In the past, the singer's relied on frayed musical quirks to add her own element of weird, but Mug Museum remains delightfully off-kilter without resorting to weird for weird's sake.

His relapses into techno abuse are few here, and even in those clubbier depths, there's a thoughtfulness under it, building on the dreamier visions of Andorra.

Gold sprawls but it rarely meanders, all the while signaling Adams' rite of passage from alt.country bad boy to Left Coast post-folkie.

End still brims with hope and promise, no more so than on "Moving On," with its beaming synths and stadium drums, and "Loved Ones," which builds atop an extended piano interlude. End might not be a breakthrough, but it doesn't have to be.

Supplying a few impeccably recorded onstage rockers, $10 Cowboy slots like an exploratory studio in-betweener among Crockett’s comprehensive catalog.

Musically, it's as diverse as anything the band has ever done, smoothly vacillating between forceful beats and heady grooves.

The Physical World proves that not only is 2004 just far back enough to merit nostalgia, but that this return opens our first portal back.

The strategically elusive songwriting and well-curated nostalgia quotient are almost enough to make disconnectedness sound fun.

"Last One Goes the Hope" buoys the middle third atop the bar, placeholder for acousti-punk tango "In the Meantime in Pernambuco," new greatest gauntlet. Penultimate "Break the Spell" doesn't.

Master of My Make-Believe takes a more subtle approach than its predecessor.

Below the Pink Pony--a tasty tangent for all involved.

New second guitarist Ed Rodriguez adds a nice sheen to John Dietrich's low end, drummer Greg Saunier's maniacal playing is its most metered yet, and singer Satomi Matsuzaki's singing and lyrics have matured.

Toward the end, the gentle folk trot through mountain passes, creeks, and farms starts to get tedious, but Diane has a stellar voice that would fit in Nashville, North Carolina, or Nevada City.

Second LP Warpaint stirs, stews, beats, and swells far more amniotic, evoking the seminal psych greeting, ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space.

Now You Know is most definitely a departure, but the source is completely, wonderfully recognizable.

The Fall offers many new sides to Jones while remaining comfortably close to the jazz diva many adore.

The cinder and smoke (and mirrors) that coats the rest makes Pleasure seem twice removed, but it's an insular listen, well-suited for personal reverie or a peyote trip at Devil's Waterhole in Inks Lake.

It won't get your blood pumping, but the dusky vibes are markedly idiosyncratic for a crowded landscape.

Though his father, Steve Earle, once vowed to climb on Dylan's coffee table to champion the late Townes Van Zandt, the next generation two-steps through such a musical minefield and turns out a winner with his Bloodshot Records debut, The Good Life.

"Bill Murray" and "Never Going Home" truly drop the screen for the vocalists, both as sparse as Phantogram will venture, and still entrancing.

Torche's 2008 master class, second album Meanderthal, began at prog metal and closed as a mind-blowing stoner maelstrom. Harmonicraft polishes that sonic Darwinism into tight, melodic, mosh pits.

The seductive warble of Cambodian-born singer Chhom Nimol converts this psychedelic canvas into high art as she sways effortlessly between English and her native Khmer.

Hynes creates a jazzy respite for the marginalized by brimming Negro Swan with horns, synth, and guitar even if only for an hour.

Shying away from lo-fi, Dum Dum Girls still deliver perfectly spare noise rock ("I Got Nothing"), but they're best somewhere in between.

Gillian Welch returns after an eight-year drought with fifth LP The Harrow & the Harvest, an album sown with dry desperation.

Any way you slice it, the Wu is still coming through.

Self-aware and refined, fifth album Last Place--the first in 11 years--is astonishingly solid.

Led by sturdy guitar work from Jeremy Lynn Woodall, Shaver's songs continue to shine in spiritual and spunky ways.

The first battle cry on this best-of won't prepare non-Rammsteinians for the cabaret bombast that follows.

With Kasher's howl aging into a gritty melodic power, Cursive keeps its stride without compromising.

It's tempting to knock Lidell for being too derivative of Wonder and Donny Hathaway or for simply being the latest in a never-ending line of Brits mimicking the sound of Soulsville, but why bust up a party that's this much fun?

Her third full-length Tall Tall Shadow undulates between extremes, too, rolling radio-ready adult alternative and acoustic traditionalism.

The duo's "Ruby Tuesday" cover slides rough, understated, but their take on "You Were on My Mind" hits a high note.

Robert Plant's pilgrimages to the Deep South led him to Nashville for Raising Sand, an imaginative, seductive collaboration with bluegrass goddess Alison Krauss that explores the desolate valleys between his Delta blues and her Appalachian folk.

Despite the time off and lineup shake-ups, album No. 6 bears all the hallmarks of the band's 15-year career.

