On "Lazy Bones," that confessional spirit adds urgency to the band's power-chord crunch. Elsewhere, though, there's a troubling lack of focus.

Mr. Kravitz: The radio would be a lonely, segregated underworld without you. But, at this point, that full-on funk album sounds pretty damn nice.

Love at the Bottom of the Sea is an endearing, comfortable offering from a band that will hopefully do 10 more albums.

Bainbridge reaches past the boundaries he set on Change of Mind, making Otherness a rich, varied examination of love and loneliness. But sometimes that sparseness he likes means there’s just too little to grip.

As their third album in 25 years, V for Vaselines showcases a surprisingly staid band, but one that occasionally flashes its early brilliance for listeners.

What we're left with is an EP full of hollow gestures. But at least it's an EP instead of an LP.

If anything, the vocals provide the most effective dynamism in lifting these tracks out of their banality and providing sporadic moments of layered exaltation – short, shimmering flashes of greatness on an album that’s not especially compelling.

Tough Age’s self-titled debut has its moments, most of them falling in the album’s front third.

Mostly she's reaching into the dark places, teasing pain from the wreckage and holding it up for all to see.

The band gets bogged down far too often with a slow-verse-then-guitar-solo model, making Shots a nice overall listen but not much more.

As with most of the band's young oeuvre, there's a sturdiness to Enjoy the Company's booming interstate anthems.

Our Country: Americana II and its predecessor, along with Davies’ 2013 memoir Americana, offer an outsider’s perspective on the beauty and peril of America, a land of confounding contradictions. Davies doesn’t judge, he simply tries to understand. Maybe seeing ourselves through his eyes will have a similar effect on us.

The six-track album (seven if you buy the digital, eight if you pony up for the vinyl edition coming out in August) has the internal warmth and jubilant spirit that its predecessor was lacking, with the music appearing to blossom before you rather than clacking by like a train.

Where lyrics are concerned, be prepared for plenty of eye rolling (or eye gouging).

All in all, it’s just good fun. And more than a little bit clever.

What made their previous work so special was their ability to encompass the listener’s consciousness, looming over uncomfortable moments and allowing them to feel gratitude for the ensuing moments of relief. Ceremony lacks that control, and instead assumes the listener wants to be dragged around this disorienting hall of funhouse mirrors without looking into a mirror themselves.

Rise Again is an indispensable recording from one of the world's most important living artists.

Evil Urges has a little something for everybody, and at a time when albums often consist of a few peaks and a lot of filler, it’s remarkably consistent, mostly lacking extreme highs and lows.

Jackson Browne fans will be extremely satisfied with this set, one that Browne himself must surely be smiling upon.

Classics presents these songs faithfully and inoffensively, and She & Him cover them with the best of intentions.

In the end, it's too erratic even by The Fiery Furnaces' standards to be a studio album, and utterly lacking the charm and character of the band's exhausting live show.

Déjà vu, ambition, whatever be damned. No help may be coming, but they don't need it in the first place.

Free of filler, and with the beneficial addition of cameos from Best Coast's Bethany Cosentino and Fucked Up's Damian Abraham, Life Sux is hands down Wavves' best statement.

Ruby Red is free to sprawl and amble, joyous in its own sense of creative possibility.

A couple songs on Continuum do hint at what Mayer is capable of if he can shed his perfectionist skin and get to the quick of his emotions. [Nov 2006, p.76]

A consistent-not-masterful album like All of Me would still do you some good to hear.

By releasing these two projects at once, it seems as if Luna are overcompensating for a lack of new fully fledged songs.

While the band takes some sonic risks and shows continued versatility on songs like 'Alligator Pie (Cockadile),' the album is saddled with some of the same leaden production values that have dogged the latter half of the band’s recorded career.

The concept was ambitious but, unfortunately, in releasing Tomorrow as an album, the team divorces the music from the stage and leaves the songs stranded in a mire of effects and noise.

The songs really serve as a backdrop for Randolph’s musical prowess. Designed to work for frat kids, fest-goers and other party people, in the end, what matters is the way he plays.

It is an album that would make Tenacious D roll their eyes and make metal fans scratch their heads.

Organ Music not Vibraphone like I'd Hoped's chaotic nature shouldn't be reduced to just a skewed version of the artist's other projects, because while the record is commanding and at times difficult to stomach, it is perhaps as clear a glimpse into Krug's psyche as we've ever seen.

