Shiny and Warm: Goldfrapp, 'Head First'

IF GOLDFRAPP'S LATEST ALBUM, "Head First," had parents, the likely culprits would probably be the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' 2009 album "It's Blitz!" and the soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever."

Somehow, Karen O. and the Bee Gees bred creatively, and Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory got all the knowledge. Those lucky kids.

But even if this make-believe tale of faux parental units is just that, the influences of disco and electropop on "Head First" are hard to deny.

Goldfrapp's fifth album comes two years after their acoustic-inspired "Seventh Tree," and though some songs on this album are slower and similar to that previous release, more here is euphoric and thrilling, lyrics full of first-love longing and with optimistic, synth-heavy instrumentation to match. Over the course of the album, Alison Goldfrapp's lyrics deal with finding that guy, losing that guy, getting that guy back and then realizing maybe he wasn't that perfect anyway, a sequence of events that leave her pondering whether "damaged goods can be refunded" and if "too much, too little, too late" can ever be enough.

She's conflicted, yes. But what girl isn't?

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Age of Emotion: Kidz in the Hall, 'Land of Make Believe'

THE HIP-HOP duo Kidz in the Hall think the rise of the MP3 has changed hip-hop — in ways both good and bad.

The Kidz's Double O and Naledge think the easy availability of single-song downloads has given rise to the casual fan who won't invest the time to absorb an artist's full album or oeuvre. And for MC Naledge, this reaction is worse than any visceral one.

"When people are just in between and don't really give a shit about your music, that's kind of the worst thing that could happen," he said. "When I come to your town on tour, you're going to be like, 'Oh, Kidz are in town? ... Um, they had a couple records that I like, but I'm not going to go see them.'"

But according to DJ Double O, the benefits of having music mostly delivered via the free-for-all that is the Internet is that someone like Nas can be found only a few short clicks away from, say, Neil Young. This freedom helps create new associations and influences, which has caused the tone of hip-hop to shift.

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Born to Be Bad: The Runaways, 'The Mercury Albums Anthology'

FORMED IN 1975 and defunct by '79, The Runaways are perhaps more legendary than listened to. The band of teenage misfits — all barely old enough to drive, none old enough to vote — was assembled by show-biz entrepreneur/svengali Kim Fowley, who devised their jailbait images: tight jumpsuits and lingerie sets, lyrics about come-hither glances and flipping the bird to authority figures. They recorded a handful of great-to-adequate albums, hit big in Japan and finally broke up before any of them were old enough to drink.

Even if their albums have been out of print for years, The Runaways' legacy thrives. The stuttering single "Cherry Bomb" has been endlessly anthologized on punk compilations like Rhino's excellent four-disc "No Thanks! The '70s Punk Rebellion," even if The Runaways had only a glancing association with that scene or sound. After the break-up, rhythm guitarist Joan Jett sold 10 million copies of "I Love Rock & Roll," lead guitarist Lita Ford scored two solid hair-metal hits in the mid-'80s and Cherie Currie appeared in "Twilght Zone: The Movie" and a couple of television shows.

Now, more than 30 years after they parted ways, The Runaways are getting the Hollywood biopic treatment, starring that actress from the "Twilight" movies and ... that other actress form the "Twilight" movies. Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning certainly look the part of Jett and Currie playing fierce juvenile-delinquent trash rock, but early trailers suggest director Floria Sigismondi may be overselling their importance, implying that fame killed the band when, in fact, they struggled more than succeeded.

Coinciding with the movie (in theaters March 19) and its soundtrack (featuring original Runaways songs along with new versions by Stewart and Fanning), Hip-O Select has repackaged the band's first three studio albums as well as 1977's "Live in Japan" onto "The Mercury Albums Anthology," which is more fun that you might expect or remember.

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Cheery Jams: Free Energy, 'Stuck on Nothing'

WITH BIG POWER-POP hooks and a relentlessly upbeat outlook, Philadelphia's Free Energy is not your typical indie-rock band. In fact, the group's unwavering optimism almost seems at odds with a genre often defined by its detached cool.

Discovered by James Murphy, the creative force behind the acclaimed electro-rock group LCD Soundsystem, Free Energy started showing up regularly on blogs last year when the band released its joyful first single, "Dream City". Drawing heavily on '70s glam-rock boogie and the classic American pop of bands like Cheap Trick, the song was about as perfect a summer jam as one could hope for.

Capturing the spirit and innocence of a teenage night on the town, that same youthful energy carries through the band's full-length debut "Stuck on Nothing."

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Darkness and Dirges: Liars, 'Sisterworld'

LIARS MAY HAVE started out as a jittery post-punk act at the turn of the millennium, but since then they've been nearly impossible to box into one genre.

