn’t reach the highs of that far more ambitious and sprawling album ["Train of Thought"], but it’s a welcome return to form.

The continuous hitmaking of Present the Paisley Reich might be gone forever, but Dancer Equired offers up enough catchy pop jams to warrant a listen.

The writing is as crisp as the playing, ornate but without added contrivance, a credit to producer Joe Henry. A tuneful 10-song novel.

Pollard has long been in the business of writing songs, but here he seems invigorated; and for the first time in a long while, his business is mixed with pleasure.

No, Virginia ranks with Elvis Costello’s "Taking Liberties" as a B-sides/leftovers album that turns out to be more fun and more revealing than a thought-out official release.

Whereas some attempts to hybridize indie rock and electronic music are forced or awkward, Miike Snow gets its right by paying as much attention to their uncluttered celestial melodies as they do to their beats.

The results unfold like a well-plotted novel.

There is a place in this world (Pottery Barn maybe, or a future Eddie Murphy romantic comedy) for the R(ap)&B cocktail party that is Finding Forever.

Their new project has much of the same visceral energy of their old gig, but Mi Ami present it in a much more harmonious, affirming manner.

The thread that tethers I'm Gay to the rest of Lil B's immense, sprawling catalogue is his earnest loyalty to the central tenets of the "based" movement: love and positivity in the face of adversity.

Those vocal harmonies are used to good effect in the blue-eyed-soul tune 'Alaska.' But 'Die Die Die,' a slow and raggedy piece of psychedelia complete with funereal organ but thrown askew by out-of-place handclaps, is far too taken in by its own gloom.

The first comeback album in history by an iconic rock act that stands up against anything else on the shelves today.... This is the mighty Van Halen at their best.

I can feel my IQ slipping a few notches with the passage of each track on this disc, and gloriously so: it takes brains and balls to make pop this smart sound so dumb.

Urban has the market wisdom to balance his artistic efforts with assembly-line Nashville pop-chart fodder.

For a densely layered, expertly produced dance-rock album, this second full-length from British three-piece Friendly Fires is perplexingly bland.

Although they love drama, AFI never abandon believability here. Which means the arena-rock trappings don’t make the music feel fake -- they just make it feel more exciting than life.

Alpers has a knack like few others for spinning our over-interconnected loneliness into something more like a blissful collective daydream.

His simple songs come closer to eclipsing their cliches and becoming classics when they aren't buttered with dobro and pedal-steel arrangements that sound like afterthoughts. But when you're allowed to get close to the raw artist, you witness something truly special.

Having graduated from knuckleheaded threats to a more hardened ghetto perspective that sometimes blossoms into tender complexity, Freeway sounds at home, particularly over the sweetly weeping keyboard loop that grounds 'Reppin’ the Streets,' the album’s best track.

It’s brimming with curious melodies (like the darkly cute skews of the title track), rich poetic detail (as lush as the orange carpet in '16A'), and a truly generous spirit (you can listen to the whole damn thing over and over).

Hamilton attempts to resuscitate it with his warm voice, but the record plods on with one mid-tempo nodder after another.

While mostly a California creation, Still Living echoes the sounds reverberating across the Pacific from New Zealand - think '80s/'90s bands like the Chills and the 3Ds, whose splashy reverb tanks were almost louder than their amps ("Call Me"). Or even Galaxie 500, whose Dean Wareham is a native Zealander ("Bradley").

The songs on this debut album are lethargic, syrupy, and sinister, with the rough-edged peaks of a maxed-out mix.

Not everything is new on Everything Is New, this young London singer's sophomore set, but enough is to make you wonder what on earth persuaded Jack Penate to ditch the ample charms of his terrific debut.

It may be just another platter of product from this Richmond, Virginia, crew, fit for mosh pit incitements, but it's also a harrowing and hypnotic package of wound-up, meticulously arranged aggro-bombs by a veteran team of low-end hatemongers.

The indie-leaning direction of the album suggests that the Canadian singer-songwriter is coming into her own.

Old-school fans may roll their eyes at this forward throwback, yet whatever conspicuous mode he chooses to work in, Merritt's songwriting remains conspicuously remarkable.

His music always offers an emotional complexity to mirror its melodic sophistication.

Listening to the new MGMT album requires similar preparations to those for a prolonged psychedelic experience: you may want to leave some time in your daybook for unexpected detours, and it'd be wise to erase previous experiences from your mind for fear that heightened expectations may not be met and mass bummerage will ensue.

These 11 tunes deliver both the thematic and the sonic hugeness we expect from U2; you only have to proceed about 80 seconds into the opening title track before the Edge is spraying his trademark guitar sparks everywhere and Bono is observing that infinity is a great place to start.

Ferry is as cool and debonair as ever on his first collection of new material in eight years.

Elsewhere we get lots of the usual earthquake bass and keening synth arpeggios and staccato horns, and, of course, Jeezy’s hypnotically commanding flow, all of it amounting to one of the hardest mainstream rap albums in years.

