Here is a great band putting out a just pretty good EP whose existence is really only justified by its brilliant title track.

I can identify the album’s merits and appreciate the craftsmanship but, to employ my second cliché in too short a span of time, the magic is gone.

It’s refreshing to hear Herren at least trying after the wash that was Preparations (2007) but this new sprawl of a record is one that’s much easier to appreciate and respect than it is to feel.

Go, then, is strangely underdeveloped for how overdeveloped it feels; by no means a trifle, it's as hard to outright hate on as it is to be trampled by, just another lovely 40 minutes from a guy with easily another 40 up his frilly sleeve.

For just over seven minutes, Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust may be the most wonderful, jubilant listen you’ve had yet this year, and, within those two songs, Sigur Rós’s fifth proper album plants the most exciting, empirical stipe of artistic direction the band has forged in over six years or so. The elation doesn’t last.

On Talk to La Bomb, the main elements of the Brazilian Girls debut are still in place, but both vocal and instrumental elements head toward the middle, leaving us with a more polished and ultimately less satisfying listen.

The band seems unsure of what instincts to follow to get more intimate, streamlined rock; their attempts produce a hodgepodge of style that in turns prevents the kind of gut reaction that normally attracts listeners to rock in the first place.

Jim White’s latest collection of songs has a humanity about it that is too multifaceted to categorize in broad terminology or flowery descriptors and is quite possibly beyond adequate summation; overthink or undersell as much as you please.

There’s a wealth of great material buried within The Avalanche, if you don’t mind digging.

The problem with Stay Positive is that all the great songs subtly exhibit a kind of fin-de-siècle exhaustion, while the obvious attempts to break out of the old ways fall flat.

Six Demon Bag’s a romp, short but sprawling, careful but passionate.

Dead Man’s Bones is about death, right, and about love, testing where one touches the other, flirting with sensations similar and enduring the inability to confront or frankly deal with that intimacy. Had this record a thicker dramatic arc or something less confining than a spreadsheet of rules, then maybe the songs wouldn’t so inevitably miss their obvious marks.

Half of the fun with Dumile has always been the unexpected, ridiculous sampling and the storyline he develops around it. MMâ?¦Food seems unable to capture this element. Doom manages to drop a few great songs, but as an album, MMâ?¦Food falls flat.

It's a well-constructed and performed album that sounds great on the stereo.

A disappointingly safe album of reasonably enjoyable pop songs by interesting musicians masquerading as average ones.

So, Ludacris is still a distance from a definitive, unmatched hip hop statement, but I’m content with his glaciered pace and middling “a-a-a-a-b-b-b-b-etc” frame. It’s just too much damn fun to pass up.

The most interesting thing about Loud Planes Fly Low is the way it uses that rift, confronting the inherent tension and wringing it out. It may not be Howard and Crisp's best work to date, but it's perhaps their darkest, sincerest, and least expected.

Like singer Zooey Deschanel, Volume One is endearing and unpretentious.

It suffers both in comparison to Black’s other solo material and on its own decidedly alt-country terms.

Rick Ross would like you to know he has sodomized women in Acapulco. Lord knows we all aspire to such Olympian heights, but in that admission lies the crux of the impotence of Rawse's extensive discography: this is all pretty unnecessary.

For this and a couple other of IRM‘s electronic-heavy songs, Gainsbourg sounds like she’s doing her best Trish Keenan, though the songs lack the warmth and haunting tension a band like Broadcast can create from similar soundscapes.

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.

What The Tale Tells employs stock language to present stock characters going through stock conflicts.

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.

While it may not match his most impressive work, he continues to challenge himself.

For Golden Smog, this is another fine album; fine, fun, but never great enough to make you forget that these guys are in other bands.

'Superstar' boasts a sanguine hook and a sophisticated mess of rhymes about fame and backlash and fandom and such. Unfortunately much of the rest of the record lacks this clarity, and while the first part of that “sophisticated mess” description remains valid the second part becomes dominant.

Life Sux is no King of the Beach; if anything it's a minor diversion on which Williams seems to be toying with the idea of slowly toeing into maturity.