Make no mistake: Kweller's an endearing artist, not to mention a talented lyricist, but it appears that he's simply too impressionable and ends up mirroring his influences rather than building upon them.

Sure, we're living in politically charged times, but Earle's Revolution warrants fewer rants and more transcendental blues.

Sometimes, he floats as a delicate mist (around the vocals of Erykah Badu on Mongo Santamaria's enduring "Afro Blue.") At other points, he's a guiding light, riding the beat ("Why Do We Try.")

[Radio Music Society] positions Spalding as an artist looking forward and back, a powerful stance.

But for all the influences that rip through the LP, the youthful abandon recasts them for a new generation.

Fuses the chavvy charm of working-class Britain to a stream of anthemic, pure pop melodies in the service of pissed and pissed-off youth worldwide.

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

Blak and Blu throbs more like a lava lamp turned upside, a red-line splat of molten nightlife served on a huge sonic bed only achieved by major label productions.

The Loneliest Man I Ever Met refuses to be overshadowed by Kinky Friedman's outsized personality.

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

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

While Reality isn't a failure by anyone's standards, there's precious few moments that you can recall, much less hum, an hour after listening to it.

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.'

The title track, meanwhile, showcases the intimate girl-and-a-guitar ethos that makes Arnalds so charming. Unfortunately, the sensual charango tick-tocking of "Surrender" features backing vox from One Little Indian label head Bjork, who railroads the song with her guttural growls and swoopy showboating.

Rare treat to see a band come of age so quickly, and Trouble leaps forward.

Flexing the same contextual muscle that helped make Atmosphere's Slug an MC for the downtrodden, Macklemore utilizes second album The Heist as a vehicle for dissection, pulling back the layers of skin that cover addiction, the music industry, materialism, and homosexuality.

Why not take the five really good tracks on Break Up the Concrete ("Boots of Chinese Plastic," "Love's a Mystery," "Rosalee," "One Thing Never Changed," "Don't Cut Your Hair") and offer a stellar EP for download?

Houndmouth pulls it all together into a packed album without faltering.

Unlike the Strokes, and say, Interpol, no sophomore face-plant here.

The heiress-turned-songwriter spins tragic tales that further an intrigue somehow only mounting, yet they're just dubious enough to keep any artistic credibility at a cautious arm's length and thus perpetuate her core polarity.

Though no song stands out as particularly remarkable, Warpaint drips steady consistency.

While Mr. Beast may not sound as fine Happy Songs... or Rock Action, it no doubt kicks ass live.

Antiphon offers a band regrouping but still searching for distinct direction.

Produced by Grammy-winning producer Ricky Reed (Twenty One Pilots), the troupe also trades in the lo-fi blades of Too for a polished maturity without sacrificing any edge.

Pierce shows neither the vocal presence nor the songwriting chops to justify Let It Come Down's bloated orchestral excess.

If there's a thread connecting TOD's discography, it's cinematic ambition, a musical grandeur grounding both the post-punk of 2002's Source Tags & Codes and the lush art pop of 2005's Worlds Apart, career milestones the pair. IX evolves that tradition, though it surfaces through different channels.

Not quite a party record, Leave Me Alone fuels messy rock with sunny guitar lines.

Suggests that he's finally coming into his own, albeit gradually and grudgingly.

Drama aside, space is Menomena's final frontier, and they use it to great effect.

A surprising change of pace for a band that shows no signs of slowing down.

Deeper--his third LP--plunges into his most self-assured head space yet.

"Fool for Love" wouldn't have survived the twisting soundscapes of the frontman's initial EP, but it offers the same sweeping vistas.

Third album Down in Heaven moves through Monkees-level cheese with the walking bassline and soaring "ba-ba-bahs" of "My Boys," while "Holding Roses" swings Rolling Stones, guitarist Clay Frankel mastering both Mick Jagger's vocal swag and Keith Richards' guitar privateering.

T Bone Burnett's production provides a certain dusky character to these songs that lends them a weight beyond their unadorned sentiments. He's added actor, novelist, radio show host, and playwright to his resume, but Earle proves he's still capable of getting to the heart of the matter with charisma and skill.

