As accessible as most of it is, though, the band can’t seem to resist throwing strange electronic sounds and off-kilter ideas into the mix, which helps offset some of their blander tendencies.

Estella and guitarist/singer Eric Cardona trade quirky elocution and harmonies with twinkling, twangy arrangements that toe the fine line between charming and cutesy.

It should all work extremely well to break Lekman beyond his current fan base of bored Sufjan Stevens fans waiting for Pitchfork to tell them what to like next.

The album has its super-twee moments but is never insufferable.

A few breakdowns and builds fly off the rails on the clubbier numbers, but the better songs balance shiny, modern production with exuberant melodies and timeless songwriting.

This could be a glimpse of a post-Interpol Banks or a hint at a musical transition within the band. It’s worth a listen either way.

he best songs on Rize Of The Fenix address that real-life redemption story....Still, it's hard to ignore the fact that the joke is kind of stale.

It's consistently uplifting and bright, and its best moments feature powerful orchestral sweeps, a surprisingly adept disco hook and even some gospel. But the lyrics are often so cringe-worthy that A Head Full Of Dreams comes off like that one friend of yours who's so positive you want to punch him.

She writes old-fashioned love songs enhanced by Ward’s expert arrangements and reverberated girl-group harmonies.

Taking a tip from William Cooper’s conspiracy theory tracts, Nas deftly delivers attention-grabbing rhymes with a sickly slick flow yet offers little backup for his inflammatory insinuations in the way of persuasive substance.

Ono brings out the unexpected in everyone, and even the most conventional indie pop acts sound edgy with her idiosyncratic vocals on top.... The album would have benefited greatly from more careful curation, though.

Unfortunately, the band lacks Grizzly Bear’s songwriting chops. After that early-album peak, the tracks begin to sound like undercooked compositions coasting on bells and whistles.

It’s not surprising, then, that a number of the tunes on Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! sound familiar. Besides the ones that sound like rewrites of Iggy Pop and Leonard Cohen rewrites, Cave and crew aren’t above recycling their own work--'More News From Nowhere' is just a riff on 'Deanna.'

Her signature hollowed-out minimalism nicely suits the subject matter, sometimes rising in urgency before falling into a deceptive calm.

The fuller orchestration might translate better onstage and help the band gain a wider audience, but this water-themed record mostly leaves you with the wrong kind of sinking feeling.

Not terrible, just half-assed.

Turns out the relentless ferocity, while a riot live, ends up making the Dirty Nil more enjoyable in small doses on record.

He’s abandoned the tres, a three-stringed Cuban guitar used uniquely on earlier efforts, in favour of a few not-so-good stabs at reggae. But he keeps his songs zippy and focused, and infuses many with foot-tappin’ playfulness.

FitzGerald's only musical foils are guest vocalists, so the contrast between fragile sentiment and driving rhythms feels obsessively and perfectly realized. It's pretty standard stuff, but it works because the album is full of subtly affecting moments that viscerally lock in to a magic-hour state.

Williams is more observational than personal throughout Blessed, looking upon her downtrodden characters with sympathy and compassion.

The lyrics are bizarre ("I'm DJ Khaled / I'm a daikon radish") and confrontational ("RapGenius.com is white devil sophistry / Urban Dictionary is for demons with college degrees") but also cohesive and purposeful.

It’s essentially a continuation of "Ballad Of The Broken Seas," with Lanegan’s world-weary baritone bellow completely overpowering Campbell’s wispy waif-like purr and making her come off like a background singer on her own project.

There’s plenty of the intelligent, expansive instrumentation that’s earned TMSR their band-geek badges, but despite a strong finish, Universe lacks a life-changing single.

Adele's husky, powerful voice is what keeps you listening, but here's hoping she experiences something besides betrayal before writing her next record.

The dynamics seem tired: boom leads to bliss and back to boom again. It's more of the same harsh, ambient wallpaper (peeling) stuff.

The elegant album is wisely paced, cinematic with strings and keyboards, and Campbell and Millan sound great together. But despite the emotional drama on offer, it fails to be moving.

They're clearly aiming for epic but more often accomplish exhausting. It's admirable to see a band unselfconscious enough to present such unapologetically maudlin balladry (in a good way), but there's only so much of it you can take in one sitting.

There are some missteps--the ballad Tripwire feels out of place in the general uptempo pace, and in (She Might Be A) Grenade, Costello lazily compares a girl to an atomic bomb (didn’t Green Day already do this?)--but when the album works, the band and the singer/songwriter sound more invigorated than they have in years.

This album is their least messy and most consistent, but it hasn't left singer/songwriter Mike Donovan's slacker charm behind.

