Believers is another step away from Bondy's noisy past, and he knows how to use his inside voice.

These are just the outcast songs with edges too elusive to polish. And while you're unlikely to fall completely in love with them, it's comforting to know that Lekman felt similarly.

At the heart of it though, we're still left with what's Björk's been doing for most her whole life: music.

Things jump back and forth from there, and never seem to build to very much. Shadow may want to cross back.

The record's general aesthetic stays the same, docile sounds, pitter-patter polyrhythms, and shimmering vocals, but the ear-tickling mutations along the way is the appeal.

Ultimately, Hearts is an adolescent album in every conceivable sense.

Like his rhyming, his production is sophisticated, earnest, and maybe could benefit from a dose of rawness.

It's an uneven record in some ways--that middle sequence weighs it down and Feist still feels undersold as a band leader in the studio too often--but while that may be what keeps it from the finding the same success its predecessor did, it's also what makes Metals the more exciting album to dig into.

It trades the organ liquidating power of Crack the Skye for a collection of songs that sound as much like a B-sides compilation as a new LP.

The Whole Love has the band giving more than in the recent past, but the combustible musical debate at the band's core seems largely to have ceased. Wilco may still have the ability to thrill, but they've lost the ability to surprise.

Taylor doesn't get caught up in making his sounds too big, too large, or too much. He could, but he doesn't. He maintains control, doesn't get lost, and the result are nothing short of terrific.

Work (work, work) sounds more like a laborious task than a bracing trip into emotional bedlam and sexual anarchy.

Through its happy welding of superb vocals and tactical percussion, Gold Leaves achieves a timeless quality, with a bright future on the horizon.

The album is nothing like a career-killer, but it is a career-worrier.

These mid-tempo songs sap some of the group's natural energy from Dracula.

Twin Sister live up to their advance press here: They're a good band with room to grow, and a couple great songs.

For the most part Only in Dreams is a sound that is firmly theirs.

With West, Wooden Shjips is just breaking in its new soles--and hitting its stride.

Heems and Kool A.D. might be deconstructing rap for the purposes of delivering ingenious and challenging verses, but Relax is one of the best capital R rap albums out this year.

Mostly, Hysterical is lost in a hazy cloud that is more Dan Bejar than it is David Byrne.

It's apparent they're looking to construct a big tent for everyone to fit in, and unsurprisingly they're succeeding wildly.

While Seasons on Earth turns out not to be the sort of stoner's delight diehard psych-folkers might be looking for, neither is it looking in any direction other than straight ahead, evocations of another era notwithstanding.

Wild Flag is the creator of an absurdly good album, one of the most vital of 2011. Wild Flag is not a supergroup. They are a super group.

Mountaintops is a decent pop record, and will surely add a few fan favorites to the live set, but for a duo that did so much with just two instruments, they too often do less with more here.

Strange Mercy is her best yet, a deft mixture of self-confession, master class musicality, and downright unshakable songs.

Complaining about a lack of hooks can be painted as unrefined, but frankly Era Extraña hasn't shown me why it deserves hallowed deconstruction, it may be weightier, but there's absolutely no question which Neon Indian album has the most stick.

The trouble here is what we know: That they're capable of more. So the question becomes how much we hold our expectations against them, and the way you answer that question will shape how you feel about their latest offering.

Male Bonding have stayed on course, but their sound remains as virile as it was.