On their sunnily deranged new album, Repo, Black Dice somehow manage to do away with context entirely, constructing music comprised solely of sound effects designed and recorded themselves.

Bell House is a slight work--10 tracks in about 23 minutes--but its songs feel sturdy, as if they’re anchored by DIY ethos and a solid rhythm section.

The Twins aren’t so compelling as songwriters, and too many of these fire songs sound merely serviceable, with mellow hooks and humdrum sentiments.

While Hamilton Leithauser's hoarse yowl perfectly suits the plastered proceedings, the late Nilsson woudl likely have settled for a less sincere form of flattery. [Nov 2006, p.81]

The album relies on a stark, tribal minimalism that sounds as if it was recorded several decades ago. [Dec 2006, p.93]

With the help of producer Joe Henry, Loudon Wainwright III has been excavating his own past, and he’s disgorged some hibernating gems from his first four albums, revisiting ghosts that haunted him 35 years ago.

Known for his skills on the keys and a voice that retains a lovely purity, even in falsetto territory, Legend does indeed evolve with this record.

On this album, the music meets and sometimes exceeds those ambitions.

While it’s a novelty to hear 21st-century artists stretch so far out of their comfort zones, several sound out of their depth.

It's refreshingly under-eager. [Aug 2006, p.94]

With a little luck, this collection of mostly obscure covers could, on a smaller scale, do for Dando what the Rick Rubin-helmed American Recordings did for Johnny Cash.

Argos' delivery on Brilliant! Tragic! is a necessary and not unwelcome change, a way to keep the songs compelling and unpredictable.

This is an album for anyone born and raised with the inherently youthful and yearning spirit of rock ringing in their bones.

A Hundred Million Suns? Ugh. More like a hundred million yawns.

While Cleopatra may seduce the faithful, it would be far better if next time The Lumineers are able to regain their groove.

The playbook is obvious and efficiently executed. [Mar 2007, p.63]

Lyrics have never been Gilmour's forte, but now hooks have also abandoned him. [Jun/Jul 2006, p.117]

Miracle Mile is the most varied Starfucker joint to date. It’s also one of the prettiest party records you’ll hear this year.

On The Hurry and The Harm, everything feels much more carefully crafted and well-thought-out than on some of his previous releases, so that every instrument has a very specific, and important, reason for being included.

Prodigiously talented but frustratingly inconsistent, Lerche gives Heartbeat Radio an unsteady pulse.

It's clear that they have been able to hone their sound and perfect not only what listeners have come to love and expect, but also music the band itself wants to hear.

It might as well be Harcourt’s thesis: marrying the histrionic truths of the deeply aggrieved with the formal mastery of great pop. More often, Harcourt’s failed attempts at mimicking Jeff Buckley throw whatever genre he tries off balance.

Free Energy can put a damn pop hook together--problem is the execution.

It’s trademark Buzzcocks, with the slashing guitars to get you going and biting lyrics that let you know it’s not all fun and games.

A fine collection from a distinct band. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.105]

Most of these songs feel like a collection of unused material from their last two album sessions that really should’ve just been scrapped. It all seems phoned-in and apart from the singles, the rest of the tracks shouldn’t even suffice as b-sides. You’ll find yourself returning to exactly three songs, and in a tracklist of 11, they’re completely outgunned and overshadowed.

While Springsteen is notorious for painstakingly sequencing his albums, High Hopes was a losing battle--a puzzle with pieces that, more often than not, just don’t interlock.

Disconcerting and intensely beautiful. [Oct/Nov 2005, p.146]

Fifth falls in line on both counts, highlighted by the wistful, contemplative power-pop anthems “None of This Will Matter” and “Things on My Mind” but also lined with a lot of forgettable folk-tinged Middle of the Road rockers, the latter swirling together in a nondescript sea.

Triage is full of fun, catchy melodies that waste no time grabbing your attention. Fans of 2010s indie pop bands like Foster the People will eat this by the spoonful. Webb is an Aussie pop prince and a keen producer, and this album, even if it occasionally slips into lyrical drab, sounds like the career-honoring record he needed to make.

In this cultural moment where a soundtrack’s artistic credibility is measured by its ability to piggyback on the brilliance of James Mercer’s chord changes and/or Sam Beam’s whispery poeticism, Björk graciously peels back the firmament and reminds us that a good soundtrack bears the same responsibility as good cinema: to show us possibilities our dreaming minds couldn’t stitch together.

