Although the reinvention teased before release never materializes, Lust for Life is still a return to form which should cement Del Rey’s status as the queen of femme fatale pop.

Modern Guilt doesn’t quite make it to that flashpoint, but it certainly points the way to a musical future brighter than the endless, mirrored hall of 'Devils Haircut' rewrites that songs like 'E-Pro' suggested was coming. And that is a sea change worth waiting for.

What could have easily ended up as a boring, stale record -- the sound of a band getting ready for 401(k) land -- is instead the peaceful sound of a goofy band being a little less silly.

The group's bleak, sinister quality has always been one of its best assets, and in humanizing themselves, even in the record's shinier latter half, the musicians take on a slightly stronger shadow.

A powerfully uncomplicated rock album.

He never panders to them; instead, Plastic Beach's guest vocals are anchored by Albarn's own melodic flair. His falsettoed ennui shines through, and the songs are loaded with Albarn's pet sounds.

Each track stands on its own; there is no filler, and it highlights each musician's strengths.

Mark Kozelek is surely a distinct voice, and a dynamic guitar player, but there's a difference between playing solo and playing to yourself. And he stumbles over that line just enough to hold this album back from greatness.

The tensions on the second record take on new, fascinating layers as you go back to the perspective laid out on Born on a Gangster Star. The two also clash musically, sometimes echoing one another, sometimes conflicting. But both albums reward repeated listens.

Although Steeple is not entirely groundbreaking, it's not entirely safe either, as its fidgety temperament is remarkable enough to make anyone feel at home.

Chunks of Temporal will be inessential at best for casual fans, meant to appease only the diehards.

Ultimately, Trees Outside the Academy will most likely be remembered as Moore's most personal solo album, not because he sang with anymore emotion than anything he did with Sonic Youth, but because within its twelve songs he tackled many facets of music that interest him.

Simplicity works here, and even though the album may not have a clear direction, the array of song topics is catchy enough to make this alt-rock/indie/country/folk experience work.

King lacks an overall cohesiveness or direction.

Root for Ruin doesn't have the ecstatic heights of Let's Stay Friends, but it's more level-headed in a way.

This Is for the White in Your Eyes is a come-out-of-the-gate winner.

With an ear pointed to the type of gritty urban centers depicted on the album cover, Dirty Bomb references dubstep, baile funk, breakcore, North African drum patterns, Arabic folk music and Bollywood strings. And it will devastate your subwoofer.

While there's no shortage of stylistic/historical touchstones for the wildly varied batch of tracks that makes up Rites, there's some indefinable thread connecting it all, ultimately giving the band members their own sound whether they really want one or not.

The rookie blunders are kept to a minimum, and Wale’s mesmeric talent--the left-field punchlines, the charmingly laid-back flows, the nakedly emotional storytelling--is enhanced by lively beats that juggle eclectic synth-pop with throwback soul.

The live tracks, especially those on the second disc, are the songs that will win you over if you are still listening and still on the fence.

There is a tension inherent in the contrast between such well-known artists that makes for interesting possibilities. Moderat do well here by playing off of this tension while creating highly listenable songs.

True to its title, it finds the pair plowing away dutifully and deftly at the furrow that's been their focus from the beginning.

The album showcases Bethel and Paterson as solid songwriters who can willingly carry you into places no god-fearing man would dare travel.

While no single song on the album comes close to the weight and volume that Lift to Experience was capable of slinging, Last of the Country Gentlemen delivers its own subtle intensity.

In the end, The Fool's success comes in not cutting corners. No moment here settles for the cheap thrill, and in building these songs -- carefully,and each with its own distinct materials -- Warpaint comes off as an awfully confident band, one you should be listening to more often.

Spoils contains enough perverse and engaging lyrical quirks to make it worthy of investigation, and who can resist lines like: “And here’s the dowry of the leper/ A walnut shell and a peck of pepper” (from 'Hazel Forks').

A bewildering kaleidoscopic whirlwind that retains edginess and remains splendid all at once.

Take Care, Take Care, Take Care is another beautiful record from the band, and another fresh track laid on their sonic landscape, a slight tangent from their other records that never loses their overall direction.

As she sets her sights on bigger targets, namely war and terrorism, it's hard not to wish she'd remained as narrowly focused on the politics of personal freedom.

Reign is more nuanced and varied in sound than Treats was.

Even for Deerhoof, this is a tricky album to work your way through. But even if you never quite figure it out, it's unlikely you'll get tired of trying any time soon.

Cruising through a quieter set of cornfields than its predecessor, Celebration Castle never fully grasps the energy of Laced with Romance, but its songwriting and guitar work are equally as strong.

[Casablancas] builds atmosphere out of evocative lyrics and emotional scenery, and he does it without leaning on linear narrative or songs with singular interpretations.

