The album is full of this kind of mish-mash, but it never feels forced or too clever. In fact, it's the apparent lack of thought that makes the whole thing work.

Their signature '80s homage is consistent across their songwriting, lyrics, album covers, and design - even their videos. And despite their claims to the contrary, the duo have enough self-aware irony to rise above the level of a throwback novelty act or a one-trick nostalgia pony.

The collection itself is haphazard; what's worse is that the individual tracks build and remain suspended in mid air by very thin and awkward threads, rarely growing into full-fledged arrangements.

There are rare glimmers here, but maturity sure is sobering.

Teenage Dream is front-loaded with synthetic whump-pop that fuses Perry's singular vocal nag to irresistible songsmithery.

As a wholly serious project, Warp Riders is self-indulgent and only passable.

The Orchard cracks open a window to dreamy possibilities.

The songs all melt together after a while - they're charming but not memorable.

What they lack in consistency they make up for in intentions. It's soul for all the right reasons.

Where's the band's personality? Promises glimmer everywhere, as when off-kilter instrumental breaks start stabbing away at "18th Street," but the entire album eventually drifts past without delivering anything as sonically-or emotionally-provocative.

Her magnetic debut album doesn't aim to break new ground, but her rustic, Stevie Nicks–ish voice unifies the myriad sounds that position her as both a radio-ready alt-country chick and a young, hip folkstress who pulls off online covers of Lady Gaga and Kid Cudi.

The lyrical immediacy and intimacy lift Black City leagues above much of the disassociated drivel that's labeled vocal house.

Wilson may be most famous for his own good-time rock-and-roll hits, but in underselling the Gershwins he's neglected his own very sophisticated and currently under-utilized capabilities.

There's nothing all that intelligent about anything SSLYBY have said or played, and Let It Sway is no exception--but someone will always love pure, simple, feel-good pop rock.

His simple songs come closer to eclipsing their cliches and becoming classics when they aren't buttered with dobro and pedal-steel arrangements that sound like afterthoughts. But when you're allowed to get close to the raw artist, you witness something truly special.

True, Camu Tao hadn't mastered the art of songwriting: verses and choruses abound, whereas bridges are conspicuously absent. But even half-built tracks like "Bird Flu" and "Intervention" are proof that he could create engaging and catchy hooks alongside vocals that matched his new palette without diluting the hip-hop aesthetic. Such songs are tantalizing examples of unrealized potential--a sad indication of what could have been.

What separates Reed from his would-be contemporaries is just how much Come and Get It! is not a pop-crossover record -- a point that is the album's strength, as well as its potential weakness.

It would help if the songs were better, but with all the up-and-down scales and chirp-chirp-chirpiness, the American Express commercial gradually gives way to a Riverdance special on pay-per-view.

The band's wonderfully detached mood seems born of their music's head-bouncing distractibility rather than any pretentious pondering.

He sounds like the dude from Blink-182 - just another suburban punk whining about this and that.

Praise & Blame casts away the extraneous baggage that has weighed down many of Jones's previous recordings and puts the focus squarely on the voice.

The good news is, this album is going to garner a dozen swoons in her direction for each romantic woe she professes on it.

On their debut, the young Beach Fossils separate themselves from the rest of the pack by coloring the ubiquitous surf-pop sound with a listlessness that makes them seem like weary veterans.

The details are stacked on in such neat pieces--background piano arpeggios here, a couple of skronking guitar notes there--that it's all reduced to very well executed window dressing.

The Tigers have no trouble doing vivacious and catchy without being cloying, so it's a shame they've shelved that skill.

Joe is one of the last remaining beasts from the East, and as he demonstrates on the DJ Premier ringer "I'm Gone" and "At Last Supremacy" with Busta, he sounds better in his back yard than he does in trying to appease pedestrians with unnecessary Wayne and Jeezy cameos.

Anyone digging into Maya (or MAYA, as it's being promoted) expecting club-banging pop hits will be . . . not disappointed, but definitely confused.

Every song here showcases Linkus's gift for pinpointing little benchmarks in hopelessness with brittle gestures of melody and ambiance. It's also another reminder of Danger Mouse's ability to whittle lean pop shivs from gnarly splinters.

But tempos that gait like a swinging pocket watch and Kozelek's drowsy, double-tracked voice make a strong case for a spellbinding kind of sublimity. This uncanny effect is even more pronounced on Admiral Fell Promises.

Aphrodite feels like a disjointed hodge-podge of shallow Hi-NRG dance-floor bangers for a decidedly older crowd.

Here, he recruits a cast of producers ranging from the familiar (Dungeon Family compatriots Mr. DJ and Organized Noize) to the surprisingly appropriate (Scott Storch, Lil Jon) to craft a palette of dexterous futurist funk that seems to be a logical successor to the groundwork laid by 2003's Speakerboxxx.

Again and Again is a beast of a different color, the sound of a classic New Order or Pet Shop Boys track--if someone had first sunk his incisors in and drained the blood from it.

Ambition might sound like an odd thing to chide a band for, but if Wolf Parade had figured out when to push the hooks and when to pull back the excess, Expo 86 would have shone.