Indulging in a baroque concept that includes chanson, 60s French café swing and lush pop, he has no qualms about pushing the drama levels vocally. He warbles yearning lyrics on songs like La Banlieue, Un Dernier Verre (Pour La Route), alongside swaying accordion waltzes such as The Penalty. Best served with croissants and café au lait.

Her 11th album is full of potential hits (and not too many boring mid-tempo plodders). Unfortunately, there's nothing quite as catchy here as 'Can't Get You Out Of My Head,' although a few tracks come close.

In the first few songs they stretch themselves creatively and come up with promising results, but halfway through it's back to overwrought ballads and middle-of-the-road mid-tempo rock songs.

Suri's clearly committed to losing his joke rapper image, and while this attempt is not consistently successful, the high points balance out the stumbles.

The record will prove inaccessible for those seeking a retread of the members’ more famous projects but works when approached on its own terms.

Songs are summery and bright, a more apt soundtrack to a road trip across Prince Edward County than to a night at an underground club.

The more conventionally New Age tracks that dominate the first half are the weakest. Things start to get interesting on Tethered In Dark, when the acoustic guitar arpeggios and synths lock together into hypnotic loops.

Pagans In Vegas may not be the strongest entry in the Metric canon, but the juxtaposition of Emily Haines's robot-girl vocals and pointed lyrics with dark yet hooky melodies remains a winning combination.

An hour long, Reverie's an unusual mix of gentle, drifting and jarring.

Some songs work. He makes great use of Ethiopian-sounding jazz samples and M.I.A.-style children’s chants on ABCs, and excels while rapping over some of the album’s otherworldly beats.

For an album that otherwise condemns the materialism and narcissism of the modern world, Everything Now works best when it practises what it preaches: block out the superfluous noise for direct appeals to the heart.

Disappointingly, she doesn't go all the way with this new, abrasive approach. Instead, she lets ex-Suede guitarist and Duffy mastermind Bernard Butler smother the album with corny string and brass sections that try but fail to impose a 60s girl-group aesthetic.

Pink's weirdness is a major part of his appeal. It just requires a lot of patience.

The sheets of noise and absence of hooks hide some interesting ideas if you have the patience to listen for them.

Some of the innuendo ('Take You Down') is kind of hurting but the song 'Nice,' gangsta-fied by a Game appearance, is solid.

What sets Heloise, et al., apart from others mining the same sonic epoch are consistent hooks, guest vocals by Debbie Harry and catchy-as-hell disco bass lines courtesy of a rhythm section that’s tight­er than Williams’s neon spandex unitard.

Edmonton’s the Faunts have livened up on the punctuation-happy Feel.Love.Thinking.Of., moving away from the floating dreamscape world of their filmic M4 EP.

Powers's vocals, which still possess his signature nasal tone, are more upfront and unflinching this time. Yet for all this newfound confidence and prowess, that special emotional punch of a Youth Lagoon song is missing.

Much of it sounds like it could have been played by humans using traditional instruments.

The Colour In Anything is a good album that could have been great if Blake had been a bit more willing to edit and discard his less successful sonic experiments.

He is not to be dismissed--as a rapper, that is. k-os the pop singer though? Not good.

This collection of B-sides, recorded over the past few years, is way more put-together than Modest Mouse’s previous rarities comps, Building Nothing Out Of Something and Sad Sappy Sucker. But it lacks the carefree charm of Isaac Brock’s pre-success indie rock experiments.

Despite interesting bits of psychedelic texture, the album floats around your consciousness without making much of an impression. It's pleasant, but not particularly memorable.

After the long wait it’s not a disappointing effort, but it’s all over the place.

Viva La Vida starts off with promise for fans who felt that "X&Y" was a far cry from "A Rush Of Blood To The Head."... Unfortunately, the rest of the record fails to build on this.

Searching for depth in an emcee so obviously beholden to gimmicks is a fool’s errand, and if you give that up, you’re rewarded with low-stakes perfectly inoffensive jams.

More a lyricist than a singer, he gruffly talk-sings through much of it, making it hard to grab hold of melodies.

Throughout, his rhymes hit the mark, whether he’s painting a bleak picture of the Detroit streets, battling his own demons (loneliness, molly, more molly) or rapping at length about drug-dealing without glorifying it Rick Ross-style.

The trio lose their equilibrium on Maniacs: a flashy keyboard solo hijacks the song and takes it to a cheesy place. But even when songs swing too deep in that direction, Lobsinger’s steady, breathy vocals keep things grounded.

As far as comeback albums go, Seasons Of Your Day doesn’t disappoint, but few songs truly stand out.

There’s a world-weary wisdom that was only hinted at in party-heavy previous albums, and the band is skilled at translating it into catchy lyrical nuggets you can raise a tall can to.

