A guilty pleasure that grows less guilty and more pleasurable with each album, Paramore packs all the thrills of their male-fronted emo-rock peers, but leaves behind none of the slimy residue. The group�s latest, Brand New Eyes, out today, is their tightest and fiercest yet, a Trojan horse of a record with seemingly lightweight punk songs that disguise a whole lot of brute force. Most of the firep...

After a frequently exceptional run, Mariah Carey�s Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel closes with a flagrant vote of no-confidence in everything that came before it; a radio-baiting cover of the Foreigner power-balled �I Want to Know What Love Is� was apparently tacked on in a panic after the slow start of the album�s lead single, �Obsessed.� Of course, Carey hits the cover out of the park, but the vic...

All achy voice and crashing guitars, Montreal's Land of Talk play indie-rock the way it sounded early this century, before the mid-decade mutiny of synthesizers and cowboy hats. Land of Talk's sophomore album, Some Are Lakes, was one of last year's most underrated albums, a poignant showcase for singer Elizabeth Powell's bruised-peach vocals, and this fall the trio is following it up w...

Well, it's good see that somebody found a use for Peter, Bjorn and John's wildly uneven latest album, Living Thing. If that record arrived half-formed, then Mick Boogie's re-imagining of that record, the Re-Living Thing mixtape�available for free download on an Internet near you)�marks its completion. As underground producers like 6th Sense and Cookin' Soul give Peter, Bjorn and John's clattery ...

Full disclosure: I don�t much care for M. Ward. I find his songwriting nearly as dull as his listless, smug voice, and I find his invocation of vintage American music to be disingenuous, just another affect he slathers over his flimsy songs. I admit this now not to rip on a performer I�ve mostly held my tongue about for the past half decade, but to give context to my endorsement of the debu...

Official streams of Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II went out today, and the album is every bit the swift Tim boot kick to the head Wu-Tang fans hoped it would be. It's a remarkable, beast of a record�it's 21 tracks long�and it manages what few Wu-Tang projects have this decade, taking that classic, grimy, cinematic Wu-Tang sound and making it fresh and vital again. Raekwon is on the t...

In a bad marriage, children can become the one common interest holding the couple together. And in a good marriage, children are usually the focus, an organizing principle of their parents' lives. When the children leave, some couples feel disoriented and play for time as they regain their direction. And some marriages run out of time once the kids are gone. That could be the guiding theme of an intriguing film from Argentina, Empty Nest (El Nido Vacio). But director Daniel Burman smuggles other meanings into his story, including the sometimes-uncertain line between desire...

Whether Method Man and Redman's 1999 collaboration Blackout! is actually a classic is up for debate, but as the only full length from the cult rappers turned unlikely Abbott and Costello comedy team, its status grew each year to the point that any formal follow-up was bound to be a disappointment. By almost every measure, though, Meth and Red's tardy sequel, Blackout! 2, is better than its predece...

That The Church still have great albums in them isn't a surprise; they've already proven themselves one of the few bands unblemished by age. Each year the veteran rock band gets older, grayer, farther removed from their '80s stardom and ostensibly more out of touch with contemporary music, yet their output remains as vital as ever. But even coming on the heels of so many proud late period releases...

From the "music I love immediately and intensely" file: the self-titled debut from Polly Scattergood, the latest successor to those Kate Bush comparisons that are suddenly in vogue thanks to St. Vincent and Bat For Lashes. Scattergood's debut also invites comparisons to a whole host of other moody songwriters, touching on Lily Allen's spunky pop, Lykke Li's electronic brain twisters and Joanna New...