A 2013 mix of the LP, reportedly overseen by Albini and surviving group members Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear, and boasting an alternate guitar solo on "Serve the Servants" and a different cello overdub on "Dumb," but otherwise it's indistinct. The bonus material gets worse: ubiquitous B-sides ("I Hate Myself and Want to Die"), boring instrumental demos, and a "Forgotten Tune" that simply sucks.

Live at the Paramount--also included as a CD--comes off as otherwise bloodless. Joyless. That goes double for the lifeless remastering of the original LP.

Animal Collective has backslid into a comfortable, but unfortunately unexciting, middle ground.

Fishscale's tail-end reeks ("Jellyfish," "Big Girl," "Momma"), but then first cuts are always the deepest.

Someone please get this man his edge back.

I can't tell if The Wind is a final bid for immortality or some kind of dirty joke.

Moments, ideas, turns of phrase are jumbled together, good and bad, resulting in the sweet smell of garbage.

The new songs have attitude, but they sound like outtakes from 2000's classic Kid A and 2001's lesser Amnesiac.

Happy Songs for Happy People offers many of the thrills of Rock Action, but without the diversity and succinctness that made that album shine.

For the fair-weather Bowie fan, his Berlin years are probably the least favorite next to Tin Machine, but to the rabid appreciator, this time frame is arguably one of his best.

All in all, though, Medúlla is far too busy. Even when you're experimenting, the less-is-more rule still applies.

It's the Ting Tings amplified past 11, and the two never stray far from the formula.

Yoshimi has its moments, but it sounds like leftover brilliance from its older, better brother, padded out with filler to make a new album.

El Camino might be the weakest Black Keys album since 2006's Magic Potion, but the band certainly earned this celebratory joy ride.

You can imagine a modern-day Syd Barrett coming up with similar ideas after being locked in a closet with a laptop.

Formulaic song-structure stagnation lingers since the group's 2005 lineup overhaul and subsequent lackluster LP, Wilco (the Album). In Fact, the sextet borders on complacency in its rock-ribbed space-rock safety net, despite that music's surface eccentricity and innovation.

Six years later, the New York trio's third LP, It's Blitz!, is only as subversive as its cover image.

The result's a bit half-baked, which is disappointing when you know Hebden's capable of far more spirited adventures in sound.

[It] tries putting everything from the buffet on your plate, even the Jell-O you're not going to eat. C'mon, sounding like a stripped-down version of the Stooges wasn't such a bad thing, was it?

It's perfect for getting some shut-eye, but the boy wonder bores when cast upon alert ears.

Without co-star Alison Krauss or marquee Texan producer T Bone Burnett, Robert Plant's latest solo outing suffers the expected sequel slump.

It all goes down like kung pao chicken and Sapporo, but you'll be at Church's in an hour.

While this summit doesn't offer enough to interest more than the converted, the magnitude of the encounter tends to transcend whatever music is created.

Though the lyrics are light ("Could We") and often banal ("The Moon"), the warm, Mazzy Star minimalism and neon-roots groove are fairly irresistible.

If it doesn't exactly blaze off in bold new directions, it does offer an opportunity for Interpol to do some fine-tuning (not that they need much) and settle comfortably into their black, velvet-lined pocket.

With Dr. Dre, Kanye West, and even Jay-Z on its guest list, Hip Hop Is Dead makes for an ample, yet ultimately morbid, party.

Gone is the glitzy art-punk, spastic freak-out, and unfathomable screaming. Here now instead is simple melody, nasal singing, and familiar songs, which begs the question: Y Control?

Neither miserable nor memorable.

While the lack of onstage banter is welcome, Alive & Wired would have benefited from fewer songs and more space.

At 23 songs, the UK electro duo's fourth full-length has a lot of room for experimentation, but it comes off more like the soundtrack for a 1960s Hammer film.

It's sometimes hard to tell who's running the show, the major label or the major talent.

Chicago instrumentalists Russian Circles arrive at neutral ground with Geneva.

The band hits all marks on melody and dynamics, but the furious passion that drove their past work sounds muted.

For all the loud-fast ethos, the album feels like it's balancing on one leg.

Foals' major label debut, Total Life Forever, keeps those elements intact, most notably on the title track and in the calculated urgency and cold sweat of "After Glow," but the band has redesigned the template to include a more expansive pop approach evinced by sprawling centerpiece "Spanish Sahara."

