His dark visions are overpowered by his colorful writing and pure humanity.

Attention to the smallest instrumental details and the finest points of every composition have become Interpol trademarks; more complex than its pop song structures might suggest, Our Love To Admire is well worth exploring.

The Return of Mr. Zone 6 is an album pared down to the elements Gucci knows best - sinister beats fueled by snare pellets and twisted, carnival-like synths, deadpanned prioritization of cash over women, and collaboration with a slew of Brick Squad compatriots and friends (we hear everyone from Birdman to Master P to Waka Flocka Flame, many times over).

Chrome Dreams II is effective despite the sonic clash because, on both the new material and the leftovers, the loud ('Spirit Road') and the soft (the soul ballad 'Ever After'), it’s unified by its call to give props to spirit and humanity, a sentiment that, whatever it’s wrapped in, never gets old.

The good news is that Why There Are Mountains is polished and offers some strong songwriting while still leaving the band enough room to grow into something better.

It’s more polished and sonically ambitious. But it’s not a major departure.

Their ability to re-create shrewd discordant pairings in a second set of simple pop songs and still leave fans uncertain as to whether the duo are cleverly cloying or cloyingly clever is what will keep listeners in suspense until the curtains have parted.

Horehound isn't White Stripes tea-party cutesy, and it's not Raconteurs good-times eclectic--it's nothing but riffs and 'tude all the way through.

Meric Long, vocalist/guitarist for San Francisco duo the Dodos, makes a lot of broad statements on the band's fourth studio album. Fortunately, the music fills in the blanks.

This New Jersey quartet is one well-oiled muscle, and they flex it to hypnotic effect for 40-plus minutes.

Here the band, with producer Dan Carey (Hot Chip, CSS) at their side, dip their big toe into electro-pop, Afrobeat (sorta), new-wave seizures, and all manner of groove that bespeak body-rockin' pleasures.

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.

In sacrificing weirdness for conformity, Cobra Juicy shows growth, but somewhat mugs the band of what made them so singular.

Thanks to Okkervil's chiming, handsome folk rock--and also to Erickson's improbably buoyant spirit--the music doesn't sound defeated or even especially vulnerable. True Love makes good on its title.

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.

For the most part an exercise in Prince-like electro-funk, full of squelchy keyboard fuzz and chicken-scratch guitar noise and absurdly complicated falsetto harmonies.

Aesop's preference for boring "live" beats tends to hit somewhere between the Roots ('Getaway Car') and Linkin Park ('None Shall Pass'), but that hardly matters: it's his delivery that commands the attention here.

Gloss Drop is another infectious, drug-induced carousel ride in which electric guitars sound like short-circuiting circus organs and drums punch through the mix like atom bombs--but there's a distinctly multi-cultural vibe here.

It’s Frank Black on his first real roll as a solo artist.

With synth tones straight outta Miami Vice and dreamy melodies that cut through the fog-machine haze, Plastic Beach is music for piloting your speedboat beyond the no-wake zone, or for looking back from the future with a sentimental affinity for the past.

Under the Skin’s tenderly whispered ruminations... are gripping little creations, full of weird acoustic-guitar riffs and uncomfortably intimate vocals and open revelations about the anxiety he feels in trying to reassert his creative identity at this late date.

Their third album sticks to the Neil-Young-meets-Gram-Parsons folk rock of their first two but finds Sykes and [Phil] Wandscher experimenting with rockier blues and psychedelia.

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

Hundreds of Lions marks her return to original material, but it’s clear that the time she spent doing songs by yesterday’s greats inspired her: this is her smartest, slyest set yet, with shapelier melodies, wittier wordplay, and more-adventurous arrangements.

As frontman Craig Finn tries singing instead of just reciting and the band hang tighter around their major-chord riffs, the music sounds older than ever, recalling beautiful-loser ’70s rock like Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland.”

If you’re not in the mood for it, Perkins’s uncut melancholy can be a lot to swallow. Still, this is one of the prettiest bummers around.

Although there's still a menacing pulse to be found, anything constituting traditional dubstep is largely forgone.