Introspection of this kind can be a difficult thing to pull off convincingly, but Nostalgia never veers too far into sentimentality to let its edges be sanded down.

Ultimately, that is the problem with most of W.A.R., though. Monch is so busy adopting the typical backpacker agenda of putting himself at odds with the mainstream that he takes steps towards a new conformity instead of just destroying sh*t.

House of Balloons is an album suspended in contradiction--a collection of sex jams tired of sex, or a paean to coke addled irretrievably by the same. It lacks dynamism because it has to; the Weeknd know nothing else, just that in every solid groove lurks the metronomic pulse of something waiting to die.

Volume II: High and Inside picks up exactly where its revelatory predecessor left off, but this time welcoming a few more indie-world guest stars, having a few more stories to tell, and reveling in slightly more robust production.

You leave Nine Kinds of Light completely unaltered, neither enlightened nor offended, simply having experienced a series of first-person statements: Adebimpe in his doorless (and not terribly interesting) tower of self.

They're also carrying on in the tradition of independent rap artists from the fertile early 2000s, producing whatever they damn please and selling it for ten bucks. An uncompromising approach can lead to disaster, either financially or creatively, but COHESIVE is the paradigmatic fruit of such an approach.

No matter how good these songs are (and many of them are quite good), the finished product is underwhelming, and I can only hope that I don't have to wait another half-decade to hear where they go next.

On Rolling Papers, Wiz Khalifa's personality shines through: unobscured, stoned, brilliant.

All Eternals Deck, the band's first album for North Carolina superindie Merge, effectively picks up from where the apocalyptic finale of The Life of the World To Come (2009) left off.

After all, the Pains of Being Pure at Heart never promised reinvention, and Belong is another solid soundtrack to summer afternoons lounging on bedspreads, making collages, flashing back to one's own days as a teenage outcast-however far in the past they may be.

Angles manages litheness; First Impressions was all sludge. And despite the rumored ills surrounding the recording process, the resulting album paints the band as re-energized and optimistic, playful in a way their last record so detrimentally wasn't.

Basically, if you're a Suede fan looking for a way forward in 2011, then factorycraft is your personal lifeline, a snake-hipped mating dance with a guy who's got a mouth like a Hearts supporter, a mouth that exists purely to confess-jealously, restlessness, rashes, warts, and all. Happy scratching.

If there's any band that's completely earned the right to gracefully knock themselves off, it's R.E.M. It only took them fourteen years.

Vile has slyly written pop that enters one's head without leaving much of a permanent mark; instead of a distraction from one's deeper woes, it's chameleonic accompaniment.

Reptilians is a batch of competent dance-pop-not as groundbreaking as fans have hoped, not as obnoxious as non-fans may've assumed-overcompensating for all the patience they've tested and the goodwill they squandered on their looping baby-steps back to the Starfucker moniker.

While their debut showed a lot of promise, Beach Fossils still haven't really set themselves apart from every other band practicing the same pleasant murmurs of personality.

Too Beautiful to Work isn't focused enough to create an atmosphere that whole, and for all the virtue of its experimental tendencies, "Cold Canada" shows the record might have fared better if it wasn't so antsy.

Space is Only Noise is delivered with an impressive restraint, especially for a debut LP and from an artist of Jaar's age, its songs warm and dense whilst seeming full of negative space, gentle and humorous whilst threatening claustrophobia.

It's not that Several Shades doesn't showcase Mascis's talents. It just denies us his flashiest ones.

A good few years on from the rise and partial Fall of the Decemberists, Meloy and Co. are managing, still, to carry the fire.

The peaks are good, obviously; but they're just peaks. And the dips are experimental fun but together they sound like curios. Still, the unfortunate sequencing aside, Passive Aggressive is a great compilation-especially so for those uninitiated with the band.

The hyperactive channel surfing of most punk music is here eschewed in favor of rumination on individual sounds, hypnotic repetition having more in common, perhaps, with ambient or noise than conventional rock. And like the best of those other genres, the album is finely scoped to just these eight complimentary, textural songs.

Wounded Rhymes' moments of true daring are few, but it's the first indication that Li's turning a critical eye on her own style-and that she's got a knack for reinvention.

So Living With Yourself is a lot like, well, living by yourself-comfortable, unchallenging, plenty of time to get introspective and think about things that once were.