Current fans may appreciate these saccharine sounds, but others will find them a little much. Still, the highlights make this album worth recommending to those with a penchant for breakup music.

Deep, wobbly bass, twinkling synths, crisp programmed drums and esoteric guest spots by Holly Miranda and Tegan and Sara's Sara Quin seem crafted with blogs in mind, ensuring the album's freshness in the moment but leaving it vulnerable once the hype dies down.

This could be any novice eight-track job recorded in a basement or garage, but at least For The Season comes off like the work of a real band for a change.

They've succeeded at making a good big-dumb-rock record, but you get the sense they didn't mean for it to be quite this dumb.

There is a fair amount of Bowie-esque schmaltz in Vincenzi Vendetta’s vocals, which make Dystopia a little harder to swallow than its instantly catchy cousin, Cut Copy’s "In Ghost Colours."

The T-Bone Burnett-produced album admirably employs a nuanced approach and a consistent tone rather than using the opportunity to cash in on the film's young core audience.

His first album in four years picks up exactly where The Trinity left off: at the centre of the dance floor.

[The album] chugs and punches in a suitably heavy way without ever feeling essential.

There's nothing on 3121 that Prince hasn't done better before.

While it's dense with mood, gloomy lyrics and studio texture, almost to a fault, it's thin on memorable melodies.

Bibio isn’t reinventing the wheel here (or rather, the acoustic guitar), but when you’ve already hit the sweet spot, you don’t have to.

The abysmal Justice concert recording is relegated to the audio disc (also hiding evidence of whether or not Gaspard Auge’s MIDI controller is actually plugged in), while the DVD in this package contains the much more engaging behind-the-scenes tour documentary covering 20 days of bleary-eyed debauchery.

While the five-piece continue to write virtually the same song over and over again (hell, practically in the same key), there are new proggier and acoustic bits (Ghost Walking) on display.

The album definitely grows on repeat listen.

While the bouncy good-time foolery is charming enough in small doses, Islands' relentlessly giddy glee gets annoying awfully fast.

The hooks and charm of their epic debut, "Logic Will Break Your Heart," were decidedly missing from their 2006 sophomore effort, "Without Feathers," but Oceans Will Rise marks a partial return to form for the Montreal quartet.

Long-time fans will appreciate that Napalm haven't toned down their extreme approach to metal.

The production sometimes eclipses the songwriting.

Strong melodies make the tunes better than middle-of-the-road, but aside from a bit more distortion, the New York trio show little desire to venture outside their breezy alt-pop comfort zone.

These 10 tunes feel dashed off.

Provisions is a haunting, alt-countryish record that’s not unlike the Silver Jews’ latest work.

Williams does sound inspired, and there’s an energetic current running through Little Honey that was missing on previous records.

Impeccably produced, Valtari ultimately feels like two diametrically opposed albums.

In a genre based on repetition, standout moments are critical, and We Move provides too few of them to be impactful. But when they show up, the results are stunning.

Five Jurass's virgin excursions into P-Funk and electro find some comfortable new sonic territory.

Without the bizarre lyrical invention and fuck-shit-up whimsy of his earlier work, Beck's attempts at party jams come off woefully overwrought and flat, making the darker bits interspersed throughout seem intriguing by default.

They occasionally slip into derivative territory, Beggars Banquet-era Stones in particular, but strong solo material saves Lifeline near the end.

This album is back-to-basics rock and soul; you won’t find any further ploys to appease contemporary audiences, and therein lies its charm.

His vulnerable warble is still intact, his lyrics remain tenderly existential (aside from, uh, Shave My Pussy), and the noisy bits just make the softer tunes all the more gutting.

His ambition is never entirely realized, and though his voice is versatile, his almost operatic style at times borders on annoying.

Public Strain is front-loaded with some of the more patience-testing tunes, but stick with it to discover some astonishing beauties.

The Kooks seem unable to get beyond the Brit-rock blueprint.

The result is an album with chart-worthy songs that are uncomfortably familiar at times and a touch low on risk.

Here, every song tells a little story in which Johnson assumes different perspectives and uses broader instrumentation.

It's mostly just softly plucked, atmospheric guitar and Webb's weary vocals building up songs that are achingly slow, sombre and intimate.

So, Danja hooked up Duran Duran with some seriously dope beats and nasty Neu-ish grooves for Red Carpet Massacre, way hipper stuff than they even know. The downside is that Simon LeBon is still singing and writing all the lame lyrics.

Lots of bands pillage from the pop music canon; few do it with the aplomb of the Horrors.

Not every song succeeds, and the best moments tend to be the danciest.