It’s a ridiculous album, sure, but take "Defenders of the Faith," replace the Metallion with Nostradamus, double the number of awesome riffs, add the occasional pan flute and symphonic embellishments, and you have the most grandiose metal record likely to be released this year.

Pollard has long been in the business of writing songs, but here he seems invigorated; and for the first time in a long while, his business is mixed with pleasure.

All rappers ride on the claim that they’re the best, but on III Wayne makes his case.

Every song, no matter how familiar, is transformed by one detail or another.

It’s brimming with curious melodies (like the darkly cute skews of the title track), rich poetic detail (as lush as the orange carpet in '16A'), and a truly generous spirit (you can listen to the whole damn thing over and over).

Rook is flush with the hallmarks of Shearwater’s style, from high-wire drama to near-hymnal stillness. Although its songs aren’t as uniformly good as those on 2006’s "Palo Santo."

Singing gets no more graceful than Green’s hot buttered tenor, which he plies here with every micron of grace and soul he can muster. Add the Dap-King Horns (able backers of Sharon Jones and Amy Winehouse) and this is more than a soul album. It’s an album with soul.

No, Virginia ranks with Elvis Costello’s "Taking Liberties" as a B-sides/leftovers album that turns out to be more fun and more revealing than a thought-out official release.

'(Keep Eye On) Others' Gain' and the title track sound similarly hopeful. The gloom is still there on 'You Remind Me of Something' and 'Willow Trees Bend,' but it feels less crushing. There is also more variety to the sonic textures.

It’s a mere change of scenery, then, that separates this from much of the Wedding Present’s canonical work; the scabrous schoolboy humor of their 1987 debut, "George Best," has become the scabrous, middle-aged cynicism of El Rey.

It’s a sonic adventure thanks to Burnett’s current signatures: booming drum kits sans cymbals, knotty guitars, lyrics sung through amplifiers, and an open, airy quality that’s the antithesis of modern rock production.

After a few listens, the entirely synthetic remainder that is Supreme Balloon is not merely a relief but a delight. If anything, the limitation of having no limitations has revealed Matmos as more skilled, stylish, and sculptural here than on any of their past releases--not to mention versatile.

Costello’s flubbed lines are left intact and the album’s mixes can be wildly uneven, but missed perfections make for a pretty riveting whole.

Anyone expecting a return to the slick cinemafunk of ’90s Portishead will be taken aback by Third, but though the album never reaches the eureka moments of old, it’s a welcome step into new territory and a more than satisfying downer dose to set against the onset of sunny days and ice cream.

Rising Down is a grim mirror of a particular time and place, one that will still be worth the look when (if?) things get better somewhere down the line.

VYP nonetheless shows, perhaps by design, a pretty convincing arc of maturation.

The record bursts with energy and purpose, revealing the brilliance that advocates like the Roots’ ?uestlove have long suspected 9th had in him.

Recorded with his working band the Blokes, the album isn’t without its misfires (the obvious 'The Johnny Carcinogenic Show'), but it is Bragg’s most assured statement since hooking up with Wilco a decade ago to give life to lost Woody Guthrie lyrics.

Fans and detractors alike get exactly what they expect with bratty rockers like 'Outta My Head' and 'Rulebreaker,' but things seem to “get real” a bit with a more-introspective (if you can call it that) track like 'Murder (I Get Away With).'

But as a musical concern, the Conchords can’t hold a candle to [Tenacious] D, a shortcoming that’s much more apparent on this homonymous CD than it is on TV.

Unless he goes all Malcolm X on us behind the walls, this solid release will be just a prelude to whatever morbid thoughts Prodigy has to share upon his release.

This is an album steeped in a generation’s worth of nostalgia, but unlike most rehashed coming-of-age exercises, Saturdays = Youth manages, in its own small way, to offer something entirely new.

They don’t always succeed on Walk It Off, in part because producer Dave Fridmann’s oversaturated-in-both-senses-of-the-word indie-psych sound does them no favors in their attempt to establish an identifiable TNT brand.

Even Youngster’s more modest near-ballads, like 'My Year in Lists,' preserve the band’s boisterous style through outlandish lyrics (“You said, ‘Send me stationery to make me horny’/So I always write you letters in multi-colors”) and ecstatic delivery, making twee fare like long-distance relationships or working in a bookstore seem like serious pop paydirt.

What BYOP now lack is the element of surprise that made their debut such a kick; they no longer sound as if they had something to prove, and that drains their music of much of its charm.

His philosophizing is rarely twee, and his fine-oaked voice gives new authority to his pastis-and-mushroom-fueled musings.

Real Emotional Trash, with its long, winding guitar solos, extended jams, and emphasis on shifting psychedelic guitar textures, is as retro an album as Malkmus has ever recorded.

Good Time is old-school in the sense that he’s bypassed Nashville’s army of songwriters to pen all 17 songs himself, and modern in the sense that at least half of the 17 slide by your ears without making much of an impression.