Kesto is heavy-duty stuff, a coherent, 250-minute artistic statement blessed with an epic scope and a dangerous edge.

Everywhere you turn, there's another neo-soul band trying to re-create, in some form or fashion, the classic sounds of Motown, Stax, and Philadelphia International artists. One of the best such efforts comes from the City of Angels on this impressive full-length debut, which succeeds in large part because the band creates its own vibe.

Singing sometimes borders on yelling, but the promised heights reach their summit.

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

It's almost unimaginable, but they continue to render sounds that swirl and dissolve into something deceptively and gloriously American.

∞ (Infinity) is ambitious and experimental, not so much songs as scored moods and sketches of dreams.

Johnny Flynn's fourth LP pivots on the English songwriter/actor's distinctive voice, which echoes older UK folk even while wrapping itself in modern indie roots.

Opener "I Only Want You" busts the QOTSA model with a little funk and jive. The rest of the album follows suit: a Queens backbone and Seventies rib.

Together, these giants deliver a master class on how country music is supposed to be done. It's also the strongest work of their three-decades-plus partnership.

Long shots this winning are rare, but 'Cause I Sez So pays off in spades.

Smith teamed with Marty Stuart for pure, rich, no-frills country music.

Although too saccharine in places, She & Him's second time around spins wonderfully bittersweet.

The Ride has Macha's dreamy, pulling, mournful feel, yet as the name Seaworthy implies, this is more blurry blue aquatic.

Four songs clocking in at nine minutes or more, Föllakzoid's III unfolds subtly and gradually to steady, hypnotic rhythms inspired by their Andean forebears.

La Futura crumbles into more of the exact same-y after that, whether it's the repetition of "I Don't Wanna Lose, Lose, You" or the dinosaur thud of "Flyin' High," which counter to its title might actually be reptilian and/or subaquatic.

Pity that "Jupiter," disc one, mostly falls flat.

Pinback is among a select group of indie rock bands who excel at making incredibly nuanced pop music full of graceful layers the intrepid listener can delight in sorting out.

Magic still, mundane, too.

These are tunes that would've fit perfectly on Top 40 radio in the Seventies.

Just a little less inscrutability, and this could have been a real contender.

The best live albums offer new insight into an artist and their music, but Fillmore does little of either.

A few latter-half tracks become saccharine, at times bordering on the generic, but reverb-imbued closer "Bothering" redeems the album with simplicity and ends Drastic Measures on a retrospective, reaching note.

As San Fermin's best outing, Belong winds wildly through styles, but ultimately ties together its own unique intoxication.

Feminist complaints aside, the problem with this seventh LP is that the Old 97's suffer from being too comfortable.

Past Time is markedly more graceful than Grass Widow's self-titled LP--just wait for those voices to wrap around your brainstem.

If anything, Here Before echoes the pastel colors of 1986's The Good Earth, each song a subtle variant of the next, measured and metronomic. This isn't a first-spin grabber, but if you're as patient as the Feelies have been, it might grow on you.

Melodically, Young creates a comfortable, atmospheric lilt his admirers will instantly recognize. Lyrically, however, Young's lost his way.

On Tarnished Gold, the Beachwood Sparks' reunion drowns in a bog of bad production and lesser material. Even when the Seventies Laurel Canyon sound turns heavier psychedelic ("Sparks Fly Again") nothing catches fire under the LP's soggy sound.

Shootenanny! has all the soft harmonies and lush production of 2000's Daisies of the Galaxy, but while that masterpiece was an homage to symphonic pop, this one is rooted in Southern blues.

The outcome is as natural as John Gotti singing Sinatra.

Despite the messiness of searching for their sound, they balance modern psych and glam rock with obvious pride.

More than 15 years in, the Old 97's remain vital and enthused, making one wish all bands could age with this sort of spunk.

If Lissie's still searching for her best expression, My Wild West comes closer than before.

The underlying want and yearning pulls the songs most effectively.

