Probably not the best soundtrack for you Christmas Eve Open House, but destined to be a Holiday classic for Crowell diehards.

It’s a cerebral, sometimes sinewy sound, but one which leaves a lasting impression regardless.

Though only seven songs long, at least two--“Mallow T’Ward the River” and “One Can Only Love”--offer multiple movements that provide opportunity to explore more exotic environs.

It makes for a suitably successful second record that, regardless of the salacious story surrounding the band that made it, pretty much lives up to the inspiring promise of their first.

Todd tended to distance all but the most devoted, thanks to an album that was, to say the least, rather difficult to digest. So while Global draws from the same synthesized setup, fortunately there’s plenty here to keep everyone enthralled.

There are times when Wilson's meandering style emphasis on ambiance turns on a twilight sound.

Friedberger sits at his keyboard noodling around on little motifs with slight variation here and there, which do evoke cinematic cues. But without the images on the silver screen, it becomes the music of buttons being pushed which gets old quickly.

There's still plenty of glamor and atmosphere in the Crystal Stilts' aura, but with this EP a significantly clearer sense of structure and purpose.

There’s an elusive aura that surrounds this set, suggesting Lord Huron will never pry its door open entirely. Then again, that’s what makes this outfit so fascinating…and possibly so essential.

Despite those candid confessions, Arrows never bows to Scattergood’s self-indulgence, given the swooning synths and other cosmic confections.

The lack of a rhythmic anchor sometimes gives the songs more free form than they actually need--there’s a difference between playful interchange and self-indulgence. But most of the music simply translates deep musical respect and chemistry into moments of artistic fire and great beauty.

Their music, those influences intact, circles around a classic rock genre, but without any mediocre redundancy or artificiality.

What you might miss in Fake Yoga, if you’ve been around for a while, are the mordant, Wilco-ish ballads that dotted Hesitation Eyes.... Still Fake Yoga is a very solid album and much more compelling than 2010’s Bible Stories.

Intended as the follow-up to Griffin’s sophomore set Flaming Red, Silver Bell finds a young artist still determining her direction. Griffin’s furtive vocals dominate the album overall, but the settings shift dramatically throughout.

Spectral effects and pulsating tones swirl through each selection, but it's the persistent rhythms that steer the aural acrobatics, making Den a harbinger of fascinating efforts yet to come.

This latest effort is underscored by sweeping arrangements and a turbulent pulse that only serves to accelerate that sense of drama and defiance.

Worship the Sun has the lemonade-y ambiguity of all good pop.

The band’s timbres are more distinctive than its songs, which means that even the shorter tunes are best when they let the instruments do the talking.

The news is, basically, modest: On the whole, Hairdresser Blues picks up where the first album left off.

This is a very good album, sure, but it adds not so much to the Rangda catalogue.

All in all, United States demonstrates McLagan’s allegiance to a pure pop mantra.

Live in Japan is more valuable as a historical artifact than as a concert recording one is likely to return to again and again.

Holy Ghost finds him coming across as remarkably unassuming, a casual, somewhat weary traveller bound for a yet undetermined destination.

Singer Brittany Howard’s vocals are as pliable as ever, a high pitched squeal one moment, an irascible growl the next. Yet, in this case, it’s the band--bassist Zac Cockrell, guitarist Heath Fogg and drummer Steve Johnson--that have evolved most this time around, providing a shifting set of circumstance varied in both tone and texture.

They play one too many Springsteen cards with the dark “Cadillac Road” (at this point, Bruce pretty much owns any lyrics that revolve around mills shutting down), but the record ends on another strong track, “Across the River.” Taken as a whole, All Across This Land is one of the group’s strongest offerings in years.

No Age has made an album devoid of joy, yet I couldn’t help but smile when listening to it.

It would have been better to be more sharply focused, and more limited in scope, so a wider audience could discover it and maybe love it as much as Johnny Boy.

Given the earthier sonic aesthetic of the band’s previous LP, the gauzy mist of Warpaint may be hard to accept at first, but given time, the record’s sensuality becomes clear, making it more of a next step than a radical rethink.