There's no risk here, but there's plenty that's right.

Having put aside the gimmicky Atari-melting antics of yore, the Castles have created a dense-yet-airy thicket of pure pop transcendence.

It's great to know the band still have some ire burning, but White Crosses is a crushing listen for someone who bought into Against Me!'s revolution.

He’s no slouch in his endless catalogue of exhumed pop tropes, and here he treats radio pop’s past with the all-encompassing vagueness of its title.

A good deal of the album (particularly the first half) uses the new-fangled instrumentation sporadically, as an afterthought to a slightly darker version of the duo's time-honored techniques. This is where LP4, though flawlessly produced, is messy.

Apparitions is a solid debut that both emulates the band's contemporaries and revisits a once influential genre that most of that peer group have all but abandoned.

Disorienting at first spin, Wild Smile rewards by reconciling the easily digestible and the weird with each subsequent listen.

Alas, at this stage of the game, The Chaos may satisfy, but it rarely excites - something of a snag for a band whose whole purpose seems to be capturing in song the thrill of a thrill.

Up-tempo club jams like "Break Your Heart," "Dynamite," and "I Can Be" sport melodies sturdy enough to support all the digital detailing, and power ballads such as "I'll Never Love Again" and "Falling in Love" do the gathering-steam thing as efficiently as more traditionally presented songs by Diane Warren or Kara DioGuardi.

As confidently current as Say It comes off, it doesn’t sound susceptible to fashion. Given enough attentive ears, the Ruffians may have made a statement that will last a long time--or at least assembled enough ears for the next one.

Yet if the title is straightforward, the music often isn’t, with LaVette teasing out new emotional details from songs that seemed to have given up all their secrets decades ago.

The likes of Kate Nash and company have flitted through this piano siren/exuberant dance-diva territory, but never mind, because this gorgeous genre starts now.

As its title hints, this overstuffed album of addictive party starters seems likely to be stuck in our present for a long time to come.

Brothers finds the Black Keys digging their own space, one that needn’t be geographically defined.

There’s atmosphere, sure, but it’s less sad-guy sitting room and more 22nd-century juke joint.

Hollenbeck leavens the severity of his attack with instrumental warmth and unusual ensemble timbre: reeds (Chris Speed), accordion (Ted Reichman), vibes (Matt Moran), bass (Drew Gress), percussion--plus, on Royal Toast, frequent collaborator Gary Versace on piano.

All in all, not bad for the inevitably disappointing follow-up to the greatest rap disc ever made.

Forsaking subtly Southern melancholy in favor of jangling, twanging hillbilly heartbreak, Here's to Taking It Easy misplaces amplified country fever instead of channeling it.

More often, however, CooRosie appear uninterested in the listener's experience--and that can make Grey Oceans a bit of a slog. The cost of their commitment is you.

The lyrics do little to stand out, but that hardly blights the rest of the experience. And none of the 13 tracks on Nothing Hurts tops the 2:45 mark, so it’s a speedy listen.

For a band known more for untamed drones and out-there sonics, Totaled's tempering of pop and experimentation is a welcome new feel.

The rest of the album, which was produced by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, never quite lives up to that early peak.

The bilious frontman has aged like a cheap wine: embittered, but with enough kick left to make for a good time.

The new BSS album may already have a lock on most dynamic record of the year.

Cosmogramma is decidedly more, uh, cosmic, than his 2008 "Los Angeles," in its atmospheric spiral away from the beat and toward a more free-flowing collage of instrumentation.

Together, the group's fifth record, is explosive and infectious yet tight and glossy, a far cry from the proverbial seat-of-the-pants audacity of their 2000 debut, Mass Romantic.

Here they get back to where they once belonged, layering all manner of squiggly synth riffs over the kind of sleek techno grooves that define Get Physical, the well-regarded Berlin label they helped found. That gives the music an appealingly relaxed vibe, but it also produces the slight scent of concession.

Though the Long Beach band's sound may not be the most original going, Avi Buffalo pull it off with polish, not sacrificing quality production or songwriting for the sake of a vibe.

Carpenter remains one of the most thoughtful writers around, but lately she's been reluctant to leave her musical comfort zone.

These songs (which include settings of three Shakespeare sonnets) are so well-tempered with raw, emotional moments that the album never seems dour or austere. On the contrary, this is one of his most personal, sanguine releases.

If Clinging is at all a departure from the Radio Dept.’s previous pleasantries, it’s along the two most valuable vectors: outward and upward. Although their sound has always seemed certain, it’s never been this clear.

Thanks to Okkervil's chiming, handsome folk rock--and also to Erickson's improbably buoyant spirit--the music doesn't sound defeated or even especially vulnerable. True Love makes good on its title.

Like labelmates Passion Pit, Freelance Whales trick out their wistful, post–Postal Service electro-pop with just enough record-nerd insularity to fend off cred-endangering Justin Bieber fans.

Listening to the new MGMT album requires similar preparations to those for a prolonged psychedelic experience: you may want to leave some time in your daybook for unexpected detours, and it'd be wise to erase previous experiences from your mind for fear that heightened expectations may not be met and mass bummerage will ensue.