If the band's found inventive ways to stretch out its melodies, lad-in-chief Jon Fratelli delivers best on soused songs illuminating how love has gone wrong. Party on.

Opener 'Bells of Creation (Machete Mix)' slowly builds from a single piano note to a cathartic wall of sound, a newfound streak of optimism underscoring Conrad Keely's lyricism. The celebratory spirit carries over to the title track, a jovial romp of baroque pop, and the more ornate 'Inland Sea,' balancing progressive movements and post-rock guitar.

The three-guitar interplay, moderated by bassist Mark Ibold and Steve Shelley on drums, is confident if briefly indulgent ('Walkin Blue'), but Sonic Youth reigns in those tendencies for the most part, making The Eternal its most straightforward album yet.

While the material may not translate terribly well into the live milieu, this debut is the perfect accompaniment for an intimate evening spent at home with candles and wine.

Following a David Cronenberg-style instrumental intro that whets the appetite for straight-to-video gore, The Fatal Feast flails forward with the professional bounty hunter creed "Repossession."

Morrison's first collection of originals in longer than most of us can remember relies on a characteristic combo of jazz phrasing and bluesy riffs that should please die-hards and maybe bring in a few latter-day converts.

The rest is more of what fans have come to expect: entertaining stories told with heart and Southern rock brawn. For them, each DBT release is a Big To-Do.

If the post-punk revival needs a poster child, Shame is a good choice.

Where its predecessor corralled modern versions of The Canterbury Tales that the band's foxhunting moniker continues to evoke, Pecknold's Helplessness relies on a suitelike flow in the absence of greatest hits.

On Wide Awake!, Parquet Courts uses punk mood swings and Gang of Four-style vocal barking to camouflage some of the prettiest songwriting of their career.

The Cameroonian New York dweller threads a singular narrative obsessed with the singer's sense of place, or lack thereof.

The Union should've been a Leon Russell album produced by Elton John and titled The Confederacy.

The sad thing about Brainwashed is that for the first time in as long as one can remember, it leaves the listener with high hopes for what Harrison would have done next.

Uh Huh Her is a lesson in contentment, anger, disappointment, independence – seductive psychosis.

Hints of Michael Jackson's melodic moonwalking lace in the type of hip-hop ennui that will appeal to fans of Solange's A Seat at the Table, plus a sexy swagger of feminist liberation that screams 2018.

Apocryphon stomps with familiar, even comforting, satisfaction.

Deschanel's voice inhabits so many chanteuses that she never reveals her own, save perhaps for unadorned closer 'Swing Low Sweet Chariot,' and at times even threatens a theatrical kitsch (especially the Hawaiian-cowpoke arrangement of the Beatles' 'I Should Have Known Better'), but Volume One is utterly enveloping in its charm.

The band's Interscope debut, $O$, siphons waste-product off Eminem's vulgar Slim Shady-era, the global grime of M.I.A., and Lady Gaga's shocking performance art, injected with the catchiness of a Dr. Evil parody. The production's no joke, though.

There's a seductive quality to the simple yet sophisticated and intimate ambience Jones creates with this music.

On third full-length Dear Science, the Brooklynites have turned a corner, safe in the knowledge they can pen a good pop song. Not everything works, of course.

Johnson approached these nine songs from a position of discomfort, writing in isolation on his least familiar instrument, bass. Candidate Waltz therefore doesn't rip, but rather pulses.

Seventy-three crack-in-the-earth's-crust minutes liquefy into the same basic miasma as the sophomore LP that inspired them, yet more streamlined, less apt to wander into the ambient dead zones like "Caviglia," a problematic disconnection of the disc's overall forward thrust.

"Save Us" could be a Strokes twister, while its LP bookend, closer "Road," summons no less than Blue Öyster Cult.

Negotiations develops spaciously, expanding with every song until it becomes enveloping.

Vienna-based English producer/songwriter Christopher Taylor breathes more life into his glitch-filled indie R&B on strong sophomore full-length Rennen.

The San Francisco-based duo's second album together hews closely to the dream pop/shoegaze formula.

Sergeant blows glittering guitar lines like glass, while McCulloch overflows the vase with black roses.

Lyrically naive at times ("Rock and Roll Forever"), guitarist and singer Parker Gispert locks his strum and wail to the chunk-a-funk drums of Julian Dorio to make Whigs rock worth hearing.

As 34 minutes advance, songs get longer and less interesting ('Sing for the Submarine'), but "Horse to Water" stomps, and 'I'm Gonna DJ' ("at the end of the world") doesn't decelerate.

At this point, homage is almost expected of the Keys, but in doing so, the band is starting to dilute the "Heavy Soul" and Thickfreakness of their earlier material, as well.

