At a conservative 35 minutes, there’s little fluff. Still, some songs feel longer than they are and the sheer abundance of words is sporadically exaggerated and tiresome.

You may wish the songs were a little tougher (the Wilco frontman might have spread himself too thin writing the entire album), but Tweedy’s words preach without sounding overly preachy. The backing musicians effortlessly find a funky/soulful groove and even at low boil, Mavis Staples remains a force of nature.

At times this slick party vibe sounds like Hall & Oates at their least soulful, which is to say the music has an inevitability to it that initially feels fresh, but starts to wear thin when it’s clear the entire album is cut from the same glitzy cloth.

Even though their vocals aren’t always suited to each other, this set of mostly covers (some previously recorded by the participants), works relatively well, as long as you’re not expecting too much.

Boy in a Well remains a missed opportunity for The Yawpers to raise their lyrical game, one that could easily have been rectified with more attention to packaging and explanatory details that are mysteriously and frustratingly MIA.

Ultimately, Lukas is carrying on Willie’s tradition, pushing the outlaw boundaries his famous father established in the ’70s and proving that the musical apple truly does not fall far from the tree.

The optimism of Lust For Life is a pleasant surprise, though the album is still painted in the same shades as Del Rey’s previous releases. At times it’s some of her best material, but it seems like a record best experienced in pieces than as a proper whole.

With a two-pack-a-day voice that combines the hard boiled/craggy rectitude of Tony Joe White, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson and especially Waylon Jennings, anything Walls touches feels authentic and lived-in.

Even though this is unlikely to appeal to hard core Black Keys or Arcs fans, the songwriting effort (the sweet, sensitive “Never In My Wildest Dreams” could have come from Burt Bacharach’s pen) and detailed creativity of the arrangements is impressive.

It’s far from prime Rundgren and there’s little doubt that most of this would sound better with a full band instead of Rundgren’s “I’ll do it alone and save some money” keyboard dominated music.

It’s hard to follow any Ry Cooder assisted act, but Outlaw coalesces around his own, more intimate sound. We can always use an honest, unpretentious Sunday morning album to enhance the usually easygoing mood, and for those moments Sam Outlaw’s unassumingly enjoyable Tenderheart hits the mark.

In Postcards Pieta Brown has created a trip through her most personal and revealing moments with an honesty and confidence most wouldn’t even attempt.

It’s an impressive start to what seems to be a promising career for Jay Som, an artist ready for the next step to build atop this remarkable and often striking self-constructed first release.

There’s plenty going on and most is worth hearing even if Milia’s artiness occasionally gets in his way.

While others in the Americana field get stuck in a groove, that will never be a problem with the Sadies and Northern Passages is a worthy entry in the notable catalog of a now-veteran act who refuse to be pigeonholed.

While we give Young a pass for getting new music out, and worthwhile moments are scattered throughout these 10 tunes (that don’t break 40 minutes), just as often you’ll lunge for the track-skip button in exasperation of hearing a major talent and unquestioned cultural icon who has spread himself too thin.

In other words, if you’re looking for a good time disc to get your party started, you could do worse than slapping this on, turning up the volume and letting Snider and his pals kick start the fun.

And so it goes for nearly 40 minutes. Clearly, this is not easy listening, but neither is it impenetrable either. Rather, Oberst’s naked presentation and generally obtuse concepts feel genuine and are worth mulling over for a deeper understanding of his expressive and largely enticing thoughts.

Unless you are a White fanatic, the few hard to find selections generally aren’t compelling enough to purchase lots of songs easy to obtain. That makes this an interesting but hardly essential stop-gap release until White’s next official project.

Melodies take longer to reveal themselves and choruses don’t have the natural hooks Loveless has crafted before. Which just means you’ll need to spend additional time exploring the songs, mulling them over, absorbing the lyrics and letting their more elusive charms sink in.

Typical of these compilations, some interpretations work better than others.

It may not be the Tiger Army fans were expecting or hoping for, but if you close your eyes, it will transport you back to a time when men smoked unfiltered cigarettes and women in frilly party dresses and pony tails swooned over them.

The full-band electric tracks have many intriguing elements, including a vibe that captures the wonder of Crazy Horse while infusing that chunka-chunka sound with skittery guitar riffs and other young-blood input. But the new-era tunes tend to be marred by seriously clunky lyrics.

The end product is an incoherent jumble of occasionally pleasant soft folk with mind-numbingly aimless pieces that seem arbitrarily constructed with little direction or focus.

It’s hard to imagine that after a few spins, most won’t file this with Williams’ other similarly styled albums that, even with his distinctively wacked-out approach, are starting to sound routine, if not flat out lazy.

Taken individually, the songs resonate better. But lumped together the effect is claustrophobic and cheerless.

Even with the slight stench of commercialism tainting this release, and some sub-par material Good Times! exudes enough, well, good times to capture what made the Monkees so much better than their teeny-bopper peers and maintained a dedicated fan base for five decades. If this is their final recorded bow, at least they’ll go out in style.

Lyrically, the concepts are obtuse and diffuse, but with all the effort Little Scream and co-producer/multi-instrumentalist Richard Reed put into the soundscape, it’s likely there are some intriguing concepts here, if you can untangle them.