In short, arguably for the first time, Oberst gives us an album rife with liveliness--and it sounds like he had a damn good time making it.

Campbell's particular sense of catchy pop melody is a nightlight in the darkness. [#14, p.111]

Finds them doing pretty much what they've always done (hardly bad news). [#16, p.149]

Finds her instantly accessible sound evolving at a satisfying pace. [Aug/Sep 2005, p.130]

In terms of pure songwriting, Suckers have emerged with surprising (and, at times, frustrating) discipline.

The result is a collection of five songs that shine forth powerfully spare arrangements, emerging from your audio source to your ears like hauntings from a house inside a daydream.

Their debut comes off as lacking cohesion at first; then you realize it’s supposed to sound that way.

It’s a textbook case of hiding in plain sight, pirouetting gracefully from one style to the next and deftly eluding precise meaning.

Dreams Come True is nothing if not well-produced and lovingly assembled. Problem is: there ain't no soul.

Sov doesn't sound quite as explosive here as she did on her legendary demo tracks, but there's no containing her charisma. [Oct 2006, p.75]

[It] delivers the gorgeous musical equivalent of exactly what its title implies: a few fleeting moments shared between good friends in the twilight of youth. [Mar 2007, p.63]

Tender Madness is catchy and musically inviting, but it falls short of the mark the members have set for themselves.

Back to the Web finds the band at its best when Elf Power shakes off its drowsiness and recaptures glimpses of its former weirdness. [Aug 2006, p.95]

If lyrics like, “If you wanna find love / then you know where the city is,” still satisfy some unrequited teenage dreams, then The 1975 should fulfill that naïveté.

Siberia seems to have satisfied a need in Ideskog to break from production conformity, and while there are weak spots lyrically, its shadowy memories and hazy snapshots of the Russian railway emit a steady warmth you can return to.

With their excellent full-length debut, this savage young trio offers a stiff reminder of those bygone halcyon days when Chad Channing drummed for Nirvana instead of Dave Grohl.

The result is an audacious delight, delivering aural odysseys that slither in and out of the territory of heavy-lidded dance-club bangers, junkie-punk ragers, symphonic Baroque-pop gems, plaintive guitar-rockers and myriad lessons from the Marc Bolan school of glam-rock depravity.

Simplicity is king, as a relentlessly jaunty onslaught of jangle-pop hurtles ever onwards. [May 2007, p.96]

So many of its melodies tend to bleed into the background, and it takes time to pick apart what's worthwhile.

Ultimately, these guys work best when the stakes are lowered, when the pretensions and grandeur are set aside in favor of snot-nosed, nihilistic punk-pop clatter.

More daring and challenging than anything he's done up to now. [Sep 2006, p.75]

With Peter Wolf and Robert Plant out making records that push the needle in the revered oldster lane, Robertson and his famous friends could easily have taken more names.

A stopgap EP that simultaneously displays the best and worst of what ...Trail of Dead can do.

The singer/songwriter takes the back seat and lets the college kids channel their inner Folds, and they successfully do so--often stealing the spotlight away from Folds.

Even if the album sometimes feels thematically hollow, Utopia is still one of the most forward-thinking mainstream releases of the year. Scott is still pushing the boundaries of his psychedelic trap sound after ten years in the industry, and shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.

The production is predictably overblown, the lone bright spot being the tender, acoustic 'I’m Trying.'

It's not a masterpiece or a groundbreaking new direction musically, just an hour of mostly solid rock 'n' roll.

So maybe Kintsugi isn’t a perfect effort. But like the ceramic art itself, Death Cab’s attempt at repatching was thoughtful, deliberate and, at times, really beautiful.

Combining swelling '60s throwback harmonies and the sweet, swift wit of '50s songwriting, they parlay clichéd notions into winning melodies.

Lyrically, Major General can ride shotgun with Nicolay's most-famous band....Elsewhere, Major General's arrangements are ragged, or worse, distracting.

Innumerable intricacies layered into the background make for an encompassing wall of notes that pulls you into a unusual dance.

Cheap Trick and others from their graduating class may be perfectly content to carry on as walking memes, but In Another World reminds us that this veteran rock act still has lifeblood coursing through its veins.

11 killer-no-filler songs that steer through the '70s and early-'80s and veer from fist-pumping anthems to mid-tempo good-time rock, all with an ear for a killer pop hook.