Maines makes each track her own, Patty Griffin's "Silver Bells" as pointed as any Dixie Chicks tune, but we're hungry for her rough-and-tumble songs.

More Parts Per Million revels in distorted, lo-fi counterintuitiveness to the point where it becomes a fifth member of the band.

Tucson is less a linear narrative and more a collection of songs with a thematic thread and consistent atmosphere.

This is mellow, ambient electronica that takes its time in getting where it's going, and rewards patient listeners.

The Lone Bellow explores the tensions inherent to love and its unpredictable swings from high to low, sublime to greasy.

The alto saxophonist's reptilian coils of brass all but sprout wings on Snakeoil's six songs in 68 minutes, and the piano, drums, and clarinet/bass clarinet team with a Darwinian tension.

He's still a little corny in parts, but it's outweighed by the genuinely sincere.

Safe-sex ed for Ivy Leaguers.

In the seemingly throwaway Tex-Mex bump and grind of "Baby Girl" resides the heart of Rockpango, low-rider rock as eternal as quitting time, while Henry's steel sway and Austin's Tosca String Quartet on "Change the World" pave the way for Jojo's flawless vocals, a rich wood grain of cantina soul that glides into the guitarist's fiery detailing.

Hung at Heart opens with the bright, jangly "Someday" before sliding into this whirly, reverberated abyss that bottoms out with the disorienting "It's No Use," which sounds like bad mescaline.

Free All Angels is awfully consistent in its ardent desire to make your ears ring.

Streetcore isn't exactly London Calling, but with his sweet, ragged voice sounding as strident as ever, Strummer improves on such hit-and-miss affairs as 1999's Rock Art and the X-Ray Style.

The Lansing, Mich., trio's third album seethes with warm tube amp crunch, but hints of transistor pop aspiration abound, with the overall mood of Giant Orange vacillating between wistful and resolute.

With material this naked, a stumble or two is expected, but Seeing Things possesses enough newfound emotion to make even Bob Dylan proud.

The missing link between Murder Ballads and Boatman's Call.

Wolf's Law swings as hard as The Big Roar, the difference being the aim. Regardless, it's a blast to blow out your speakers with.

Instead of ebullience, the disc finds footing in the hard lessons of romantic realism.

Lavigne's punk-lite cheerleader chic could well be tweens' first tantalizing steps down the primrose path to Patti Smith.

It's all fog machines and mirrors, with heavy synth riffs and deep motorik grooves that loop ad infinitum.

Though not as readily exciting as "Alopecia," Eskimo Snow is more accessible without compromising.

Nom de musique of Julie Ann Baenziger, her Sea of Bees diffuses California pop by turns dreamy and atmospheric – folky – and perhaps even a bit precious.

Like a strawberry cupcake covered in Szechuan pepper, A Place To Bury Strangers finds the sweet spot by ripping its way through in Onwards to the Wall.

Though Poison is uneven, with all the warmth of a winter night, Faithfull's rasp and limited vocal range are stylish enough to carry her through.

Ponys sound like they're having a nice enough time, albeit with a lip-biting determination not to let things boil over.

Working on an epic, operatic canvas, Foster and his bandmates hide the spinach of existential angst into sweetly binge-worthy dance pop.

The Love Is Hell discs are far more dense and dark, making the songs a fun challenge to crack open, though it isn't difficult to determine what a no-brainer it must have been for Lost Highway to favor the brilliant Roll over the more spotty Hell discs. [Review applies to both EPs and 'Rock N Roll']

Final Relapse anvil Death Is This Communion (2007) might never be breached, but lacking such compositional invincibility, Fire's fifth LP still incinerates a galaxy of Euro metal.

This Norwegian production couple are deft punks on their third album, a synthetic collection of upbeat dance music encapsulated by the coiling, galactic theme song 'Royksopp Forever.'

Aside from the delightfully twee absurdity of that Eighties pop, the chorus of "Don't Move Back to L.A.," a Seventies folk-country plea to a lover not to abandon New York City (where Sheff now lives) for the temperate climate and friendlier rental market of Los Angeles, almost takes on an R&B tone in its earnestness. Sheff, however, still lends his compositions heft.

Despite the stylistic twists and turns, that it all holds together as an LP is largely due to Fair's familiar nasal, wide-eyed vocals.

Lack of focus falters the whole, but Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone triumphs in Lucinda Williams becoming gloriously unbound.

The band pulls its emotional punches with all the opaque atmospherics, but ultimately, Junip takes the listener where they want to go as long as they surrender to the ride.

[Consentino's] gorgeous, autumnal voice still carries the weight, but Best Coast is left sounding less vital.