Texas Rose is moody and layered, and Raposa is adept at creating a world that is deep, enveloping, and enticing.

Although his results can be flimsy, when his creations get legs under them, Terra is the bomb.

Galactic Melt is entertaining in a novelty sort of way, but the vintage (or vintage-sounding) equipment produces such over-the-top sonics that it sinks the record, unless you're super starved for some already-been-done nostalgia.

Beware and Be Grateful's main flaw: an occasional quirk overload.

No bad songs, but any other record they've made is better.

These 11 new songs represent some of the strongest material of their career.

It's never been easy sticking with Quasi through all their quality-control ups and downs, but American Gong lets bygones be bygones, fitting their sharp wits and bruised hearts into a sound powerful enough to contain them.

That patented caterwaul is in fine form.

One Second of Love is artfully crafted.

Less polished than its predecessor, 2009's Fantasies, Synthetica brings all the varied influences and styles together in perfect synchronization.

For some, this could be unlistenable; for others, it will simply come off like the natural product of glitch, shoegaze (to which Bundick certainly owes his chord palette), lo-fi, and psych.

The result is some kind of cosmic machine music, reflecting not just a stoner’s world of internalized minimalist headbanging but an entire universe of culture, texture, and possibility.

GaGa ups the ante in terms of catchy songwriting and sheer high-in-the-club-banging-to-the-beat abandon.

Recorded with his working band the Blokes, the album isn’t without its misfires (the obvious 'The Johnny Carcinogenic Show'), but it is Bragg’s most assured statement since hooking up with Wilco a decade ago to give life to lost Woody Guthrie lyrics.

Like the most artistically successful EPs (Magical Mystery Tour, the Who's surf-rockers, the Beta Band's glory-days output), these do the job without overstaying their welcomes.

As you might have guessed, nobody but TSOOL completists (and Mojo subscribers) needs all this stuff. Yet within Communion's overload lurk a handful of neo-Nuggets nuggets.

There’s something oddly accessible about the mess the duo make on Why Bother?

Zoo is a fine tribute to [often-compared band]Wire's heavier side, alternating between powerful, lumbering riffs and manic splatters of guitar noise.

Past Time was mostly content to present Grass Widow's aesthetic--cooing, ethereal gang vocals, sinewy guitars, a general state of breeziness--as opposed to Internal Logic, where those things are part of far more memorable songs.

It's nothing new, sure, but it's proof that mining from the past is a surefire way to keep things sounding familiar yet fresh.

Some bands make a third album; others make something more like a third refinement of "the album." This feels like the (charmed) latter.

The 11 songs here clock in at a tidy 37 minutes--plenty of time to flavor the straight-ahead rock jolts with spaced-out country-rock ballads and pop-flavored rave-up replete with a horn section.

True, Camu Tao hadn't mastered the art of songwriting: verses and choruses abound, whereas bridges are conspicuously absent. But even half-built tracks like "Bird Flu" and "Intervention" are proof that he could create engaging and catchy hooks alongside vocals that matched his new palette without diluting the hip-hop aesthetic. Such songs are tantalizing examples of unrealized potential--a sad indication of what could have been.

So if Thr33 Ringz fails to shock, consider also that it fails to disappoint.

CD2’s smoking live versions are where AC/DC defend their reputation as a well-oiled machine, as oiled up as the jugtastic fembots that permeate the music’s hyper-hetero fantasia. And the band’s testicle-laden metaphorical fodder is brought to life on the DVD’s music videos.

The Ohio trio took their time with Feel Anything, arriving at this more focused, albeit less celestial, effort.

Together, the group's fifth record, is explosive and infectious yet tight and glossy, a far cry from the proverbial seat-of-the-pants audacity of their 2000 debut, Mass Romantic.

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.