Their songs of experience suggest they spent some time exploring that darkness, only to have found the light on the other side.

Veteran rock legend Alan Moulder and eclectic electro-guy Dan Carey make sure Something sounds as huge as its aspirations, bringing an impeccably massive sheen to every note.

Ashes & Fire is as close as it gets to the brilliance of his first post-Whiskeytown offering, Heartbreaker.

1,000 Years--the record Sleater-Kinney might have made at the very beginning if they'd been ambivalent about whether to turn up the volume and the attitude--is a meditation on age, timelessness, and nostalgia that could elicit a glass-half-full/half-empty decision from fans.

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

Although the band's sonic stew isn't particularly remarkable or consistent (instrumentation oscillates between warm and comforting, and distant and anemic), their lyrics have a peculiar charm that keeps them alluring.

'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.

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.

He still dabbles in more-chin-stroking fare, but he's able to ground his adventures in enough melody to preserve the album's flow--and your bearings.

Even if he's stuck in the past, Lewis's best songs feel timeless.

It’s just an Omaha boy playing some good old country pop--for once.

The 18 cuts here showcase the Birmingham (England) group’s brand of eerie yet pretty electro-acoustic pop as well as any of their three proper albums.

Reatard wants to do it all, and he comes pretty close.

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.

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.

The shoegazy noise genre is again slowly creeping toward the pop spectrum, and Sports might push it even farther toward the indie mainstream, but it needs a new tag - let's call it blackout pop.

Don't expect anything in terms of experimentation--this makes stellar mixtape fodder for an indie-pop prom night also scored by Dum Dum Girls and the Morning Benders.

So Outta Reach isn't so strong that I'd recommend it above its predecessor [Smoke Ring for My Halo], but its songs are very much cut from the same cloth.

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.

In the M83 universe, emotion comes before logic, and for all 72 fascinating minutes, Gonzalez has you in the palm of his sweaty hand.

It's taken Isbell three albums to find his comfortable post-Truckers solo-artist groove, and on Here We Rest, he settles in quite nicely.

It delivers on the promise of Louden Up, with infectious beats and a kitchen-sink approach.

This is the longest the band has had the same lineup, which adds to the overall tightness from start to finish.

From moment to moment, Never's oddball quality can be a blessing, but it becomes more of a curse when the moment passes and there's little besides disparate pieces to hold onto.

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.

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.

Albarn's work here with visual director Jamie Hewlett and a rotating cast of collaborators--Dan the Automator, Danger Mouse, Lou Reed, Snoop, etc.--is as remarkable as their 2001 debut selling six million records.

Down There harnesses the core duality upon which the AC empire is built: a warm and pure pop æsthetic folded harmoniously into layers of murky swirls and drips.

Smart Flesh won't just set many a lonely heart aflutter - it will stick around in the morning to make breakfast.

Chrome Dreams II is effective despite the sonic clash because, on both the new material and the leftovers, the loud ('Spirit Road') and the soft (the soul ballad 'Ever After'), it’s unified by its call to give props to spirit and humanity, a sentiment that, whatever it’s wrapped in, never gets old.

The keyboards that colored his swan dive into dance music before he re-embraced rock with 2005’s Body of Song are simply another subtle layer of muscle for this sinewy disc.

The spirited chants and intricate beats give Fool’s Gold unity, and the precision is inviting. They never break from their tight sound with a boldly original gesture, but there’s no need to risk spoiling this fun set of songs.

Balam Acab have crafted a fully fleshed-out record, with enticing dimension and its own subtle meanings.

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.

New Moon is their most purposeful beast yet.

The great news is that even the bad news is good news: Alabama Shakes have a hell of a lot of growing to do, but even their slightest tunes pack a punch.

Although rooted in history, this album’s themes and passion are timeless.

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

Carry on, ye bearded gods.

Musically, the septet are as colorful as ever, only more resonant and with fewer xylophones--plus a newfound emphasis on rhythmic muscle.

It's more like the album we should all discover after they've broken through with their second or third long-player, when we'll all be a lot more forgiving.

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.

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

The revelation in Gossamer is Angelakos's inner voice.

Luna fans will be pleased.

The result is as baleful and forlorn as most dance pop is swishy and effervescent.

Jay dawns that ever-frustrating mush-mouth flow throughout the LP's duration, and only sounds awake when his bars are bookended by Kanye.