Port Entropy, Shugo's fifth LP (depending on how you reckon Fragment, his 2003 CD-R self-release), decisively occupies the realm of the waking: the nimble, the abstract, and the exciting.

There's no doubt that Nothing Fits is a high-pressure, unflagging, and energetic piece of work. But it's also fun, frequently lowbrow, and--to the heathenish--a bit backward.

Sun Bleached Greek Gods is a perfectly serviceable introduction to the latest hot-off-the-grill, young, immortal, unemployed, nearly insufferable bedroom pop outfit.

The Drive-By Truckers remain a distinctly American band, a band whose stories are on equal footing with the music beneath.

It makes for a remarkable debut full-length-just don't expect to see any of it scoring some slow-motion spinning or pastel unicorns when those Pure Moods commercials make their inevitable comeback.

This is serious sound art, and it evokes a now near-mythical pre-Recession time when experimental artists didn't feel the need to obliquely reference the outside world.

Interestingly, the very qualities that make this a subpar Radiohead album are what make it their most experimental record yet. But this is also Radiohead elliptically circling back on themselves in dramatic form.

Listening to Yuck is kind of like having a conversation with someone who agrees with everything you say. Pleasant at first, it eventually and quickly feels useless.

It's thus a relief to see something, anything, resembling a coherent full-length emerge from that group of musicians, and for it to be as good as Shapeshifting is. More than anything, though, this is a success for Young Galaxy, who prove themselves far more versatile and open than they ever did before, and, as such, are likely to win over a new whole new audience.

Where the album really excels is in how it marries slightly absurd melodies to its lyrics to create a portrait of surreality and madness, as was so often rendered by those same Modernist poets Harvey cites as an influence.

Fans of old school R&B (or really, any of Daptone's artists) would do well to give him a fair shake. It also goes without saying that everything on No Time for Dreaming will sound better live. Bring your megaphones; here's a guy impossible not to root for.

While most dubstep producers are working with the same ingredients, Blow Your Head reveals how those ingredients can yield beautifully varied results.

Generally speaking that's good enough, especially since trying to find specific meaning in this kind of music is a largely futile exercise that I and others at CMG still occasionally agonize our way through against our better judgment. Perhaps the appeal of this music lies in nothing more or less than how painstakingly moulded it is, and in that respect Hecker will probably always release really impressive records.

Love Letter is more like a respite, a detour from the beaten path we should just be glad exists, and something to cling to when the next porridge of jizz and tears, The Return of 12 Play: Night of the Living Dead, drops wetly on our heads.

La Sera aren't quite up for that challenge, but their debut finds them rising above the careful posturing of their peers and creating something inarguably lovely, which, for now, will do.

Tryptych is something of a good trade convention, showcasing just how Demdike's samples become reborn with a strong modern edge. You feel like you're privy to seeing something here that's all set to sweep across the market.

Over time Napa Asylum reveals itself as remarkably cohesive and more than willing to cede points of entry every few tracks. Still an exhausting experience, sure, but one that's often thrilling, and well worth the effort it requires of us.

If Mogwai are looking for new routes to explore then Hardcore is a strong first venture.

White Wilderness gives Vanderslice's listener something to fixate on other than his often-good lyrics. As a consequence, despite its predictably moderate tempos and unchanging volume, it's a sign of progress, of potentially great things to come, and Vanderslice's most immediately welcoming record in half a decade.

It's an accomplished, knowing work that only seems to have its head in the corner.

The People's Key is not a bad album. In fact, boil the meat off these tracks, and you'd probably have the skeleton of a quite good album.

S/T II is that moment cupped in one's hand and blown like dandelion specks at an especially delicious breeze-it is, simply and thankfully, a record by Akron/Family as plain and as forward as we should expect.

This EP sounds, in many ways, like a showcase of new equipment and technology, proof that White just might be one of the best pop producers working right now. However, the songs might be too cerebral, lacking the brevity, structural simplicity, and dare I say petulance that made "Lust For Life" so easy to fall so hard for.

They've struck a balance, similar to Terrible Two, that's instantly accessible, consistently surprising, and extremely satisfying.

