Now the group has shed the charro suits and returned to its original sound with 12 serrated hard-core jams about wasted youth and suicide.

The album should keep him atop the country commercial firmament, but doesn't really advance him as an artist.

The group's sophomore outing, a six-song EP, delves into a handful of favorite songs from the 1950s and '60s pop-country era that's a big part of the Living Sisters' musical foundation.

None of these tracks are clunkers, but none will redefine guitar rock, either.

If Heartthrob presents a believably irregular vision of how love happens, the album does it with an immediacy and a directness that feels new for these Canadian twin sisters.

Lysandre is a fresh start for a writer with a fine ear for the way happiness and heartbreak intertwine.

Fade is classic Yo La Tengo: honest, unpretentious and, above all, catchy.

ASAP Rocky's songs don't lack for emotion.

What's best, despite its New York-centric vibe, those locals looking for a beat-heavy record to crank at full volume while stuck in Los Angeles traffic need look no further.

[Signed and Sealed in Blood] demonstrates that for this long-running Boston band, loving and fighting aren't opposites but rather complementary manifestations of the only thing that matters: passion.

Martha ponders the intricacies of life and death with the kind of clear-eyed honesty we rarely get from someone as close to them as she still is.

It surrounds a handful of his sharpest, most insightful songs with far less effective material--tracks that either vague out into club-rap utility or sag hopelessly under the weight of cornball sentiment.

The 17-year-old Chicago thug offers infectious odes to nihilism and tirades against haters that are as simple-minded and catchy as they are brutal.

Game makes a better villain than he does a good guy, however, and on this often-earnest album he seems hard-pressed to accept that.

In his quest to impress, Big Boi short-changes the street-level swagger that always kept his partner Andre 3000 here on Earth.

By stomping just at the edge of parental propriety and sneaking in (mostly) well-crafted lyrics, her new record confirms her place as the loosest of the dance divas, one who not only preaches on the art of the party like few since Andrew W.K., but who also delivers the message through inventive, beat-heavy musical cannonballs, most produced by hitmaker Dr. Luke, that pummel with pleasure.

In spite of that fresh blood [of collaborators], Girl on Fire basically delivers the same payload as Keys' other albums; it's a collection of handsomely crafted, gorgeously sung ballads interrupted by several overworked anthems about the value of perseverance.

Sure, she flirts with dance pop and R&B balladry, but you can forgive her for wanting to satisfy different tastes. Here, it actually works.

It's best to sit back and let the power of visionary punk rock wash over you.

While the new Rihanna record may be at times sonically exciting, what resides beneath the new bass-heavy, Skrillex-inspired music is still a fast-food burger, one with a lot of extra sauce and some very disturbing ingredients.

Though the approach here precisely mirrors that on "Planet Pit"--think big beats and bigger cameos--he's using his increased power to venture even more daringly beyond the limits of good taste.

Despite that variety [of male collaborations], 18 Months only deepens the impression that Harris is best when linked with a lady; his skills in that area are several times more developed than they are anywhere else.

"Ice Age" is one of six songs on the group's fantastic new EP, and it stands out for singer Mariqueen Maandig's wisp of a voice.

It's an excellent Green Day album--one of its best--a catchy, revealing work that surprises with its willingness to explore ideas that the band members may not have invented, but which, fed through Green Day's filter, become theirs.

Music From Another Dimension delivers riffs, clichés, solos, yowls and a virtual banquet of the same one-dimensional tropes Aerosmith has been offering for years. Mixed in, however, are a few gems.

You get some of that [back to basics feel] from the first two songs on R.E.D., both of which Ne-Yo co-wrote with Shea Taylor, who also produced.... After that, though, R.E.D. doesn't really stick to the idea of less is more.

The Oklahoma country singer and songwriter who's reached the top of the country charts with such quaff-minded odes as "Beer for My Horses," "Whiskey Girl" and "I Love This Bar" clearly hasn't exhausted that wellspring of musical inspiration yet, returning to the corner watering hole several times in the 10 new songs on Hope on the Rocks.