On I See the Sign, even the quietest moments sound bold.

The Stooges' third and final studio album before their recent reunion--remains a uniquely visceral listening experience, a confrontational slab of psychedelic punk made in the dead zone between psychedelia's demise and punk's birth.

The disc is an appropriate soundtrack for springtime and new beginnings, and this Sigur Ros–lite of a solo project does carry Jonsi across the equinox without his bandmates-turned-family-men. But it sounds more like the work of a chick hatching than a free bird.

Their fourth album isn’t substantially different from their first three: Jones’s delivery, alternately muscular and tender, and the band’s total empathy with the genre’s rules elevate each tune to lost-classic status.

Although his latest is less personal, it has a similarly broad emotional scope and a warm sonic palette far from the house-rocking R&B that’s the foundation of his four-decade career.

Women + Country sets the standard for new-century conformist rock--a genre far less boring than that phrase might suggest.

Red Sparowes can’t shake the post-rock stereotype--but occasionally they do point the way forward.

When listening to Hippies, it's difficult to forget that Harlem have professed their love for Nirvana, and still more difficult to suppress the urge to tell them to turn down that bass already.

A little order goes a long way in making Pumps! their most accessible album to date, but what makes it their most successful album is that it still sounds like Growing.

The duo can't possibly keep up this kind of frivolous pace, and several of the 15 tracks are just (and I apologize for using the term) chillwave jams--but nearly all are expertly crafted, and hedged with mirthy dance flavor.

Mostly, though, I Will Be is a flawlessly light album that floats to the top of a lo-fi pond overcrowded with sinking debris.

It’s one of the most unabashed love letters to anthemic ’80s synth-pop ever laid to hard disc....If that sounds like an unappealing clarion call from a dark musical period that you’re still trying to forget, this isn’t the album for you. But for those of us who weren’t beaten up by Harold Faltermeyer in a dream, Head First is a wondrous piece of creative anachronism.

The Unthanks’ voices are hair-raisingly exquisite in the most sororal of ways.

From the ironically melodic “Death Penalty” to the militaristic “Rearview,” this duo have executed one of the greatest roughneck opuses this side of last century. Let’s hope it’s not a one-off.

With synth tones straight outta Miami Vice and dreamy melodies that cut through the fog-machine haze, Plastic Beach is music for piloting your speedboat beyond the no-wake zone, or for looking back from the future with a sentimental affinity for the past.

For all that Liars have striven to create an original album, the songs suggest not so much inspiration and composition as hours of laborious mixing and midnight consultations with Brian Eno's "Oblique Strategies."

He may have found the perfect partner in the Shins' James Mercer, whose moody pop sensibilities complement Mouse's muted time-capsule colors.

That means you get Stickles roaring about being told he'll always be a loser over full-throttle indie-Springsteen arrangements replete with bleating Clarence Clemons saxophone lines, pavement-pounding marching-band drums, and loads of drunk-dude Dropkick Murphys gang-vocal chants.

Their ability to re-create shrewd discordant pairings in a second set of simple pop songs and still leave fans uncertain as to whether the duo are cleverly cloying or cloyingly clever is what will keep listeners in suspense until the curtains have parted.

For a visionary guy like Hendrix, this glorified compilation isn't as imaginary as it could be.

Throughout, Leo and his stalwart Pharmacists (who include James Canty of the Make-Up on guitar and keyboards) reflect the singer's unified worldview with hooky, sharp-angled guitar jams that somehow seem catchier the thrashier they get. Chalk up another win for one of the good guys.

Double-O and Nawledge were not yet capable of chopping up the sort of cuts that people sing in traffic. They are now--there's no boredom in Land of Make Believe.

These New Puritans maintain a sense of prim composure that may appeal to listeners who prefer their dread to be more precise, less anarchic.

On Creatures, Clogs imagine a graceful space that's always worth revisiting.

It takes a liner note and lyric look-along to absorb the full dose, but "Marvin" clicks immediately. Same goes for the thoughtfully morbid "Border Crossing" and "Kitchen Sink," on which Dolan throws everything from introspection to a wee bit of bounce.

But the kicker, for both music and lyrics, is Xiu Xiu's version of a pep talk, "This Too Shall Pass Away," where Stewart shows that being the most tortured musician of all time makes his fleeting flecks of hope doubly heartfelt.

It's never been easy sticking with Quasi through all their quality-control ups and downs, but American Gong lets bygones be bygones, fitting their sharp wits and bruised hearts into a sound powerful enough to contain them.

After years of being the untrained savage in the china shop of modern metal, HOF may find themselves owning the store with this accomplished thrash platter.

I Was Trying doesn't top "Is Dead," but it does keep Crime in Stereo on track toward the strange and unfamiliar. That might be the best compliment of all.

Life Is Sweet! is best at its brightest and fastest....Slower, more contemplative tunes like "Romart," on the other hand, can get a little dreary (even if they're very pretty).

Although it packs 20 songs into nearly 70 minutes, Field Music (Measure) feels remarkably concise and well-plotted — a series of harmony-rich guitar-pop ditties and resonant motifs that are covertly part of a larger package.