...The Ever Expanding Universe provides a nice excuse to put on the headphones and look up at the stars. There's nothing wrong with having one's head in the clouds, but this band could stand to make the occasional contact with earth.

There's an easiness and directness to these tunes that was missing the last couple of times out, aided by Joe Henry and Ryan Freeland's no-nonsense mix but owing mainly to Farrar's vivid songwriting.

Confident non-jumpers shouldn't be concerned that this disc weeps with you're-always-dying-inside woe-is-my-love-life misery.

There are times when Upper Air could be some clandestine jam session in the wilderness.

Wilco (The Album) finds the band looser and more assertive than they were on their two previous efforts.

The organic, timeless quality of that voice--especially haunting on Helm's own tale of a farmer's struggle, 'Growing Trade'--is offset by the sweetness of his daughter Amy's harmony singing, as well as by bright eddies of slide guitar and mandolin, all of it creating an appealing balance.

As Bjork no doubt hoped it would, the result--long on material from that year's Volta but also featuring such oldies as 'Army of Me' and 'Pagan Poetry'--captures both energy and detail.

Mascis's unique talents have ossified into a signature, so discerning any difference between this set of tunes and, say, his solo albums of the early oughts or latter-day Dinosaur Jr. albums is tough work. If, to you, that means more awesome Mascis crunchwork, then be psyched, because this record slays, the rocking is sloppy-yet-tight, and nothing on here would sound like a drag if tossed into a setlist amongst older classics.

This, their third album is as ambitious as its predecessors but mutes the joy in favor of a more serious tone and tighter focus--well, as tight as an album with a 10-minute number called 'Dragon's Lair' can be. The results are mixed.

Travels with Myself and Another doesn't quite live up to the band's first studio album, 2007's "Curses," but it reaches the same boorishly absurd heights on the spastic 'Drink Nike' and on 'Stand by Your Manatee,' a catchy freakout about the "shame" of using plastic silverware.

Bibio's references may already be T-shirts in your bureau, and his dovetailing of crisp guitars, tangling melodies, smart electronic gestures, and resin-hit production values (all evident on the title track) isn't new by any means. But if you can get out from under caring (that is, if you can locate the title lane), you'll feel as liberated as Bibio sounds here — an artist making a mixtape of himself. Folk yes.

The blithe, lyrical approach is misplaced in the context of Morello’s domineering, effects-laden guitar sound.

If the Jonases come up woefully short in the sensitivity department, they (nearly) make up for it with songwriting that's far more flavorful than that on Fearless or on the JoBros' previous disc, last year's "A Little Bit Longer."

A few songs in, I was reminded that I hate mixtapes--or at least, I find it hard to make it all the way through them, especially when they're made by other people and especially when they're filled with weak endless dub reggae.

Despite the deceptive pop-song outlines and strong grooves, just about every piece emphasizes the rich weave of voices, and on originals like 'The View from Blue Mountain' and 'Twilight of the Dogs,' Douglas extends forms you think you know to take you someplace new.

The only thing Dirty Projectors' fifth album leaves me wishing for is a fifth rating star to wedge in.

The Eternal is a fun, superficial tangent, disappointing in its regressiveness but enjoyable as long you don't examine it too closely.

Quik knows what he's doing. You can hear it on every track of this symphonic mini-masterpiece.

One consistency across all of Jhelli Beam--and particularly on such select selections as the introductory 'Split Seconds'--is Busdriver's enduring verbal dexterity.

Of the Cathmawr Yards is Ambien-fueled folk that never rises above room temperature, well-crafted yet lacking in passion and vitality.

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.

There's more melody here than on previous Mastodon albums; opener 'Oblivion' even has a sweetly grungy Alice in Chains breakdown. And Brendan O'Brien's production does increase the fist-pumping factor in 'Divinations' and 'Crack the Skye'--the latter of which bites some of Metallica's Black Album rumble. But this is still a forbiddingly dense piece of post-prog rock.

Beyond a scrappy/winsome take on the Beach Boys' "Shut Down," there's not much to distinguish one track from another. It's all shits-and-giggles, all the time.

Beware emulates and elaborates on the familiar, and Oldham's strengths as a songwriter and bandleader shape the album into something beautiful.

His melodies, whether delivered in an affected falsetto (closer to Animal Collective than the Beach Boys) or a grumpy baritone, are simple and hummable to a fault--without the energy of the distorted cassette recording, I have a feeling the songs would be a bit too cloying.

The rest of this satisfying album is a classic Hal Willner production, complete with the unusual cover choices (Decemberists, Espers, very late Eno) and the usual Willner Family Players (Nick Cave, Antony Hegarty, Rufus Wainwright, Marc Ribot) in back-up duties.

I had to make several return trips to the lyric sheet to clear up which songs were love letters and which were screw-yous. But this sort of tone-deaf emotional bludgeoning tends to work in her favor on monstrous power ballads.

Peyroux still sounds like Peyroux, only more so. Which isn't a bad thing either.

Perkins's simple, folk-hymn melodies are helped along by New Orleans brass, harmonica, B-3 organ, and harmonium, their trumpeting and wheezing sounds adding levity to blunt statements.

Hecker's sonics are huge and unrepentant, but they tease the ear; individual sounds are highlighted by their sustained revision.

Song of the Pearl may not be full of surprises, but it provides a fresh trip through familiar territory that's more than idle nostalgia.

The Truth Is Here is his second perfect disc in that many years and just earned a spot in my Top Five Alive column.

Their tracks bounce lovelier than Joe Budden's girlfriend on that trampoline (consult YouTube), and they exhibit a flair that distinguishes their cross-continental steeze from that of any other beat team.

Middle Cyclone is her most fearless and arresting record, ruthlessly composed and beautifully recorded.