It's a masterpiece of storytelling, empathy in the midst of chaos.

It sounds more like a beginning than an end.

Red is a big record that reaches for Importance and occasionally touches it, filled with well-constructed pop songs Taylor-made for bedroom duets.

KISS' new album, Monster, is a fantastic dog: Protective, loyal, fun to be around but ferocious when it needs to be.

Gibbard's songwriting holds up in the gently varied sonic settings here though nothing feels as immediate as his day job in Death Cab for Cutie.

Jiaolong boasts nine timeless dance-floor bangers that resurrect a moment.

On Halcyon she marries thoughtful ruminations on young love to whooshing synth riffs and hard-edged machine beats; the album claims electronic dance music as the natural province of sensitive singer-songwriters.

This is a far funnier (and funkier) effort than 2009's "The Resistance," which handled similar themes with a glum sobriety.

It's a minor miracle she's been able to make room for another Lavender Diamond outing. But when the results sparkle this brilliantly, the multi-tasking seems exceedingly worth it.

At its best, Push and Shove channels some of the infectiously restless energy of "Rock Steady," the band's pre-hiatus farewell. And it further polishes a bold mix-and-match aesthetic that feels familiar today in part because of records such as "Tragic Kingdom."

¡Uno! feels like the work of a band that has painted itself into an aesthetic corner.

What the album leaves you with is the image of a little lion man, rattling his ever-expanding cage.

Jepsen's strong new album, "Kiss," feels like a successful attempt to invest pheromone-rush dance pop with a bit of old-soul wisdom.

It's the band's most fully realized record, and that should keep them at the front of a dwindling pack.

Ever confident of her allure both as a woman and an artist, Furtado on The Spirit Indestructible proves nearly untouchable.

Rather than exerting an effort to advance a conversation or craft unique circumstances in which to present notions on love, most of the lyrics on Coexist are one-dimensional planes floating through the group's oft-glorious 3-D spaces.

In these 12 songs--built on voice and guitar but generously appointed with bright brass arrangements and funky machine beats--Byrne and Clark sound like psychosocial explorers setting out on an open-ended quest.

The record underscores his real strength, as a musical storyteller.

A big, confident, and captivating pop album.

Recording together in a room (as opposed to assembling songs online) for the first time in years, Animal Collective also reengaged the primal aggression of its early work.

Silver Age is an exclamation point to those [Sugar] reissues, a nod to the past but with clear direction forward.

Contrasted with Lil Wayne's easy, seemingly effortless guest verse, 2 Chainz sounds like a rank amateur whose topics of choice -- strippers, money, drugs -- have been examined to death in hip-hop by others with a much more varied vocabulary.

For an album so indebted to artists he inspired, Rebirth still feels thoroughly and essentially Cliff's.

Indeed much of Chapter V finds him going about that business as determinedly as an infantryman.

As a set of songs, though, Divine Fits' debut feels pretty process-oriented, more workbook than showpiece.

Though America is an explosive document, half the time it's a lot of smoke and bang, and it treads on territory that others have explored more thoughtfully.

Yet if Rumer seems to be thinking less critically here, she sounds just as beautiful doing it.

Repeated listenings only prove how strong and artful this collection is.

The band's handiwork makes the simple beauty of pop rock appear fresh and new.

The rapper's midair brush with death only intensified his hunger. On this commanding, complicated album, he wants more out of more.

While it's great to have the old albums re-mastered, the real draw here are the remixes and the concert performances.

These are also simply the band's finest songs in some time.

Dirty Projectors still get itchy at the prospect of sleek surfaces, and their uneasiness is a thrill to behold.

The best compliment to the record is that its omnivorous approach feels right at home today.

The more relaxed tone of Uncaged, the southern rock outfit's third studio outing, [is] modestly refreshing.

Wild Ones has two of Flo's top 40-obliterating recent singles, "Good Feeling" (in which he hijacks Avicii's "Le7els") and the title track....The rest is serviceable work for the clubland meat grinder.