Trill but fatalistic ("Part of the Math"), rock-tronic and soundscapish, Homies crams a mixtape on 12 inches of wax.

With its durable theme and shambling demeanor, United States makes a different kind of sense with each successive spin. It's adult rock music in the best sense of the oxymoron.

The results are a Technicolor Washed Out. Greene titles these tracks for the easy vibes they invoke.

Bulat's pipes and songwriting prowess flourish, more than in her prior folksy, singer-songwriter LPs.

Next to 2003's comparatively straight-shooting "Quebec," Ween's first studio album in four years is flush with quick right turns.

With sound, Arthur paints with both broad and subtle brushstrokes, and his lyrics can stand free as poetry.

Follin works aggressively on tone and lyrics in "So Far" and "Keep Your Head Up," but doesn't lose any pop rhythm amid the sonic wash and despair, even on closer "No Hope."

Where's Rick Rubin when you need him? Lead-off "Hammer of the Gods" misses his flat sonic anvil in the separation of oracle from ocean, though succeeding burp gun "The Revengeful" discharges like one of the überproducer's concrete beatings.

What The Information lacks in Sea Changemanship it makes up for in Midnight Vultures, hats be damned.

While the backside wavers, the band has never sounded better or more self-assured, but its ambition suggests they've outgrown simple song collections.

All that talent still adds up to a disappointment filled with gauzy arrangements and magnified by Alvin's rare lackluster vocals.

Feels like a prototype for something not yet fully realized.

It's an interesting departure, but not entirely successful.

Sing to the Moon is a bold and beautiful debut: airy and dense, soul and jazz, dark and light. Head in the clouds, toes in the dirt.

Meloy's touchstones form one of the Decemberists' best, precise diction; moody, compelling melodies in glorious arrangements; and elegant phrasing dripping like honey off the tongue.

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

The album lacks the gut-punch intensity of brother Seun Kuti's recent debut, and the lyrics occasionally border on the trite, but Femi certainly lives up to the family name.

Marred by Edwards' rather unremarkable voice.

Tell Me deserves praise for its alternative vision of what a singer-songwriter album can be.

They oscillate wildly, but 'The Nest' reveals partial siring from Phil Spector, in sound if not psyche, while clammy, nervous rockers like the vitriolic kiss-off 'Darling'–-cribbing its recurring riff from the Stones' 'Mother's Little Helper'--veer into outright snark.

At 65 rocky minutes, the Stones' first studio album since 1997's Bridges to Babylon, and rootsiest since '94's Voodoo Lounge, could've been whambangthankyoumam at 40.

Bassist Mike Dean may not have the monster vocal chops of immediate predecessor Pepper Keenan, but he's forceful enough to cut through the firestorm whipped up by guitarist Woody Weatherman.

The band's third LP scales back and sharpens the electronic textures and cinematic sweep that defined 2007's "Parades," and the result is Efterklang's most immediate work.

If Sky Blue Sky is the product of Wilco's newfound clarity and cohesiveness, the album's paralytic ambiguity suggests they're also still in desperate search of a purposeful vision.

Although at nine tracks it's all a bit too brief, this disc in no way disappoints.

The intoxicating arrangements of 'All the Years,' 'Heart of Chambers,' and closer 'Home Again' prove Devotion is haunted, a force hard to resist.

The much-publicized rift of RZA and his seven other swordsmen glares on 8 Diagrams, production far more experimental and melodic than any prehiatus work. RZA of Renaissance proffers an unequaled vision, and the inability to convince his soldiers to follow suit keeps the disc from being the complete innovation Wu's abbot intended.

Through producer John Congleton's flourishes you can still imagine Jaffe strumming the songs on an acoustic guitar, each heartbreaking love song written for the same audience who embraced the subtle desperation of Suburban Nature.

The 13 tracks on this sophomore disc can be indistinguishable in their chirpiness, but George's balance of whimsy and a furrowed brow gives the Invitation its lovely charm.

One can easily imagine these instrumentals finding a happy home at the National Air & Space Museum.