Under The Pale Moon pays homage to the pasty romantics of '80s pop, the dramatic crooners of years further past, the intriguingly depraved icons of post-punk, and several others without sounding like a pastiche or a mere exercise in genre tourism.

The 22 tracks on this album range freely in length from 11 seconds to six and a half minutes and a rare few would stand on their own, as the musical shifts between them can be so slight.

You Are All I See suffers from the exact same problem that plagued another act with a helium-voiced frontman: Passion Pit on their 2009 album Manners. Instead of delivering full products that capitalize on their immediate strengths, both albums pad their triumphs with overdramatic bluster storms that fail to really go anywhere, and it's kind of a shame.

The duo successfully crosses Clark's talent of romanticizing morbidity through melody and Byrne's knack for eccentric pop by using a prominent horn section both as a bridge between the two and an unfamiliar element that distinguishes this as a partnered effort.

The Dodos have released what is at once perhaps their most interesting, strangest and even most concise work to date.

At times the results might sound strained, but they are entirely consistent both with the principles of free jazz, from which the record emerges, and with the spirit of Don Cherry, towards which it returns.

Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star is a curious new entry for the group. It expands the space-age palate of Lese Majesty, but slips in the unique tunefulness of Black Up. And yet it doesn’t quite sound like either, and--maybe unsurprisingly, at this point--it doesn’t sound like any other record you’ll hear this year.

Instead of complaining about the soullessness of life under the major-label umbrella, naysayers ought to be examining the band's true aesthetic motivations for taking an earthier, more straightforward approach on The King Is Dead.

Darnielle's usual knack for detail and word play is surgical here, as usual, but All Eternals Deck is notable for its wide sonic palate.

Make no mistake, though--the music of Hymn and Her is good, and the songs are almost always uniformly excellent examples of finely-honed pop songcraft. But when each excellent song sounds just like the slow, rainy Sunday pulse of a track that just preceded it, well, a few less hymns and a few more songs for rocking are in order.

Plumb is one of the top-shelf albums of 2012 so far because of Field Music's openness to continually tinker with pop music's DNA.

Celebration is as theatrical as it is guttural, with Ford’s voice bellowing above cabaret-style organs, sharp guitars and loose, spiraling drum riffs.

The Lucky Ones shows him to be as reassuringly sarcastic and self-deprecating as ever.

A beautiful back-porch album.

This selection method lacks the cohesion of a proper album, but the uniformity of the raw emotion throughout offers some thrilling highpoints.

While the songs may seem borderline psychotic at moments, the bright zeal of their delivery and the band's careful crafting imply some moving on.

At its weary, lovely close, it becomes clear that Live belongs not to the listener but to the artist who created it. And that makes this album one of the most vital and electric he's made in years.

Some of these songs do, of course, belong on the radio: They’re saturated with production effects catered to a generation that calls its designer drug “ecstasy,” all wrapped around indulgent hooks, sentimental lyrics, and a sweet voice airbrushed into flawlessness. But Annie flaunts too much.

When the proper songs throughout are so uniformly good in spite of their fractured approaches, complaining about scarcity seems despicably greedy.

It's an album that sounds like it was difficult to make, as these two move from being the couple to being the players, and that difficulty yields some of their most beautiful moments on record yet, even if it also (and perhaps necessarily) gets in the way of the songs sometimes.

It lacks the mind-blowing qualities that made Rounds the essential album in his catalogue, but Everything Ecstatic is another must-own from Four Tet, the most reliable of producers.

To say that Oh Holy Molar has a bite is a vast understatement -- the record grabs ahold of your skin and refuses to let go.

Suckers fire off Wild Smile, an album that exceeds all possible expectations and lays down a challenge for all debuting bands this year.

The elements that make the band's performances distinct are all there: Finn’s rapid-fire, sometimes nearly incoherent delivery; the chemistry between the band members; the between-song banter that is equal parts inviting and human and kind of crazy.

The album complements each situation differently, and new elements become apparent with each listen.

Big Business boys Coady Willis and Jared Warren, the drum/bass duo, returned for their third album as members of the Melvins in 2010, keeping the hot streak going with The Bride Screamed Murder.

She's ditched the medieval allusions to dragons and fairies and most of the courtly, classical sound that marked so much of the later Helium material and her early solo material. But what results in many ways sounds like a rehash of her previous work.

Overall, though, Days is a great sophomore album and solid evidence that Real Estate is growing and ready to settle in for the long haul.

A noticeable departure on Kiss Each Other Clean is that Beam seems to be having a genuinely good time on the album.

The album features Leo's most meaty and confidant singing to date.

Despite Delta Spirit’s anarchic (i.e., creatively opportunistic) sampling of everything from cold war folk to the Cold War Kids, when the band members hit their stride--as on the rumbling, locomotive grooves of piano-stung epic Americana on 'Trashcan'--Sunshine becomes nothing less than an ode to musical joy.

