The result bounces all over the place, from zippy new-wave rave-ups to tinkly twee-pop lullabies to handsome folk-rock jams with trippy guitar sounds.

Johns’s stylistic schizophrenia might set you off here; even his singing on Young Modern changes from cut to cut. Everyone else: dig in--this thing is quite a feast.

The group’s second album continues in the same vein as the generally winning debut--only now the arrangements are lusher and more ornate and, in a few unfortunate cases, the songs are longer.

It's nice to be reminded that the world is shit and we're all gonna die. Editors have mastered the form.

Attention to the smallest instrumental details and the finest points of every composition have become Interpol trademarks; more complex than its pop song structures might suggest, Our Love To Admire is well worth exploring.

Rough-edged and overdriven in the right places, super-slick as their Reagan-era new-wave touchstones elsewhere, this pomo-funk concoction from Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé is like a French kiss from Sonny Crockett.

Although it doesn’t attain the career-defining cumulative power of 2005's "Gypsy Punks," it's a broader, more intricate disc.

This disc is both violent and romantic, offering warm singer-songwriter torch songs and jagged avant-noise frays with large-hearted choral flourishes.

'New Dark Ages,' with its layered background harmonies, wall-of-sound instrumentation, and quietly propulsive drumming, is a 27-year career in a nutshell.

In exploring his split psyche, T.I. forgets what made the excursion interesting to begin with: there’s good and evil in everyone, but you gotta mix the two to get a reaction.

The misstep here is that it all sounds too safe - rarely does he deviate from the sweet, melodious splendor of previous S&S discs.

A merger made in musical heaven.

Boy in da Corner may be the classic Dizzee will be forced to chase for the rest of his career, but Maths + English shows him still striving.

On Excellent Italian Greyhound they deliver the expected fistful of vitriolic by-number chuggers.

Sweet Warrior finds him spinning epic yarns instead of heroic solos.

Like a perfectly attired woman, the National are fleetingly alluring, never gaudy, subtly enchanting.

At their best, though, Handsome Furs do for the disaffected what the Postal Service did for sentimental Death Cab cuties: they deliver more of something not quite the same.

Erasure remain A-level, mid-tempo melody makers, crafters of classic romantic pop songs with electronica serving as the template.

His music always offers an emotional complexity to mirror its melodic sophistication.

You pretty much know what to expect from a new Sea and Cake disc: breezy lounge-pop tunes embroidered with sleek keyboard blips and gentle drum-machine pitter-patter.

The songwriting isn’t BRMC’s most memorable, but Baby 81’s noise-roots fumes are pretty thick.

If he never takes another chance, this new R&B torch carrier will still have a pop career for another 20 years, but if he wants to make a real mark, he’ll have to toss that hat.

Maybe it’s Lambert’s dark, rocking side that makes her ballads sound so disarmingly tender, sweet, and vulnerable.

These tunes shred as po’-facedly as any the Champs have recorded.

Ode to Ochrasy is a little more energized, but Mando Diao still aren’t breaking fresh ground.

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

Fear of a Blank Planet is not only their most vintage-sounding album, it’s also their best.

A weirdly entrancing collection of polished electronics and acoustic-guitar riffs layered like fruit in a parfait glass.