I'm elated to report that Zonoscope is a more than worthy successor to Colours, adhering to the tried and true follow-up formula of introducing just enough new wrinkles to their method to keep the proceedings from being a rehash, but containing plenty of the rapturous pop hooks that drew us to them in the first place.

There's a lot of rappity-rap cliches at work here: overwrought punchlines, vague disses, bitching about the industry. Kweli spends a good chunk of the album acting like a drunk, unemployed superhero, stumbling into supermarkets to aid old ladies whose purses are fully in their possession.

There's a bright side to Tennis moving beyond the measures of this LP: while tackling newer songmatter, delving into their return to land, maybe their songwriting habits will similarly shift gears with a degree of scrutiny that steps up to the plate and complements everything they brought to Cape Dory.

Half-baked and juvenile, sloppy but cheerful, fresh and joyful, the Beets may be plugging a gimmick, but at least they're doing something with themselves.

It is explorative, enchanting, wide-reaching, and so hopeful it ignites a tender pain all its own.

Albums like Kiss Each Other Clean and The Age of Adz are so giddy with compacting layers and counter layers into the already mapped-out confines of their pre-existing aesthetics that they come across like snowflakes: each one is beautiful and unique, except that the detail is too small to see and anyways there's about a billion of them shits and you have to shovel the walkway and hope public transit isn't delayed. It's distracting, basically, because nothing gets a chance to breath.

It's to British Sea Power's credit that Valhalla Dancehall seems far less concerned with mainstream sermonizing than their last full length, opting to indulge in the off-kilter charm that drew us to them in the first place

Kaputt is the sound of an artist released from his back catalogue and his own notions of how a song should be sung, or written. It is a mighty, mighty piece of work and really worth celebrating. In my mind, this is Destroyer's best album yet.

On Ducktails III: Arcade Dynamics, Mondanile introduces his voice as an element into his solo music, and in turn takes one step forward and two steps back; though his songs are perfectly adequate, the reference points and production are easier than on any previous Ducktails release, and they suffer for it.

These songs are great expanses, sprawling and glorious.

Rose still has plenty of time and room to grow, and across Own Side Now she sounds at times in search of a singular voice yet also utterly confident in her band, her arrangements, and her songs.

Deerhood vs. Evil is just simultaneously astounding and utterly familiar, correct, and right.

Special Moves illuminates the band's act for what it is.

The Wonder Show of the World, his eleventh release in half as many years, is everything for which we hope in a new Bonnie "Prince" Billy release: creeping yet expansive alt-folk; an ever-strengthening voice; erotic imagery ("The smell of your box on my mustache") paired with thoughts on family, never uncomfortably; a stark, doodled cover; a doting collaboration.

Sufjan's proficiency with larger-than-life arrangements has always been one of his strongest qualities as a musician, and across The Age of Adz he wields that proficiency, brazenly, like a kind of weapon.

As quiet strings and stupid whizzing noises pull the curtain on LP4, all I imagine is Ratatat going, "Alright, party's over, guys" and all I can think is "wait, is that what was happening for the past 43 minutes?"

Each time the album so overtly flips over, the same brief blushes of goosebumps, the same visceral highs, the same infectious, clapping percussion: I straight up have a crush on this album.

Infinite Love is a prickly, antiseptic listen. Surprising and interesting, to be sure, but hostile to expectations and ultimately as unsentimental about itself as it would be of any cultural artifact.

The record builds a whole new feeling of intimacy, and it's a ravishing enough record to, in its final breaths, break free of its own confines.

Sundown is still considerably boring when compared to the likes of the Kings' first three albums. It's also too long, the back end sacked with faceless mid-tempo songs devoid of hooks that can't compare to the mini-epics up front.

Instead of being doomed to tread a certain set of glossy, shoegaze-littered paths, and in that doom come off desperate to change, they search within their well-worn sound for a collection of songs with no aspirations to be anything more than the best at what they are. Now that's some progress.

While this album is far from The Hour of Bewilderbeast part two, it does represent a return to Gough's more stripped-down formula of simple, ramshackle pop songs built on electronic and symphonic detritus.

They may not yet have a strong enough aesthetic to make a great album, but they've made a unique, highly promising one that might soon create something which can bring Gonzalez's academics into the realm of something softer. In the way his best songs and covers were, and still could be.

It's a deeply felt, lively record that stands tall on its own merits, and further proof that Tucker's talent is bigger than that which can be expressed through one band's sound.