Not only does it stand as a summation of their greatest (previous) strengths, its rhythmic and propulsive sway points to a new, more fervently alive direction for the group, making both the band and album’s name all the more appropriate.

[Pfeffer] pruned this album to an essential thirty-two minutes, in which every note (and there are a lot of them) has its purpose and every bizarre genre switch leads somewhere important and ends before wearing out its welcome.

It's OK to play with enthusiasm. Oh, and also, it helps to have an album with 12 fantastic songs, the way the do on Nothing Hurts.

Bromst annihilates all the expectations that have come to be expected of Deacon, without abandoning what made him everyone’s favorite dance-party czar.

Santogold is sure to be one of the year’s best albums, with only one near-miss (“My Superman”), an album that may become unavoidable in coming weeks and months.

Molina has created a genre all her own, and Un Dia is its pièce de résistance.

This is a bit more than a simple holiday cash-in, but it falls short of anything all that necessary or memorable.

There may be a language barrier to be dealt with here, but the feelings of the songs here transcend all walls, real or perceived.

Essentially, Forgiveness Rock Record finds Broken Social Scene trading "big and loud" for "wide and warm" and as a result sounding like they've really just settled further into their identity as a band.

No matter what music critics might say about the album, Karen O scores a direct hit in her most important demographic. That she was able to do it without pandering or obvious compromise is a tribute to her artistry.

Castlemania indicates that like the most accomplished psychedelia, Thee Oh Sees are thoroughly capable of adding dimensionality to "odd"--and oddness to "pop."

A solid set of tunes with some interesting musical elements not typically present in Beam's dynamic.

At this point in his career, Slug seems fully aware of his own routine, and he’s either embracing it with a cheeky self-confidence (read: he’s getting boring) or he’s run out of interesting things to say but still feels like he’s somehow controversial in his honesty.

Bestival offers the opportunity to take a tour of the band's long, fruitful career, stopping at each stylistic turn in their journey to take in the sonic scenery, but it also adds the freshness that only a live performance can bring.

It's as good an introduction to the band as those 2008 singles were; sometimes thrilling, sometimes disappointing, but always formidable.

If Family Perfume Vol. 1 can be seen as a progression where Presley is settling into his skin, Family Perfume Vol. 2 is a cathartic catalogue of letters never sent, the consequences of past decisions poignant enough to keep Presley musing, wide-eyed, remorseful--but nonetheless hopeful.

A curiously good time from beginning to end.

An album full of majestic pop tunes in their absolute truest form.

The Roots are about to get flooded with production offers, since if they can lend John Legend serious street cred and make him more thrilling than he has ever been, they ought to be able to do this for everyone.

Ghostface's beat selection is impeccable.

Of all the bands in the rock canon, Wire may be the best embodiment of the term “forward-thinking” that is so vogue nowadays, and Object 47 keeps with the mantra with stunning results.

Undercard is a solid listen all the way through, and proof that Darnielle and Bruno have a chemistry that can last through 10 years of dormancy, and that Darnielle can still surprise with a song, even when we think we know what to expect from him.

On Weekend At Burnie's, Curren$y has crafted a record he's probably chilling out to right now.

Rock tropes work well for them. They shouldn't be afraid to embrace that in perpetuity.

A front-to-back play of Guns may not work for a dorm-room style throwdown, but it is a successful album of dancehall tracks that shows good teamwork within this collaboration.

But for all the sonic changes and glimmers of hope, the best stuff here still sounds like boilerplate Jurado. Swift's production is at its best when it adds subtle atmospherics to the fragile melody of "Kansas City," or the dusty flourishes to the chorus of "Harborview."

Tomboy's best quality is its consistency with Lennox's vision, in spite of the critical hullabaloo surrounding it.

Here they've proved that their success isn't all charm or happenstance. Woods have gotten to this point by following every creative impulse, and they seemingly have a million more possibilities stretching out ahead.

What makes it breathe, what allows it to flourish above its glitchy techno, its processed wizardry... what untangles it from a mess of circuitry and power strips and anti-virus pop-up warnings, is Yorke's incredible, distinctive voice.

It's encouraging to watch a band shift and grow and manage to stay essentially true to form-such is the case here, as is for the album in entirety.

Sure, he can hide his identity, but there's no denying his sudden emergence as one of dance music's notable producers, very well steeped in his own layered aesthetic, yet open enough to welcome other musical influences into the fold.

Robyn could've put together a single album filled with all-knockout jams, but it's better than she got to exercise her brain trying to fit in everything she wanted.

The album is filled with well-conceived, well-executed pop pieces, but it would be silly to pretend that the musical landscape, including Top 40, isn't occupied by songwriters who make reasonably innocent songs about boys at least as well as Best Coast does.

Without question, part of Shocking Pinks' charm is the intimacy of its unpolished production values, but, with a little more patience and rigorous revision, it's easy to see Harte's best songs being even better.