On occasion, Noonan sets his sights on highbrow quarry, as in 'Reacharound,' which could pass for some unreleased Radiohead circa The Bends. But he’s at his best when he’s emphasizing accessibility over artiness.

Moorer takes an approach opposite to Lynne’s on the stripped-down Lovin’, giving each track its own distinct personality: Gillian Welch’s 'Revelator' is droning folk rock, Simone’s 'I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl' an organ-led torch song, June Carter Cash’s 'Ring of Fire' a drum-looped twang-hop. They all deserve a little spotlight.

Rock Music is free of both the maudlin and the mundane, and oddly rousing, too.

At their best--during the disc’s torch-lit forays inward, the piano-ballad title track and the forlorn 'We’re Looking for a Lot of Love'--Hot Chip get serious, delving into the up-late tangles and riddles of the 21st-century heart.

Cohesion’s where you find it, but headphone delights are everywhere.

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 recent full-band reunion "Volume 4" was a small triumph, but Rain may be even more satisfying, since it’s the best work Jackson has done with a line-up that’s not strict-rock-band.

The fuzzy guitars start to blend together as the album progresses — the point, perhaps, but Black Mountain do well to break up the repetition with 'Stay Free,' an acoustic, falsetto ballad, and 'Queens Will Play.'

It’s a low, slow groove that might be coming out of the bodies of the musicians as much as their instruments--echoey, held back even at its most intense, every note sung or played with a determination not to force anything.

The 11 songs here clock in at a tidy 37 minutes--plenty of time to flavor the straight-ahead rock jolts with spaced-out country-rock ballads and pop-flavored rave-up replete with a horn section.

There are so many clashing vocal parts and guitar effects that you have to strain to hear the actual songs. Which is a shame, because said songs (all of which Ringo co-wrote) are pretty good.

Her fourth album brims with sunny hooks on its best tracks, and the alluring opener, 'Little Black Sandals,' affords her a rich, layered backdrop.

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

Lupe’s new sophomore disc, Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool (Atlantic), is way too long.

Here you get an hour’s worth of top-notch disco-house jams crammed together into a non-stop megamix that emphasizes both the duo’s tune sense and their body-rocking beatcraft.

Having graduated from knuckleheaded threats to a more hardened ghetto perspective that sometimes blossoms into tender complexity, Freeway sounds at home, particularly over the sweetly weeping keyboard loop that grounds 'Reppin’ the Streets,' the album’s best track.

In spite of its self-depreciating title, this odds-and-sods collection of the usual B-sides and other spare tracks lives up to some of the best material the Las Vegas foursome have delivered.

Ire Works is good science tarnished slightly by one bad experiment.

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.

On Smoke, his blog-buzzed debut, he offers a tuneful, mellow bedroom pastiche of trebly early-’80s punk funk, spirited, rhythm-rich worldbeat, and post-Beck white-guy R&B.

Why anyone would want to be subjected to such gloom is a good question, except that Burial is a witch with the kind of drum programming that leaves no choice in the matter.

Blackout may be more a tribute to the skills of the A-list producers who guided her through the disc than to any of her own talents.

Fans of old-time music, that vague notion of a genre called Americana, and bedrock artists like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard should find Dirt Farmer, Helm’s first solo disc in 25 years, appropriately haunting.

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.

In SOAD, Tankian’s vocal gymnastics and penchant for subversive lyrics are kept somewhat in check by the mix of muscle and subtlety guitarist Daron Malakian brings to the table. Here, there’s nothing to hold him back.

The finished product is a cobbled-together dazzle that contorts your mouth into a 50-minute succession of grins and wows.

Jimmy Eat World go to great lengths to recapture the anthemic thrills of "Clarity"--and give or take a few bouts of brooding cynicism, they’ve succeeded.

Unless you’re a diehard fan, wait for their new album in the spring.