It’s the sonic equivalent of the stereotypical laissez-faire worker who breezes through presentations on sheer personality alone. Is that presentation good? That’s debatable. But you’d listen to it again and again if you had the choice.

In a postmodern age of irony and cynicism, of self-absorbed navel-gazing, when too many bands want to make vapid political statements and shallow social commentary, AC/DC reliably deliver the goods: solid blues-based rock ‘n’ roll that gets the blood pumping and the air guitar strumming.

It’s not surprising that What Will We Be sounds, then, like a relaxed, slightly crisper take on the ideas that informed his previous release. This haze of lazy Tropicalia, occasionally interrupted by an indulged moment of proggy vamp, isn’t necessarily a compromise.

An album that is pretty, stream-lined, and much too often dull.

Given to the Wild is an accomplished, filler-free record that presents a band at peak condition, handily exceeding the marginal example set by similar-sounding acts.

The charm of both Kweller and his songs lies in their vulnerability, which is covered up here with drums and mildly abrasive guitar chords, rather than sitting in plain view on chirping and squeaking acoustic guitar strings.

The Blue Album is the quintessential Orbital album, because it manages to hit every expectation that the duo have created over the course of their 15-year career. But it meets these expectations, quite brilliantly in places, without ever truly exceeding them.

After such a promising start, Bailey Rae and her stable of producers simply lose momentum.

Sheek and Ghost may lead the army to battle on every track, but the rotating cast and general camaraderie makes Wu-Block feel like the no bullshit Wu-Tang sort of album segments of the fanbase have been clamoring for since 8 Diagrams.

It doesn't know what it wants to be--which is part of its weakness.

Apart from the reinvigorated songs from Woman, there's no urgency to any of the material here.

Cowboy's eerie calm reflects the domestic quietness every adolescent party animal fears stumbling into when they get older.

This style shift does give Ealom some more flexibility in her range. But if the chipper, twee sounds of "I Found Out" and "Jenny Come On" were your initial draws to Dressy Bessy, then you might find the more punky direction a bit confounding.

Terraplane is a respectful homage by a gifted singer and songwriter, but it only intermittently provides the pleasures of a topnotch blues record.

The only thing that prevents Fantastic Playroom from being a wholly perfect creation is the simple fact that, as good as it is, this is still only their first album.

While the demos CD is guaranteed to please longtime devotees, the remakes will polarize many.

The result is an unfortunately all-too short album that deftly and smartly balances frenzied punk, aural ambience and a little bit of pop friendliness.

The few tracks where Seeland drop the ball reveal that their sound is dangerously amenable to turning into mere wallpaper, though. If they focus on sticking to the extremes of their pleasant palette Seeland might be on to something.

As far as such [vanity] projects go, you could do worse than Some Things Never Stay the Same. But you could also do much better.

It’s a trip on concept alone, but Haines remains a deft enough producer of ear worms to make a listener feel like the majority of New York in the ‘70s’s dozen tracks are on permanent vacation within the recesses of his or her brain.

The sequencing is what makes this disc such a divine pleasure: we get to hear a band grow from grinning upstarts to tension-battered road warriors.

Maybe Galactic is best as just an instrumental band, or maybe they need a new vocalist (the last one split a couple of years ago), or maybe they just need to pick more interesting hip-hop artists to work with. Any way you slice it, though, this album just isn't getting it done.

Such missteps and miscalculations are permissible, however, given that Life in Slow Motion plays as much like a debut album by a young star-in-the-making who just got a record deal with a big studio budget as much as it does like an eighth album by a jaded industry veteran over a decade into his career.

Mind of Mine leaps right over anything on Justified and carves a path of its own. Next decade’s boybands will doubtless provoke discussion on which of them will break out like this, which one will be a Zayn.

Working with new producers has opened up his style, his writing, his approach, all in exciting ways. He just might need a more brutal editor going forward.

At once iconic, and yet still fiercely non-conformist, the singular appeal of these punk pioneers is as powerful today as it ever was.

All in all, Platinum Tips + Ice Cream is the rare case of a band distilling its various eras coherently and presenting the whole of its parts in a way that makes you thrilled to partake in even a small portion of punk rock alien communion.

Ben Folds has finally taken the focus off of his ever-evolving cast of inspired characters, and has finally written an album that centers on himself; unfortunately, it seems entirely possible that his trademark humility has finally gotten the best of him, as he has fashioned himself the least interesting of any of his own characters.

Although there are still individual songs here and there that are over-the-top, this album sounds more like the Badly Drawn Boy of old. But since the songs aren't up to the high standards he set for himself a decade ago, It's What I'm Thinking is more like Gough doing a mediocre imitation of early Badly Drawn Boy than recapturing what once made him great.

