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In 2008, this Broken Social Scenester released a pleasant, mid-'70s singer-songwriter record, like Jackson Browne's Late for the Sky by way of Wilco, only softer. Here, he works the '70s nexus between bubblegum soul and country, like Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle With You," only less sunny. Collett's vision of AM Gold is homespun (thanks to low-key Toronto backing band Zeus).

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Pretty much every song on this prog-pop band's sixth disc evokes moodiness via some sort of weather, event, or technological-flux metaphor. It's a suitable theme for elegantly mutable yet hummably compact songs, led by marimba as often as guitar.

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Damon Albarn claims the concept for the third Gorillaz album came to him while watching people and animals forage through a Malian garbage dump. Indeed, most every one of these lazy, hazy burbling bangers evokes the life cycle of human waste (shrink-wrap, microwaves, money).

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This Finnish "love-metal" band had a minor modern-rock hit with 2005's "Wings of a Butterfly," while 2007's Venus Doom grasped for proggy cred. But here they're back trying to build that elusive American fan base by sounding like a pro forma emo-fed hard-rock band with some likably silly Euro-doom flourishes.

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They make Pavement seem like poor folks. They make Steely Dan sound like simps. Sharpen up those Google-search fingers, everybody, Vampire Weekend are back in town: "In December, drinking horchata / I'd look psychotic in a balaclava," frontman Ezra Koenig sings on Contra. Later he rhymes "horchata" with "Aranciata," then "Masada." That Ezra, he so smart.

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It's a cold, hard world and a Ghostface Killah needs a Ghostface girl -- the kind who'll wear a nurse costume when you get back from a long night at the studio, rock the foxy librarian look on a lazy Sunday, who'll kill for you and die with you, write to you in Rikers and call you on your bullshit, take long walks and communicate in parks.