By showing a willingness to diversify their sound while cutting down on bloat, Phosphene Dream is easily the Black Angels most listenable record to date. It also suggests that they're keen on that most outmoded of concepts in the blog era: career longevity.

How To Dress Well is certainly not the only contemporary act to use nostalgia as the basis for an aesthetic, but Krell's ideas about the past and our relationship to it seem to be considerably more sophisticated than those of his peers.

Popp sounds as if he's having a ten-year-old argument with himself, and though he's certainly earned the right to make the point that this argument still holds currency, O is less than convincing.

Much more attention-getting has been Lil B's ambient mixtape Rain in England, an effort which doesn't seek so much to invert hip-hop as to merely slander it.

Because even though Silver is not quite the taut, energetic half-hour of power that the band's promising EP had me clamoring for, it still has some pleasant surprises up its sleeve. And most importantly, it offers sporadically brilliant flickers of what I loved about this band in the first place.

Flockaveli is delivery-driven, then, in the best possible sense: it is a chorus of proficient, varied flows, avoiding the pitfalls of impotent swag music and pugnacious garishness.

It's never pretentious, showy, or fake-tough; it's just Shad, doing what he does, and it sounds earnestly great.

Franklin Bruno and the Extra Lens provide a welcome respite from the false but persistent mythology of Darnielle as a solitary genius; Undercard gives his songwriting some breathing room and a refreshing dose of collaboration.

It works as an introduction of sorts to this young band, who have a surplus of great ideas (and, hey, it's a free download). But it's little more than a starting point, a segway, an ice-breaker, to the much meatier discussion that Ashes provokes.

Everything in Between is the sound not just of potential realized, but of expectations exceeded.

Kanye West had to do him; and lo and behold, he has. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is the most cohesive and assured record in mainstream hip-hop since Jay-Z sketched his Blueprint (2001).

Though it's their first time out, Weekend has created a record that bellows out of speakers, that bites and sometimes doesn't play fair. Though uneven in areas, Sports packs a sucker punch. Best sit still and brace yourself.

Rather than anticipating something new, Small Craft on a Milk Sea ultimately feels like one of the final surges of a style and format that Eno himself is outgrowing.

Warpaint is Chillwave rendered Actual via the performance of actual instruments, rendered Credible via the presence of an actual rhythm section, full of big austere drums interwoven with deeply locked-in bass lines, and rendered Sexy via the music's performance by real life, actually sexy, adult humans.

Wayne's ebullience is too curdled to be all that interesting on its own –- not to mention that he can do so much better.

It's this aura of creepiness that makes The Grand Theatre one of the band's best albums to date.

Down There, David Portner aka Tare's debut solo joint, is a further dot on the still-empty dotted line of Animal Collective's career, built on a span of eight or so albums through which these guys have willfully, lovingly defied expectations and definitions and even maybe their own individual talents.

It sounds like a Manic Street Preachers album, which alone renders it still better than all of the similar arena rock you can name.

Like any Books album, The Way Out is best embraced as a headphones record, but it could also work at a party, on a morning commute, over dinner, under a squeaking bedframe--it's the poppiest ambient album I've heard in some time, surprisingly accessible given the band's track record.

Belle & Sebastian are in transition, as they were in the early 2000s, and I can only hope that we don't have to wait another four years for the likely superior follow-up.

[The title track's] the only track on Disc Two, said to have been influenced by hip-hop mixtapes, and it serves as a microcosm for Working for a Nuclear Free City in general: overstuffed with ideas and ADD to a fault, but never, ever boring.

Lucky Shiner is a good argument for the album as a conceptual whole, and for a musical environment a bit slower than the singles-based landscape that birthed Gold Panda as an entity to be reckoned with.

One of Stern's greatest strengths is that she never relies on any tried and true shorthand when it comes to self-expression.

Salem evokes the seismic thrill of a good Gucci drop alongside all of Nico's ghostly beauty within the very framework and timbre of their productions. The result is no less than one of 2010's most exciting debuts.

Crush is cold and hard and calculated. I mean, it's clear it's supposed to sound like that, but I have a hard time getting into it.

It feels self-contained, wholly its own, and this is what allows it to hold up such a pristine and vast mirror to the scenes that surround it.