Colvin needs to bring something new to the songs, but for the most part does not perform them much differently than the older tunes.

Flesh and Machine‘s live performances may belong to the night, but the sensations stirred through listening to the album will linger for far longer.

The repeated songwriting formula becomes predictable, and loses some of its power.

Which Side Are You On? shows all of DiFranco's strengths and weaknesses and it displays her increasing maturity where she is finally at peace with herself, but hasn't lost her biting wit.

This is the kind of beautiful album that Reed knows he can make in his sleep yet seldom does.

As improbable as it sounds, imagine if Goldfrapp teamed up with Jamiroquai and you have a sense of what DOS sounds like -- seductive, ebullient, unabashedly retro, infectiously uptempo and wrapped up in the kind of maneater theatrics most pop music has shied away from since Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger" heyday.

Closing In might be a fun listen, but considering the wealth of metal bands who continue to push the genre's boundaries further outward, it's odd that Matador would put so much attention on a band as blatantly retro as Early Man.

At heart, this is a back-to-basics album a la "Death Magnetic" or R.E.M.’s "Accelerate;" not essential, but definitely worth a look.

If they more often took the step from cute to sexy, Acrylics would deliver a lusher and brasher brand of pop.

The end result is an album that feels like a group of experienced musicians experimenting and amusing themselves without sacrificing a core thread of melody.

Do It! is a mediocre album, and further cements Clinic’s status as a retro novelty band.

A Certain Ratio's musical expansiveness is felt most strongly on the album's closing track, "Taxi Guy", a percussion/horns/electronics-fueled instrumental.

It all seems too clean, too polished, and too shiny. Now and then, there are little hints of the raw power of their early work. But generally it all seems so sadly professional.

It's as if Adams is doing an imitation himself, of what he thinks "Ryan Adams" should be, or what fans at large expect: the roots rocker, the alt-country troubadour, all that clichéd Gram Parsons successor rubbish.

If you can get past the lyrics, the album is a decent listen.

With its antiseptic production and complete lack of warmth, and the subsequent disconnect between singer and song, I can’t yet listen to West without wondering when Lucinda’s going to release the proper version.

White Lies for Dark Times is a strong, rocking record that certainly pays homage to a time when rocking mattered more than record sales, and a time when some would say music was at its best.

The happiness of the album is catching like the cheer of a sunrise.

While it is a very good sounding record, this album doesn’t quite hold together from song to song.

Nomad doesn’t engage as immediately as the horde of rather overwhelmingly technical full-lengths bearing the same tag in 2008 does--the Bristol, UK artist’s work comes off repetitive in parts.

The feeling that this is your neighborhood bar band gives the music a punch of energy that's memorable. At the same time, the stories in the music, and the ways they're told, are less distinct, even generic.

On this, Dj Kicks, Photek maintains the quality that the series has become synonymous with, while providing us with a glimpse of a new, and dare I say it, more mature artist. An artist no longer worried about playing to the crowd, rather, an artist following his own musical path.

What The Story of Light shows in the end is that for every daring composition he gets right, there will be a few that are either too safe or not as well thought out.

It’s the sort of album that might not work all the time, but fits excellently to certain moments.

The 19-song set is well-paced and there’s less of the bloat—mostly overlong guitar soloing—that made for tedious moments on previous tours. But with the Stones’ expansive catalog, why always the same selections?

The album as a whole is just a big, wonderful surprise. Start to finish.

True is an album that takes one type of music and moulds it into something completely different, allowing Avicii to cement himself as one of the best DJs in the world.

In short, the band is better when their brand of noise rock resembles sludge metal than when they focus on hardcore.

Basically, the album is as bleak as the location that inspires it.

The sonics are enough to carry the Velveteers through the less-inspired tracks, and keeping the album under the 40-minute mark ensures that the listener won’t get bored. The trio’s songs are only there about half the time on Nightmare Daydream, however. That leaves the group with a solid first album that falls just short of being a true breakout.

There are moments on Untogether where the music comes close to the sensuality that it frequently hints at, but it’s so caught up in embracing separation that it pushes out anything resembling redemption.

Understated but not weak, solid but never boring, the album proves that you don’t have to speak loudly to make yourself heard. Ambivalence never sounded so good.

In the end, Funhouse bites off more than it can chew, but it never chokes on its ambitions: it shows Pink as one who is unsure of her post-marital identity, hopping around from emotion to emotion without ever settling onto a state of stability until the album’s well-timed closing moments.

Here, the band tosses in elements of new wave and post-punk, making their music an even more encompassing, dizzying, and gratifying blend of influences.

This is certainly a purchase longtime fans will justly want to grab. However, if you are a newer fan who, for some reason, wants to start with one of the group’s more recent releases, Freak Puke or Nude With Boots might be a better choice since they are more consistently rocking.