These 11 tunes deliver both the thematic and the sonic hugeness we expect from U2; you only have to proceed about 80 seconds into the opening title track before the Edge is spraying his trademark guitar sparks everywhere and Bono is observing that infinity is a great place to start.

As you might have guessed, nobody but TSOOL completists (and Mojo subscribers) needs all this stuff. Yet within Communion's overload lurk a handful of neo-Nuggets nuggets.

This may work as a singles record, but it lacks the depth to hold much interest.

Here they make less of an effort to conceal the pop smarts percolating beneath the slop-rock surface; catchy little gems like 'Starting Over' and 'I'll Be with You' help make this the most satisfying Black Lips album yet.

The dry vocal mix leaves her somewhat narrow range exposed. It adds up to an unsatisfying whole.

Like the most artistically successful EPs (Magical Mystery Tour, the Who's surf-rockers, the Beta Band's glory-days output), these do the job without overstaying their welcomes.

Produced by the late Jerry Finn, the album is a slice of American rock radio, polished, compressed, and routinely combustible.

Texas's Trail of Dead settle into a nice groove somewhere between the two on their sixth album.

Hush quells qualms with the relaxed assurance every third album should carry.

The beats are eminently funky, the rhymes tight, and the topics decidedly old-school: plain-spoken boasts, the rejection of greed, and an acknowledgment of our communal evolution indicate the overall tone.

The disparate riff-based writing can be too heavy on cue cards and too light on connecting the ideas, but it's that same friction that makes the band worth listening to.

Their new project has much of the same visceral energy of their old gig, but Mi Ami present it in a much more harmonious, affirming manner.

Still blessed with cleverness, tunes, sass, and youth, she generally pulls it off.

For All I Care adds vocalist Wendy Lewis to the line-up of pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, and drummer David King, and though it inches the Bad Plus closer to the pop mainstream, it never loses the particular rhythmic and harmonic quirks that have defined them so far.

To Willie could have a lost ballad and a roadhouse jam for variety's sake, but Houck's thoughtful curating makes it more than a fans-only stopgap.

Telefon Tel Aviv have always been the product of two drives (both senses), but on Immolate Yourself, for the first time, the workflows of Cooper and Eustis merge a single, renewed vision. They go a bit poppier than they've ever gone, yet it's also their darkest work.

There's not much fault to find with the music here, however, particularly when she elects to dial down the raw-edged guitar fuzz the Bastards have become known for.

P.O.S. must have known he had a near-classic on his claws with Never Better.

Here the band, with producer Dan Carey (Hot Chip, CSS) at their side, dip their big toe into electro-pop, Afrobeat (sorta), new-wave seizures, and all manner of groove that bespeak body-rockin' pleasures.

Gutter Tactics recalls the anger of the recent past and memories we'd like to leave behind--perfect timing.

With a slapdash track list that intersperses previously unreleased cuts with lightly retooled versions of tunes from Left Eye's import-only solo debut, Eye Legacy still feels like an after-the-fact throw-away, one that makes you wonder just what its creators were attempting to say about their dearly departed friend.

Nothing's as timeless as "Blue" or "Waiting for the Sun," but the thrill here is all about those two lonely voices that find each other, in this future of theirs, caught up in that rush of harmony.

Merriweather Post Pavilion further smoothes out their sound, and though it's full of cool, orchestrated beauty, it lacks the playfulness and spontaneity that endeared so many to this group.

It's heartbreakingly gorgeous, and if it's sometimes easy to miss the club-kid joie de vivre Antony brought to last year's brilliant Hercules and Love Affair album, well, that disc didn't have this one's lush Nico Muhly string arrangements.

Too many of the songs rely on a stilted, march-like rhythm that makes them sound formal and restrained, especially when paired with Newman's arch lyrical delivery.

There's no obvious precedent, and the session shows Redman at his best as he mixes funky riff-based bop themes with looser, free-form meditations, sometimes within the same tune.

Hamilton attempts to resuscitate it with his warm voice, but the record plods on with one mid-tempo nodder after another.

Matador's two-disc Nicene Creedence Edition (nyuk nyuk) goes way beyond the original 12-song release, adding a whopping 31 additional cuts: outtakes, B-sides, compilation tracks, and live radio sessions, all of them top-notch.

The downside of this open-armed approach is a lack of sonic specificity; OnMyRadio occasionally blands out into a nondescript stew of melismatic vocals and slow-jam beats.

Freedom is mostly lame club tunes with mega-auto-tuned vocals about wishing "I could just stop by and lay by your side."

Everything That Happens is a brilliant addition to a creative partnership that has yielded so much and shouldn’t have taken 27 years to rekindle.

Electric Arguments is a worthy addition to the canon of this eccentric gentleman trapped in the body of a pop star.

Kanye is after a very specific sound on this release, the dead-eyed, auto-tuned vocals and canned pianos contributing to a harrowing vision of emotional shellshock. The songs bleed into one another; only 'Love Lockdown,' with its magnificent drum breakdown, really grabs you by the throat.

A return to what Jones does best: Stax-inspired soul-rock showpieces, brassy ballads, and an emphasis on the massive voice itself, which hasn't dissipated a scintilla since 1964.

It might be one of the year's worst albums, an underwritten, overarranged mess of factory-floor guitar fuzz, go-nowhere vocal melodies, limp electronic beats, and lyrical clunkers.

Suffice to say that with all its slowly blooming beauty, alluring aberrations, and deftly measured brute force, the closest analogue to what Fennesz has done on Black Sea seems to be nature itself.

What makes this inspirational lyrical gimmick work is the quality of the songs and the sure-footedness of Mottet's approach to sound, a not-so-distant European relative of the Elephant 6 palette.