Unfortunately, for every song that pulls at the heartstrings or prompts a minor political epiphany, Earle has included muddled-headed efforts that don't pass muster.

The Stand Ins doesn't really figure out what it wants to be until its second half.

Doesn't possess the necessary tension of DCD's best or her wonderful 1995 solo debut, The Mirror Pool.

The band's dynamics are beyond reproach, and the album sounds fabulous. Problem: The quiet songs don't provide a proper outlet for the band's palpable tension, and Aereogramme stays quiet far too often.

Melodies, hooks, and choruses evince Beach House's candy core, but the nonexistent separation of sound makes the Blooming disc sound as if it's filtered through a dryer vent.

The sold-separately CD soundtrack reiterates that point, capturing the pair's post-millennium blues, from the scat-rap, tornado groove of "Icky Thump" and electric mandolin haunt "Little Ghost" to the proto-punk, Maximum R&B of "Let's Shake Hands."

Top-loaded with mildly engaging songs drawn out past the point of intrigue, Multi-Love sorely misses the psychedelic fancy that informed its predecessors.

The Windows operating system segue of Mark E. Smith ("Glitter Freeze") into Lou Reed ("Some Kind of Nature") is as apropos as used syringes littering Plastic Beach, which defines the disc's wasteland second half after "On Melancholy Hill." "Rhinestone Cowboy," meet "Rhinestone Eyes."

Past its christening Dylanesque by way of Todd Snider – Miller echoing Tom Petty's hard consonants – it's all lyrically downhill across party anthems ("Wasted"), fuck songs ("Let's Get Drunk & Get It On"), drug shrugs ("The Disconnect") and antidotes ("Intervention"), plus a token "This Is the Ballad."

While everything could be trimmed, Jimmy Shaw's razor guitar in 'Sick Muse' and 'Front Row' keeps things edgy.

It's not fair to hold Viet Cong's hype against them, but an album this ordinary points to a generation of indie-rock writers trying, and failing, to pretend the bubble hasn't burst.

The listener's attention drifts as Harcourt dips into sleepy introspection, although his voice is so arresting that one won't wander for long.

Italian doom merchants "Mammoth UFO"... can't duplicate the tight encapsulation of 2010 origin story Eve in 51 minutes, although 14-minute lunar landing "Empireum" could power Alien craft Nostromo.

The songwriting trends to predictable formulas of ruminations upon nature leading to contemplations of love and loss.

Even the half-hearted retreads ("You Talk Way Too Much," "Between Love & Hate") cashing in on the notoriously unwashed NYC quintet's debut can't muster a wink.

Not in the same league as, say, 2009's Willie and the Wheel, Bluegrass lacks the magic of either a great Willie Nelson record or a great bluegrass record.

Living With War: American Idiot for hippies.

In between erupts the album's clash of will and reality into a messy, ill-defined awkwardness of transition, which might have captivated in the complex shades of ambiguity that Beam expertly builds, except for a complete want of direction or purpose.

[He is] an exceptional mandolinist and brilliant composer ... however, Thile's deficiency as songwriter has begun to bleed through, and the quintet's third album quickly wears thin.

Despite Santogold's bloggorific buzz, her eponymous debut, while diverse, is no revolution.

Most of Summer Sun is underwhelming to downright cringe-inducing.

Wise Up Ghost, more compelling in theory than practice.

Unfortunately, BSS spreads itself too thin on the back nine, which, with the noted exception of Emily Haines' yearning "Sentimental X's," sounds like solo project B-sides (Kevin Drew's dream echo "Sweetest Kill" and closer "Me and My Hand") and studio outtakes (instrumental "Meet Me in the Basement," "Highway Slipper Jam").

One of the hardest working men in hip-hop fails to push himself on Big Doe, but better Ghost rapping than Soulja Boy. So "We Celebrate."

Say Yes to Love gets bogged down in some questionably drawn-out experimentation toward the end, but that can't undo the face-peeling impact of its first 15 minutes.

Consentino's certainly got an ear for a hook, and her trio makes good use of them, but you can only sing about your cat, weed, and loneliness for so many songs.

Bluegrass songbird rises from the ashes of Albion with 11 impeccables beginning with the breathtaking title track and equally stilling "Lie Awake."

Watch Me Fall strives for but never achieves a more classic and accessible sound.

While strong in parts, on the whole Lillie has a feel of tentativeness to it.

