For the jaded among us, this is regressive and full of genre-contrivance.

And so it goes with Mogwai's A Wrenched Virile Lore: a broad range of electro producers, ambient knob-twiddlers, and singer-songwriters re-assemble the Scottish post-rock champs' most recent studio album, the excellent Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, mostly with shitty bonus-feature-styled results.

Individually, these songs pack an emotional wallop, performed with a passion that is rare in today's indie-rock scene of disconnected cool. But taken as a giant lump, they're exhausting dead-ends: 12 straight climaxes cancel each other out - and Babel could use a little rising action.

Bland, quasi-political lyrics and zonked-out, dead-end textures.

Steam Days is usually pretty, but it's also a snooze.

There just isn't much personality on display here: Icky Blossoms strive for in-your-face decadence, but most of the time, they sound like every other anonymous dance-pop act on the planet.

Yes, there are some colorful, more fully realized moments toward the end, but all the mumbling and fussing it takes to get there is murder.

Diver is depressingly one-note, trimming back the band's scope and muscle. For some reason, Callan Clendenin sings every line in the same tiring, vacant croon, and its charm fades with each track, as does the Garageband-style production.

For a while, Magic Hour - the band's fourth full-length - lives up to the promise of its hilarious, zebra-centric-2001: A Space Odyssey cover art. But the wheels fall off with "Year of Living Dangerously," a campy, aimless doodle not even rescued by its random violin solo.

Although the Cribs are very good at what they do, the songwriting on the album just feels tired and unfocused.

Polished, tuneful, and utterly unmemorable.

Despite the raucous vibe, Diamond Rugs is flawed - scattered, unfocused, and rather long, at 14 tracks.

On "Cynic's New Year," Portland, Ore., indie-folk duo Horse Feathers stick so firmly to their sonic guns that it becomes tightly constricting.

Their most subdued effort yet.

Great Lake Swimmers' sugar-sweet ditties easily drift in one ear and, unfortunately, out the other.

Lissy Trullie sounds simultaneously hungry and tepid, as if Trullie wants to make a big splash, but her album lacks the conviction or vision to make it happen.

The General Strike sticks to the same supposedly state-smashing standards that drove the previous six or so albums from these Pittsburgh-bred punks into redundancy.

A curiosity from a true talent.

It's a bummer that Visions ended up as a fever dream of a record: unnecessarily oblique, listlessly long (48 minutes!), and painfully shapeless.

This is the same ol' Korn you've loved or hated (or felt indifferently toward) since you first saw that slo-mo bullet in the "Freak on a Leash" video, except with de-tuned guitars swapped for garish, beefy synths.

Although only adequate run-throughs of the studio-album tracks, Stage Whispers' live performances do underscore a continuity between songs from both 5:55 and IRM that otherwise wasn't apparent. Stage Whispers' new offerings, on the other hand, are consistently interesting.

Keys and Codes, which inverts the title of Death Cab's last record, feels slapped together, which is disappointing when you consider the array of talent present.

Though Eno is adequate, moments where he takes over the collaboration (such as on "West Bay" and "Watch a Single Swallow . . . ") are too under-nourished and ponderous to suggest that he's giving us something new.

Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage fails by making the obvious choice at every turn.

For a while, it's promising: "Only If for a Night" pits Welch's soulful-and-strange vocal gymnastics against a firecracker beat and a gang of chorus chanters. But elsewhere, Ceremonials feels drained of personality.

This is a mixed bag.

The Devil's Rain is chock full of good, campy horror business.

Closer to Closed is a testament to the decline of Braid's teen angst, but those who grew up with the band may not recognize this aging friend.