It lacks the playfulness of the early Faust records, where the band's experiments with jazz, folk, and raunchy rock and roll were coated with acceptable degrees of avant-garde theatricality.

Only a music fan obsessed with the rules of authenticity and the requirements for lyrical profundity could find fault with the 11 odes to overload that make up Hot Mess.

Spirit If . . . takes plenty of time to revel in the beauty of its surfaces.

A no-frills, consistently engaging album with heart - and hooks - to spare.

F*ck Hurricane Irene - Hurricane Grace is this year's force to be reckoned with.

Despite all these lyrical dalliances, there's one of the best house albums of the year somewhere in these songs--you just have to agree to their terms.

Special note to the freakazoids who think "Starships" killed hip-hop: the rapper who rhymes "fri-vo-lous" with "po-ly-ga-mist" is X-Acto sharp as ever.

These songs (which include settings of three Shakespeare sonnets) are so well-tempered with raw, emotional moments that the album never seems dour or austere. On the contrary, this is one of his most personal, sanguine releases.

Heart of My Own amplifies guarded things, a tuneful prototype of new-century folk intent on having its voice heard.

It's infectious, and though the album is heavy in inspirational debt, Passive's highs are tantalizing enough to lure you to come for a bright-eyed joyride.

Visitations finds Clinic four albums into their career, but they launch each new tune with the unhinged spirit of a band who are just discovering the power of rock.

There are rare glimmers here, but maturity sure is sobering.

Fascinating speed-bumps aside, it's a mission still very much accomplished.

Women + Country sets the standard for new-century conformist rock--a genre far less boring than that phrase might suggest.

At the end, after his inevitable untimely death, all anyone will care about will be the stately grandeur of the opening (and closing) music coupled with the star’s eternal blank stare: unknowable, unfathomable, and ultimately tragic. We’ll have to wait for the movie; fortunately the soundtrack is already here.

Seven great tunes... and... three dull ones.

Normal Happiness... could be one of his most satisfying sets.

It’s a low, slow groove that might be coming out of the bodies of the musicians as much as their instruments--echoey, held back even at its most intense, every note sung or played with a determination not to force anything.

As a wholly serious project, Warp Riders is self-indulgent and only passable.

Very few of their melodies go anywhere memorable, and when they do, they never go anywhere else. ("Courage" plays like one long mid-tempo drone.)

It's a minimalist approach that started on the Soft Moon's outstanding 2010 self-titled debut full-length, and continues here with each composition taking on an overall instrumental feel despite the occasional presence of lyrical accompaniment.

For anyone bored of being bored of being bored, strap this one on and ride away.

The year's most outstanding rock album.

Although some may find the noisy rambunctiousness and jarring bursts offputting, Hill imbues Straits with an irresistible playfulness, and his talents as a drummer (and a frontman) will leave listeners dumbstruck.

It's one of 2011's finest pop records: 10 tracks of dreamy, weirdo hi-fi pop that grooves, sparkles, and hums with clipped beats and smooth drums.

Frontman Ross Flournoy and his mates kick up a ramshackle jangle-pop racket that gets its energy from always sounding as if it were on the verge of falling apart.

Song of the Pearl may not be full of surprises, but it provides a fresh trip through familiar territory that's more than idle nostalgia.

Aside from the highlights, though, other cuts here fall short of album quality, especially the last three selections, which are paint-by-number displays of chops and over-seriousness.

In a sense, the veil is lifted ever-so-slightly with this new [album]: although they still wump you with weird on sonic gauntlets like "Molochwalker" and the title track, they also hit on some great choruses and comprehensible songcraft that, unlike most of their earlier work, is commendable for something other than the effort it took to create it.

Like everything Eno touches, the album is riddled with baffling and stimulating forays into unexpected territories.

These straight pop tunes are great by themselves, but after slogging through the symphonic sludge, you’re likely to find The Resistance a jumbled, forgettable tracklist.

There’s an urban-informed edge to much of the disc.

Minimalist guitar work (it brings to mind the tonic-based, repetitive structures of later Don Caballero), tape-distressed drums, and banged metal work together to reduce the album's throwback feel and give an edge to the sing-alongs. Too often, however, the band either let these sounds overwhelm the songs or cobble them into throw-away vignettes that interrupt the otherwise drifting cadences.

It's not as challenging as previous Ducktails recordings, but a pleasant pop record nonetheless, and the band's most universally accessible yet.

Kozelek's guitar playing is predictably tremendous, what with all those incessant triads and nervous arpeggios. But at 17(!) tracks, many of them floundering for melody and meaning, this is the first SKM release to spin its wheels.

He sounds like the dude from Blink-182 - just another suburban punk whining about this and that.

On occasion, Noonan sets his sights on highbrow quarry, as in 'Reacharound,' which could pass for some unreleased Radiohead circa The Bends. But he’s at his best when he’s emphasizing accessibility over artiness.

It's arguably Mercer's and the Shins' most satisfying achievement.

At their best, though, Handsome Furs do for the disaffected what the Postal Service did for sentimental Death Cab cuties: they deliver more of something not quite the same.