Nirvana Bleach (reissue) Rating: 4.0/5.0 Label: Sub Pop Bleach remains Nirvana’s most inconsistent and least appreciated album, a tiny and wobbly baby step for a band whose legacy and permanent pop culture presence are both assured (as long as Kurt Cobain’s likeness continues to be used for grotesque commercial purposes, at least). Certainly, Bleach is flawed like no other Nirvana …

Air Love 2 Rating: 4.0 / 5.0 Label: Astralwerks Artist transformations are most satisfying in subtle doses. It’s arguable that the French duo, Air, have undergone anything but a gradual metamorphosis. The indelible space lounge of Moon Safari was abruptly replaced with more prominent trip hop and big beat qualities on their sophomore outing, 10,000 Hz Legend. Talkie Walkie and …

Fuck Buttons Tarot Sport Rating: 4.0/5.0 Label: ATP Recordings The second half of Fuck Buttons’ acclaimed debut single, “Bright Tomorrow,” was a mess; it was a barely listenable melange of droning distortion and garbled screams exploding out of an opening half that flirted with synth-based, beat-driven dance floor accessibility. With wisdom far beyond their years, Andrew Hung and Benjamin John …

Memory Tapes Seek Magic Rating: 4.0/5.0 Label: Acephale Records Dayve Hawk may claim otherwise, but he’s certainly a man of mystery at the moment. Recording under the names Weird Tapes, Memory Cassette and now, Memory Tapes, he’s as hard to pin down for genre and sound as he is to stick to a nom de guerre. His debut as Memory …

Le Loup Family Rating: 4.0/5.0 Label: Hardly Art The entire notion of a music “collective” may reek of ill-conceived indie-art pretentiousness, but the Washington D.C. group Le Loup tows the line perfectly between thoughtful, intelligent experimental musical act and over-inflated, self indulgent high pseudo-art. Aside from reigning sonic pop collaborative Animal Collective, Le Loup is the fast-rising new group by …

Karen O and the Kids Where the Wild Things Are OST Rating: 4.0/5.0 Label: DGC/Interscope First thing’s first- I have no idea how Spike Jonze will translate Maurice Sendak’s beloved 10 sentence book Where the Wild Things Are into a feature length film. As that’s the case, it’s difficult to think of how the soundtrack is going to measure up …

Alec Ounsworth Mo Beauty Rating: 4.0/5.0 Label: Anti- An indie musician from Philadelphia walks into a New Orleans studio and records a quasi-Southern Gothic album with a small army of Crescent City players. What has the potential to be an unmitigated disaster instead results in one of this year’s most varied and intriguing releases. Although cynics might see Mo Beauty, …

Ghostface Killah Ghostdini: The Wizard of Poetry in Emerald City Rating: 4.0/ 5.0 Def Jam 2009 has brought the release of one of the most anticipated sequel albums of all time, Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II, which lived up to its hype as another Mafioso rap classic. Imagine the surprise of the hip-hop community when Ghostface Killah, …

Boston Spaceships Zero to 99 Rating: 4.0/5.0 Label: Guided By Voices, Inc. If slow and steady wins the race, nobody bothered to tell Robert Pollard. Whether fronting legendary indie rockers Guided By Voices, flying solo or recording with one of his various side projects, the uber-prolific singer has been writing and recording songs at a ludicrous pace for over 20 …

The Flaming Lips Embryonic Rating: 4.5/5.0 Label: Warner Bros. It’ been a full 10 years since The Soft Bulletin touched down on terrestrial soil to massive and near-unanimous critical acclaim. The stratospheric lead track, “Race for the Prize,” completed The Flaming Lips’ colorful paradigm shift, foreshadowed four years prior on 1995′ Clouds Taste Metallic, from weirdo acid-rockers to weirdo psych-pop …