There’s something cathartic in seeing another’s isolation. Thistled Spring, however, is bracing because it refuses to wallow anymore.

The most glaring problem with The Lost Riots is that it's just no fun.

With their reverence for the past and all things twee, C86, and noise pop related, Gold-Bears have their limitations, but luckily, they're already well versed in working their sweet spot.

Woman does provide Justice’s most human sound to date, if you will. That sound is made particularly clear by including more singing and lyrics than they’ve been known to do. Despite so many tracks feeling substantially longer than called for, Justice presents new ideas and a sound fuller here.

He shows here that he is much more than the swagger and smut of some of his previous releases. He has made it clear to the world that he has real vision and dexterity.

She’s Gone is a thoroughly catchy, energetic, and sometimes fascinating rock record, the kind of great start that makes you think this band has a lot more to say going forward.

While The Terror sharply divided fans and Oczy Mlody fails to to anything notable or interesting, Mlody isn’t a bad album: just a forgettable, dismissable one.

Without knowing the musical and political climate at the time, and without knowing Dylan's future place in both camps, this disc is slight at best.

The Messenger isn’t groundbreaking or iconic in itself, but it’s thoroughly enjoyable music from a groundbreaking and iconic artist.

Misery and heartache added a much more interesting layer to these songs the first time around, but it all still works. Formulaic though they might now seem, the quartet's reverb-drenched songs of lust and longing still beguile, and on Cry, that sultry voice continues to be a ravishingly beautiful thing to behold.

If Forcefield is about hitting you in the moment, it does that. Sadly, much of it doesn’t last for the moment that comes next.

Bombay Bicycle Club seems to be content with genre hoping on each of their releases, and perhaps it won’t make for any one great album, but it makes for an entertaining discography.

While crossover potential is huge with their more conventional, contemporary sound, Freedom is doomed to connect on a far more limited level than their early triumphs, especially with the genre’s diehards.

Their best, most mature, and most vital effort to date.

Proof that a return to one's roots does not necessarily have to mean rehashing the past.

On the whole, Etheridge seems to be back circa Yes I Am, which is a good thing for fans and newcomers.

Refusing to settle into one definition, No Doubt is vibrant and full of life here, even if the heights it reaches for aren't always achieved.

The high point of the band's career.

Mostly, 29 is inhabited by half-formed or downright failed songs that never get comfortable in the reductive environment.

The disc sticks reliably to the formula that found them their rotation on radio, trading fluid and flashy runs from guitarist Travis Stever with Claudio Sanchez’s contagious storyteller swoon.

There’s something profoundly unsettling about D-Sides. It’s better than it has any right to be.

Samurai is an often frustrating listen, but at a minimum, it is always interesting.

When Kasher and his bandmates really have something to say, this scream can be a revelation; when they don't, it sounds stilted, silly, like it's issuing from a mouth that has nothing to scream for but still screams anyway. On Vitriola, the band's eighth full-length, there are good screams and bad screams.

There’s a heavy metal fence around much of New Maps of Hell that does sometimes feel new, or at least like revitalization of old habits.

We get some huge heavy hitters who do very good-to-great work. But the record sinks into pink slush during the so-so-filler tracks. Although there are some fantastic high points and some tacky low points, Barbie: The Album still manages to pull through with a cheeky victory, even if it’s qualified.

A small number of bands has continued to carry that torch in an effort to find places for innovation and elbow room for fresh sounds without coming off as cheesy or hollow. Silverstein is one of those bands, and with Rescue, they've crafted another great record.

Unfortunately, Solar Power just isn’t palpable for anyone beyond Lorde’s existing fanbase or background noise for a mellow summer picnic.

Throughout, Pete Rock gives the listeners what they came for: his beats, grounded but lifting off with an outerspace tendencies, highstepping with snare or petering off with synthesized tail ends.

Other pop fans are more likely to see through the emperor’s new clothes and call this for what it is: mostly weak but with a couple of monkey magic moments.

Castle is a good vocalist and a skilled guitar player, but her songwriting abilities seem to be a work in progress.

Ultimately, Days of Abandon is an album that feels like the Pains of Being Pure at Heart are trying to settle into a new sense of what it is as a band, whether that’s because Kip Berman is still continuing to find his voice as a songwriter or because his music sometimes sounds more like its influences than what it once was not so long ago.

This 19th album may not quite be the best of their releases, nor is it the most accessible album to come out of 2013 (accessibility would not exactly be very Melvins, would it?), but Melvins fans and fans of experimental rock, novelty songs and the classic punk style that never took itself too seriously will find a lot to love in Tres Cabrones.