Clark's worthy of the adulation, of course, but only a handful of cuts beg for more than that initial spin, and quite a few suck the life out of the song.

A single CD's worth on two discs, Hurry Up indulges many watery washes ("Wait") but restrains sound collage use ("Echoes of Mine") in waiting for another 21st century merry-go-round ("New Map").

Desgraciadamente, that's when Radiolina smashes against the wall. Fragments--stadium chants--rather than songs compound a larger issue of 'Rainin in Paradize' drenching the rest of the album.

The swapping out of Justin Harwood for Britta Phillips on bass seems to have enlivened things somewhat, but what starts so promising, sputters as the album progresses.

Closer 'It's All Good' offers the disc's best song, a brilliant idea and hook whose lyrics deserved more investment than that lent by Dylan and his collaborator, Grateful Dead word whisperer Robert Hunter. Beyond that lies nothin' except a wasteland, with nary a pulse for Life's second act.

Fellow Okie Wes Sharon might be to blame for producing both albums, because the similarity in sound detracts from 20-year-old Millsap's themes of love, redemption, and what passes for spirituality these days.

After two decades of creative partnership, she and Parish no doubt know what the other is thinking, but it also feels like a mishmash of sounds from over her whole career, a flood after the stillness of "White Chalk."

Honduran Aurelio takes the Garifuna mantle from his late, great mentor Andy Palacio (ACL Music Festival 2007), further evolving the musical moment an African slave ship broke free to the Caribbean.

Davies' trademark softer delivery saves 'Imaginary Man,' but convincing vocalizations remain a major problem at the Café. Two steps forward, one step back.

Simple piano/bass head-bob 'Sing a Song' closes, reaffirming that Jenny Lewis' tongue lashings can't be matched for cheap thrills.

Although Home isn't entirely successful, it doesn't get out-and-out boring until the second half, laden with generic songs about believing in love and needing more of it, plus a lullaby that sounds like Don Henley's "The End of the Innocence."

Thirty years after first collaborating on the Talking Heads, these two don't have to mine the past since there's nothing that remarkable about Everything.

It's a tumbler, a series of good thoughts that get lost in development.

The album's midsection goes limp.

In the end, though, Broken Boy Soldiers merely makes you wonder what Meg White has been up to.

These 16 songs in 16 minutes are a lean demonstration of hardcore punk purity that only lacks memorable songs.

Punch buries its best shots behind too much guitar and gratuitous arrangements.

Beginning with the naughty promise of "Closer," which voices a transgressive assertion of female sexual desire, the duo rapidly devolves into a string of whiny mash notes accentuated by tinny, synth-heavy instrumentation.

To the Sword's credit, variety pulls its sense of melody to the forefront, though die-hards may find the subsequent loss of energy an uneven trade. Yet "change or die" applies to the Sword as much as anyone, so if the tweaks of High Country act more as window dressing instead of a new structure, the additions enrich a manor in need of upkeep.

Deal; her sister, Kelley, on guitar; drummer Jose Medeles; and bassist Mando Lopez return from 2002's "Title TK" in a mellow tone.

Fans of Calexico's darker, rougher, and more cinematic work will pine for just that, even though the band's clearly evolving on Garden Ruin.

Material is everything to a chanteuse, and in contrast to Come Away With Me, the problem here is that Jones wrote/co-wrote almost half of the Home's 13 tracks.

A.C. Newman is a brilliant singer-songwriter, and his work here shows no diminishment. Challengers' glass jaw, then, is its sluggish instrumentation, its boots filled with lead while the lyrics and vocals--especially Ms. Neko Case's--strain to pick up the pace.

All too often, his voice/accent/rhyming patterns suffer from too much rehashed facsimile of past rap glories.

Event 2 sounds close enough to the first launch that an outwardly futuristic disc sounds oddly dated. Eight years in the making, the sequel doesn't venture where no man has gone before, but it's a worthy return trip for fans of the maiden voyage.

Trampin' is much too formulaic, too willing to leave the power of Smith's songwriting in words and not back it up musically.

A juvenile cluster bomb of goofy guitar shenanigans.

Although his quartet's first LP has boozy punch, even with two bonus tracks, the Scots' eponymous debut still feels padded.

Synthesizers are set to beverage warmer – nearly nil – but where a back-to-basics drums/bass/guitar bash continues since peak return Vapor Trails, pinpoint production to extract hooks from hard rock homogeneity continues to elude them.

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.

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.

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.

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?