So the first-listen impact has been lessened, but the growing affection ends up in the same place as always.

You can’t ask for much more from a sophomore album.

As eclectic as the disc is, it never strays from that warm sense of familiarity.

Because Seger has honed his craft to such a silver-bullet point, the album never feels like a retread; as on John Fogerty’s underrated Deja Vu All Over Again from 2004, roots-rock tradition seems renewed in Seger’s hands.

Its stories of survivors and struggling lovers have a wistfulness that spills from the lyrics into the tone of David Hidalgo’s vocal performances and the warm guitar lines, which draw on blues, classic rock, and traditional Mexican musical flourishes.

The template holds.

In the end it’s the guitars, which alternate from restrained, melodic jangles to serrated feedback screams, and the general sense that Happy Hollow chronicles life during wartime that hold these 14 tune together, hymns or otherwise.

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.

Damaged isn’t the most tuneful record Wagner and company have made.

The simplicity of the punk-driven songwriting and the bare, urgent honesty of vocalist/guitarist Hutch Harris’ delivery drive home the album’s political points with startling effectiveness.

Ratatat never get as Daft funky or as outright punky as you’d want. But they never linger for too long in one place, and they throw more than enough cerebral curveballs to keep you on your musical toes.

The murky production seems lazy rather than artful; the hard-rock riffs don’t kick as hard as they’re meant to.

Some tracks, of course, are as sexy as a soggy batch of freedom fries once the words are comprehensible. But the best updates... have a seedy splendor all their own.

This time the throwbacks are so brazenly imitative, they might raise the copyright hackles of the earliest copyright infringers.

Think of it as rock-and-roll comfort food.

The warmth and the easy familiarity enable The Trials of Van Occupanther to stand on its own.

Peaches sharpens her synth hooks, varies the electrogrooves, and serves up 13 tracks that are just amusing enough in their risqué behavior to keep the smiles coming while also standing behind the political point of the title.

Only the title track bears any resemblance to what Dashboard once were.

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

Keith is... for the first time living up to the standards of his most important precursor, the shape-shifting funkateer George Clinton. That is, even as he jokes and grooves his way through Octagon’s long-awaited return, he’s also serious as shit.

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

It’s Frank Black on his first real roll as a solo artist.

If the lyrics weren’t so surreal, you could imagine yourself dining with George and Tammy before a Grand Ole Opry performance.

[Sonic Youth's] most openly “mature” disc, possibly their best since ’95’s Washing Machine, maybe even the almighty Daydream Nation.

Always ambitious, occasionally experimental, and sometimes even radio-friendly.

Son exudes the studied calm of a laboratory technician engaged in heavy-duty experimentation.

Although they love drama, AFI never abandon believability here. Which means the arena-rock trappings don’t make the music feel fake -- they just make it feel more exciting than life.

It’s this willingness to experiment with sounds and percussion that distinguishes Psapp from their electro-organic brethren.