In Preliminaires, the Stooge King has put together a perfect soundtrack for a short, doomy stay in the Hotel Lautréamont.

Cut in Nashville with ace session players, what might have been a disastrous mess in other hands coheres into one of Costello's most satisfying releases in some time.

Phoenix deal with an American genre on its own terms--and in its own language--far better than most homegrown bands.

BMSR have, however, gone for extra credit and studied up on their Free Design and David Axelrod; they may even have taken more quaaludes.

Alpers has a knack like few others for spinning our over-interconnected loneliness into something more like a blissful collective daydream.

His deadpan honk of a singing voice calls to mind a less caustic Mark E. Smith, and he arranges the 12 quick songs with a gift for effective repetitive hooks and reductive structures.

Their loping AM-radio psychedelia--like later Stereolab or lighter Dungen--engages with enough noise (if not complex rhythms) to keep the band out of mawkish territory.

Anyone up to date on the current dance-punk scene would have little trouble taking most of these 11 songs as outtakes from recent albums by such higher-profile acts as Soulwax, LCD Soundsystem, and Simian Mobile Disco.

After years of Boston's repping itself on the national stage with scally caps and mime make-up, the promising prospect of a blog-stoking, pant-tightening, fresh-making outfit like the Pit feels long overdue. The good news is, it sounds only slightly so.

The music simply crawls by in a maddeningly static mid-tempo blur, going about its melancholy business on the way to nowhere.

The meta quality of the immoral, libidinous singer refracted through unblinking irony feels too transparent for a songwriter of Cocker's depth.

Some bands make a third album; others make something more like a third refinement of "the album." This feels like the (charmed) latter.

B.S. includes far more filler than it needed to.

The sonic touchstones are rediscovered gems of Latin American psychedelia mixed with the work of romantic cantautores (singer-songwriters) from the waning days of Franco in the '70s.

Whereas their 2006 disc, "Moonlighting," was across-the-board impressive but a tad monotonous, their latest hinges on memorable and unpredictable style jumps.

It could have easily gone any of several wrong ways, but Green Day's punk has long since been tempered with pop's most attractive attributes, and 21stCentury Breakdown, like its predecessor, is unapologetically accessible and relentlessly exhilarating.

Townes does what a tribute album should do: Earle evokes the essence of the honoree without giving up a smidgen of his own individuality.

This is the work of artists confident enough to embrace a sound that makes them happy.

It’s just solid, classic Dolls, with all the swagger, muscle, righteous kitsch, and ballsy defiance you expect, plus some new twists.

'Jerks' is a scathing freakout that made me want to hear Sonic Youth's cover of the Untouchables' 'Nic Fit' all of a sudden; '7/23' is a clopping, slightly flat, strangely iridescent love note; and the focus that disperses over the course of six hazy minutes of 'State Numbers' takes the opportunity of "The Ricercar of Dr. Clara Haber" to slap itself in the face a few times and the shimmering outburst of 'The Lighter Side of... Hippies' to remind you why you made it so deep into this oddly arresting album in the first place.

For their ninth studio album, the Welsh quintet go heavy on vamps, riffs, and refrains; the result is their most spontaneous and blissfully lax effort since 2000's "Mwng."

Callahan sprinkles his world-weary perspective with enough wry humor to make the album pleasant and endearing.

It isn't new indie-rock territory, and spring is certainly an odd time to release such a puzzling (and puzzled) record, but I couldn't stop listening to it.

Two Suns rarely ventures into anything truly experimental; when it does, as in the maelstromic beat of 'Siren Song' or the Scott Walker cameo in album closer 'The Big Sleep,' it makes you curious as to what Khan could deliver if she weren't so committed to her "studenty" (in the UK sense) affectations.

Levy's unorthodox and, in some cases, homemade instruments strum and stutter with calculated abandon; her heavy British accent slumps itself across this glitchy bubblegum arcade and blunts it.

This is not so much a reinvention as another way to look deep into the heart of Elliott's music. It's also an early nominee for folk album of the year.

Fans will welcome the grotesquely titled 'Ultra Vomit Craze' and 'Gag Shack,' reveling in subtle mood shifts found amid the ferocious racket. Skeptics and nay-sayers will remain unconvinced of the genre's ability to move beyond bratty outbursts.

Ogerman charts emphasize minor keys, creating a moody emotional palette for the album. And, as usual, Krall's honeyed voice and carefully chiseled playing are as spare and perfect on every cut as her core quartet's accompaniment.