Almost every soulful track grew on me, with the clincher "Down & Out," one of his periodic explanations of why sometimes he sips and smokes instead of trying yet again.

What we're hearing here is the Temptations turning into the Delfonics--the way his midrange gives up the verse and his falsetto takes the chorus is as nice as his boyish sexism.

In short, this rocks differently in a year when it's been hard to use that verb without reflecting on the mortality of all things.

Between speed of delivery and brevity of line, Sandman's nonstop tunefulness here tends jingly no matter how gritty his flow.

Church has always known how to write, and he's blowing here.

Elsewhere it's just sweet sensation. Succumb‑-succumb.

I give him extra credit for both preaching to the converted and doing his damnedest to rally the holier-than-thou.

Sweetly skeletal arrangements featuring various bandmates and his bassist dad underpin the quietest and most winning singing of his career, with lyrics so crystalline you never need the booklet.

Even in their overwork, however, they evince an effort that bears a remarkable resemblance to care‑-that is, to caring in the best, broadest, and most emotional sense.

I like the feisty ones, as I generally do. But "Begin Again" and especially "Stay Stay Stay" stay happy and hit just as hard.

A lot of the time he's trying too hard to say too little or trying too clumsily to say too much, sometimes even with his trusty guitar.

What kept me on it was the ingrained musicality of a bunch of jokers who've evolved into a sonic organism even though they never see each other anymore.

If the verse-chorus-verse of these gorgeously understated, quiet but hardly grooveless artsongs makes your teeth hurt, Grizzly Bear will give you something to suck on any year now.

Until the last two songs, whose overwrought drama I don't have to like just because I trust its verisimilitude, they hit every time.

Seth Lorinczi provides the right shades of darkness‑-sometimes enticing, sometimes engulfing‑-as Sleater-Kinney fans long for a bright and cleansing breakout. They get one as "Handed Love" goes out, when Corin shouts her desperation and rips off a riff, then tops the outburst with the even more rousing "Doubt."

There's more space in these tracks, and unlikely hints of sweetening both orchestral and distaff that come as laugh moments whether the lunatics running the asylum think they're funny or not.

The catch is that through all her generalizations it soon becomes clear that she needs that guy much more than a postmodern girl is supposed to. Too bad she can't pin it down and also can't pin him down. I blame the weed.

[Glad Rag Doll] brings out the warmth in a voice that's been chilly, verging on aloof, at times. She calls this her "song and dance record"; I'd call it her nimble, witty, change-of-pace record.

These are so fine you don't mind listening again. And as you do, you start noticing how deftly Brett negotiates lines and stanzas that aren't as blockish as their meter and his voice make you think. And then you listen to this uningratiating music some more.

Reminds me of a painter pal who in the '60s did a whole slipcase of polarized bicolor sex silkscreens--some lovely, some gross, all yummy.

Their synthbeat-meets-comi​x concept got over as pop because it found a mildly playful and pleasurable way to enact well-meaning self-effacement.

For better or worse, and it's both, this is kind of what you'd figure sort of: a Sonic Youth record dominated by that band's most important member.

the doting Vasquez love song "Blue Eyes," the lyrical Dawes lost song "Thanks for Nothing," and the clippety-clopping Replacements road song "Portland" all augment the deep craft and acrid wordplay of the guy who's why you heard them‑-in fact, who's why you heard this varied, consistent, tune-conscious album.

Predictably, Jay's power is more interesting than Ye's, which was funnier and sicker on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Think the patron's proximity made the protegee nervous? Think the patron figured it would? I do.

Midway through, here comes some madman with the deeply stoopid "31 Flavors" and you realize it wasn't going along fine enough.

They have mouths on them, yes they do. But their mouths are connected to their hearts and minds, and amped by loud guitars.

These 13-songs-in-35-minut​es, cut half in 2008 when he was drunk and half in 2010 when he was sober, are shockingly strong for the first eight or nine, which unfortunately include all the drunk ones.

Given his limitations, his famous friends are a mixed benefit, because they show him up.