Some tracks, of course, are as sexy as a soggy batch of freedom fries once the words are comprehensible. But the best updates... have a seedy splendor all their own.

This time the throwbacks are so brazenly imitative, they might raise the copyright hackles of the earliest copyright infringers.

Think of it as rock-and-roll comfort food.

The warmth and the easy familiarity enable The Trials of Van Occupanther to stand on its own.

Peaches sharpens her synth hooks, varies the electrogrooves, and serves up 13 tracks that are just amusing enough in their risqué behavior to keep the smiles coming while also standing behind the political point of the title.

You’re unlikely to encounter another pioneering techno-pop act entering its third decade with style and substance largely intact.

Keith is... for the first time living up to the standards of his most important precursor, the shape-shifting funkateer George Clinton. That is, even as he jokes and grooves his way through Octagon’s long-awaited return, he’s also serious as shit.

Phillips captures the imagery, as well as the heart, of an era’s underground.

It’s Frank Black on his first real roll as a solo artist.

If the lyrics weren’t so surreal, you could imagine yourself dining with George and Tammy before a Grand Ole Opry performance.

[Sonic Youth's] most openly “mature” disc, possibly their best since ’95’s Washing Machine, maybe even the almighty Daydream Nation.

Always ambitious, occasionally experimental, and sometimes even radio-friendly.

Son exudes the studied calm of a laboratory technician engaged in heavy-duty experimentation.

Although they love drama, AFI never abandon believability here. Which means the arena-rock trappings don’t make the music feel fake -- they just make it feel more exciting than life.

It’s this willingness to experiment with sounds and percussion that distinguishes Psapp from their electro-organic brethren.

Free To Stay is all about hyper, exuberant tunes as accessible to Kidz Bop kids as they are to parents.

Although Citrus allures with its dizzying waves of sound and airy melodies, the band never let those elements become tangential or spiral off into cul-de-sacs of pointless theatrics.

It’s better this way, all apologies to Meg White.

At War with the Mystics is as accessibly odd as Yoshimi but more scattered and darker.

In a genre dominated by sensitive boys in sneakers and second-hand cardigans, Rainer Maria have had an edge: ... There’s barely a male voice to be heard on Catastrophe Keeps Us Together.