Fortune reveals an artist more concerned with calculating than creating.

These 13 songs waft between nostalgia and realism and unfold at a stroll's pace.

The lived-in uplift of Write Me Back finds him at a perfect sweet spot of nostalgia and modern skill.

It seldom gathers enough momentum, and doesn't feel the least bit cohesive.

It's essential 2012 listening for anyone interested in popular music as art.

The Cherry Thing reclaims the unpredictable outlaw energy and impulses of hip-hop, jazz and punk, organically linking them all.

It might be the year's most beautifully sung recording.

It's more pop than it is revolutionary, but within its 14 songs are a number of fantastic steps forward.

The result confronts old age without giving in to self-pity. It earns its title.

Metric's lyrical concerns are increasingly philosophical, and the band grapples with big questions with earnestness.

The new box set does indeed help shed new light on the music and the entire project by way of the various bonus features that now accompany the original album... To paraphrase Rod Stewart, every album may indeed tell a story, but some stories are dramatically more compelling than others. The story of "Graceland" is one of the most compelling in all of pop music.

He sticks with what works, but never sounds as if he's simply exploiting a formula.

Banga is both a return to form and her best album in many years.

Though uneven, the group's 29th studio work (including 2011's "The Smile Sessions") contains a number of elegant, shockingly beautiful moments that not only do justice to and expand on the sound of Southern California in the 1960s but serve as a bittersweet and at times heartbreakingly brilliant coda to five decades in music.

In comparison to the drudge that is contemporary mainstream American pop and R&B, Emeli's folk-inflected soul/pop is Nina Simone and Bob Dylan all in one.

On Valtari it's back to the essentials: oceanic buildups, flickers of treated orchestras and falsetto vocal lines that yank heartstrings, even though you know exactly when they're coming.

Beyond her playing, Spektor holds together the music on Cheap Seats with her singing, which even at its most intricately melodic (as in "Oh Marcello") retains an improvisatory feel.

Ace producer and longtime champion of underground hip-hop El-P walks a fine line on Cancer 4 Cure, crafting aggression with militaristic precision.

Kimbra's American fame may have come on the heels of someone else's single, but there's a vision here that's entirely her own.

Much like Black's sagging teacher in "School of Rock," this album lives its joke about redemption and returns to past glory.

It all makes for a lovely lullaby of an album, but it just doesn't result in many songs.

But extracting a narrative from these delicate sounds can feel like more trouble than they're worth--even if you haven't half as much happening as Albarn does.

This is Los Angeles hard-core. Long may it rule.

Not everything on Evolution is so sharply focused; the album's middle section especially, feels larded with the kind of big-room sound-scaping Van Dyk can probably punch up in his sleep at this point.

Throughout, Santigold never stops playing spin-the-globe, and she also never loses sight of her mission to keep listeners moving.

This ability to maneuver through complex emotions is one of Wainwright's strengths and makes "Out of the Game" an essential recording.

Mostly, though, Blown Away finds her using her remarkable voice to deliver feel-good bromides.

The 10 tracks on the act's full-length debut don't unfold so much as softly purr, with titles such as "Teenage Love" and "Kaleidoscope Hearts" summarizing the starry-eyed romanticism the pair specializes in.

"Blunderbuss" is, quite simply, a marvelous rock album.

Though saucier and sleeker than its peers, the Wanted isn't nearly as fun....But none of the guys has an especially charismatic--or even distinguishable--voice.

The new set, Benson's fifth, is as solid as its predecessors.

This is punk rock with a hip-hop face-lift, and the merger here is equally trippy ("Get Got") and noisily belligerent ("System Blower").

OutKast's duo have made a cohesive statement that not only cries at the boundaries of rap music but vaults over them to a place where the music sounds like neon colors and the only rule is that you must free your mind. Your ears will follow.

The Alabama Shakes' first album, Boys & Girls, is an electric jolt that anyone who loves blues-based rock music should track down immediately

As often as not here Amadou & Mariam seem crowded out of their own music.