The smart, funny, fanclub chants herein, each as catchy as Willie Mays in the ’54 Fall Classic, are gemlike tributes to the characters who’ve made that diamond shine, from Satchel Paige to Fernando Valenzuela.

Their wail-and-bash raison d'etre continues to bring more intense, absurd listening pleasure than any other noise band on the planet.

Foals haven't lost their math-rock edge; they've infused it with fun.

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

Strangelet... seems like the work of a man who hasn’t aged a day since he figured out what kind of music he wanted to make.

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

[At times on Wild Peace] you might wonder if Echo Lake are merely a caricature of every previous shoegaze and dream-pop outfit. What saves the duo is how splendidly their iridescent sounds can evoke a moment, allowing listeners to lose themselves in the music.

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

But that's just it; much here is good, even great, but it's all too familiar.

Their stuttering, airy synths would serve as an appropriate soundtrack to a nightclub in Heaven.

AMOK is as heady and immersive as any great Radiohead album, but those comparisons eventually wilt: Yorke's new band has discovered a symmetry all its own.

From 'Intoxication' (a tale of sexual regret) to 'Church Heathen' (about hypocrisy in the church), the lyrics are more stimulating than your typical dancehall fare, and the beats are elegant and catchy.

Slightly less coherent than his previous stunner, "Awfully Deep," Slime & Reason has tracks intended to fill dance floors and cuts that are more layered, their intricate beats and rhymes better suited to headphone enjoyment.

The British duo's second full-length in as many years mashes ghostly electro-pop tendencies with live instrumentation, empathetic orchestration, and tape-machine snippets, creating a world that is both compulsively listenable and eerily foreign.

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

Be the Void might be the band's least accessible offering yet, but it's certainly their bravest--and given some breathing room, it might just prove their most rewarding.

Woke Myself Up is smart, arresting, and nimble; at 30 minutes, the only real disappointment is that it’s over too soon.

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.

Daisy may lack the immediate accessibility of Brand New's previous efforts, but once it grows on you, good luck getting it out of your head.

It'll inevitably be pigeonholed as post-house or something equally asinine, but for now, it exists without definition, and for that we can be grateful.

It's perhaps overly long (53 minutes) and hard to penetrate, but Animal Collective's creativity glows brighter than Ric Flair's hair.

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.

Oneida have always been a thick stew of different influences, but usually with a dash of originality to bind it together; Preteen Weaponry never rises above pastiche. Nevertheless, the band’s hypnotic drone sweeps through the album like a swift current — it’s enough to generate anticipation for their future travels.

[A] terrific, visceral album.

Youth Novels, one-ups the competition by being sillier, funkier, and less comfortable--more “Konichiwa Bitches” than Keren Ann.

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.

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.

Most of the songs light up, shine for a while, and pull back so suddenly that you feel a little betrayed. It's a shame these dry lullabies didn't surface earlier in our dreary summer.

Everything feels dead in the desert, but Return is rife with life.

As the obviousness of Write About Love's title implies (it could have been called Play and Sing!), Belle & Sebastian are looking to get back to basics with their first album since 2005's tremendous The Life Pursuit.

The spotlight stays fixed on his darkly soothing intonations throughout, keeping the smoky, low-key aesthetic unvarying despite some stylistic and instrumental adventurousness.

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

This could prove strenuous, but the album is more contemplative than didactic--a (k)no(w)here that’s difficult to study but easy to inhabit.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Little Big Town make implicit the debt they owe to the California rock of Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles in a way that makes Little Big Town seem fresh and thrilling compared to most other Music Row acts.

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.

Although driven primarily by Meluch’s intrepid acoustic guitar, Temper is a many-layered affair, an engaging concoction of delicate electronics, birdsongs, and tape experiments that resonate with impossible harmony.

Thibodeau’s melodies, which have always been pretty, are now beautiful.

A showcase for some undervalued compositional chops.

Rot Gut, Domestic never sugarcoats its uglier tendencies, and yet the uncompromising--and uncomfortable--nature of the music is oddly compelling.

For the most part Life Death Love and Freedom makes good on--and somehow makes entertainment of--its sober sense of purpose.

The structural maturity, in this case, is merely a Trojan horse, meant to smuggle in the music's core brutality in a facade of lean indie mournfulness.

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.

The lyrics run, uh, let’s say straightforward, but Black Kids know as well as any good sentimentalists that delivery is everything; teenage yearning couldn’t hope for a much better vehicle than their pouting power pop.

Koushik finally attempts to transcend his impeccable record collection.

A brilliant shot of Veloso the pop composer.