Sometimes I Wish I Were An Eagle is like a Technicolor epic--brass accents, swelling strings and an odd, lingering hollowness at its core. Apocalypse, on the other hand, is more like an 80-minute Ranown picture--sinuous, slippery, less accessible, more satisfying.

In the end, it's the restraint, control, and unlikely expansiveness that make The Best of Gloucester County a strong and surreal step forward for Smith and his band.

This is arguably his finest work, at least since The Gasoline Age, his '99 ode to petrol-guzzling beaters and strip-mall deadbeats.

Now that we've all gotten past the question of whether or not their latest album is the true reincarnation of Daydream Nation, it's nice to be able to just bask in the variegated textures and layers of sound.

The presence of familiar things makes their music go down easier this time around, but it remains a challenge, even after many listens, to feel like you understand what you're supposed to feel.

Basically, if you hate one track, sorry boutcha. If you love any of them, though, you are going to love them all, unconditionally.

Horizontal Structures proves that this music has legs. You don't really need to know who is in this band, or what else they've done, to appreciate what they do. You just have to like your hefty sounds to come wrapped in plush space.

Sometimes, too often, you start a band and it's good, but by the time anyone really cares, you've run out of interesting ideas and your live show is boring because you're burnt out and your record sounds like it was sponsored by Guitar Center.

A Dream A While Back is entertaining enough. Hearing Higgins recorded so simply can be starkly beautiful. Yet, anyone contemplating picking up a copy should be reminded there's another, far better record that should be heard first.

There is nothing uncertain about You Stand Uncertain--this is one of the most assured albums of the year in any genre.

Subtlety is clearly not a strong suit here.

Clearly steeped in the great tradition of the British folk song, yet able to combine its structure and ethos with rock rebellion from both classic psych and more recent guitar rock, Erland & The Carnival's Nightingale is a distinctive exemplar of folk revivalism for the age of indie.

With Mind Bokeh Bibio recognizes that our happiest, hands-in-the-air, hedonistic moments are shadowed with memory. A bit of hiss, crackle or distortion can evoke the sadness under the celebration.

There's a distance between the trauma in the lyrics and the overall mood of the song, which only reinforces his albums' theme of optimism in the face of the worst circumstances. So, how does it stand up? Pretty well.

In the format of the double album LP, with over half the songs heading into 10-minute runtimes, he's going to take you on the scenic route through all the pain he's experienced. If only Pearson was as compelling a lyricist as any of the abovementioned figures [Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, and Townes Van Zandt], Last of the Country Gentlemen might have matched the power of his earlier work.

When it comes down to it, though, I can look at the track list and sing you back the most important lyric in any song. If pop music is meant to create a shared experience, consider this album a success on a whole bunch of levels.

Cornershop and the Double-O Groove Of finds the band's east/west fusion developed far past the experimental stage into deft and heartfelt songcraft.

Vocally, In the Cool of the Day often lacks that urgency: it's a beautifully played, highly accessible album that nevertheless leaves much less of an impact than one might expect.

While there are moments where En Form for Bla (named for the Oslo club where it was recorded) rolls right over you like a rogue wave, more often it sounds like the main action was situated a couple rooms away from the microphones.

Tao of the Dead makes me, by turns, want to improve my attention span and want to listen to something else.

Egyptrixx avoids the brittle tastelessness of modern electro and Fool's Gold party-starting by allowing a touch of that cold, spacious futurism to creep in.

Say this for The Joy Formidable's debut effort, The Big Roar: It tells no lies and seeks no modest ambitions.

While the album is beautifully recorded, there's a certain sterility throughout, something approaching caution.

What you're really hearing is the sound of Mark Ryan thinking out loud, through song. And even though this can be frustrating at times, it's still plenty refreshing to get such an eclectic survey of what most reformed punks are taking for pop music nowadays.

La Sera's debut is the Kate Moss of garage rock, blank-eyed, pretty and dangerously thin.

He drops his first studio acoustic disc, Several Shades of Why, and it's as lilting and boldly distinctive and profoundly sad as can be expected.

Sniper is nothing if not reliable, and consistent. But what I will return to, even after the memory of this particular album becomes blurred, is "Blurred Tonight" and the other songs that have deviated, even in the slightest, from the program.

Nightshade's 10 songs unpack desire and affection and come up with the notion that disappointment is every bit worth savoring as joy because a romantic betrayal might acquaint you with real (not necessarily romantic) love. So while this record sounds pensive and lingers on experiences of loss, it's not depressing.