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.