Each new album from the indie-rock three-piece has taken on a different approach, and almost all have been met with acclaim. The experimental noise of 2004's "They Were Wrong, So We Drowned," the conceptual art rock of 2006's "Drum's Not Dead", the relatively straightforward pop of "Liars" from 2007 — each was a sharp left turn in style from its predecessor but successful in its own right.

That's not an easy thing to pull off, of course, and it's made Liars one of the most interesting bands to follow over the past several years. Their latest release, "Sisterworld," marks yet another aesthetic detour for the group, but sometimes struggles to live up to the high standard set by their previous work.

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Throwing Down the Weird Gauntlet: The Knife, 'Tomorrow In a Year'

SWEDISH BROTHER-AND-SISTER DUO The Knife is weird. Their new album, "Tomorrow, In a Year," is weird. Everything about them, to be perfectly honest, is weird.

Does that make the album bad? Not necessarily. But to fully understand it, you probably have to be a little bit crazy.

Think of the album as a musical representation of "Lost" — all gloomy synths, echoing reverb and crashing instrumentation — and you'll get a glimmer of what it's all about. Add in the fact that siblings Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer were inspired by Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" to make this electronica-meets-opera experiment, and it makes a bit more sense. Just as groundbreaking as Darwin was, the album bridges genres with bizarre ease, mixing dance and pop with Italy's most well-known musical tradition.

Four years ago, The Knife released "Silent Shout," which was named the best album of the year by Pitchfork and spawned single "We Share Our Mother's Health," which was featured on "Ugly Betty" (rest in peace, Betty) and "CSI: NY," earning the duo some American listeners. But instead of creating another album that would relate universally, The Knife kept on getting stranger, refusing to appear in public without masks and voice-changers and with Karin slapping some horrifying, melting silly putty-like substance on her face to attend a Swedish awards show in January.

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Of Mouse and Mercer: Broken Bells, 'Broken Bells'

IN 2006, IT might have seemed premature to dub Brian Burton — a.k.a. Danger Mouse — "The D.J. Auteur," as one New York Times Magazine piece did.

Four years later, it couldn't seem more appropriate.

"I want to create a director's role within music," the DJ/producer told Chuck Klosterman. In the dozen-odd albums he's produced (The Black Keys, Beck, The Shortwave Set) or collaborated on since Gnarls Barkely's debut, Burton's done just that.

Like one of his favorite directors, Woody Allen, Burton's albums are distinctively his — from the way the drums and bass sound to his trademark organ and synth swirls. He owns each record he works on.

So it's interesting to find out one of the reasons Burton teamed up with The Shins mastermind James Mercer — a notorious introvert when it comes to writing — to form the group Broken Bells was to gain more control.

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Stickles' Folly: Titus Andronicus, 'The Monitor'

HERE'S HOPING THAT Titus Andronicus, the young New Jersey band whose ambitions currently outstrip their audience, releases an annotated edition of their second album, "The Monitor."

It's "Ulysses"-thick with references both obvious and obscure to American history, geography, pop culture and personal circumstances. The opener, "A More Perfect Union," begins with an ominous snippet of Abraham Lincoln's speech to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, in 1838 — long before he became president. From there, singer/songwriter Patrick Stickles namedrops the Garden State Parkway, the Fung Wah bus, Fenway Park, the Newark Bears, Billy Bragg, Bruce Springsteen and Jonathan Richman. And that's just the first verse.

"The Monitor" is a dense, demanding album, conceptually focused yet musically expansive as it roadtrips back and forth between Jersey and Boston and constructs a fascinatingly unwieldy metaphor about the Civil War and Stickles' inner turmoil. Its contradictions are legion: The songs are brainy yet boisterous, layered yet urgent, sophisticated yet gritty, grounded in Mid Atlantic bar rock yet turning its gaze westward to take in the entire union

"The Monitor" is utter folly, but it's also the best rock album of the year.

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Garbage Patch Kidz: Gorillaz, 'Plastic Beach'

SOMEWHERE IN THE Pacific Ocean floats an island of trash that is reportedly twice the size of Texas and cluttered with more than 7 million tons of plastic garbage. It's a geological and ecological disaster, snaring millions of birds and fish and polluting the water around it. That manmade land mass is the setting for "Plastic Beach," the third studio album by manmade band Gorillaz.

It's less an act of environmental activism than a re-imagining of the plastic island as a new Atlantis, risen from the deep with its own culture and influx of cartoon immigrants. Island sounds abound: the ominous South Pacific percussion and strings of "White Flag," the burbling reggae rhythms of "To Binge," the frenetic calypso of "Empire Ants." As a musical device, those styles tie the album together, not only pushing the band to devise new juxtapositions of sounds and styles but also creating a sense of cohesion and story. Ultimately, this is no tropical paradise, but a dystopia all its own.

In truth, Gorillaz probably never should have lasted long enough to make a high-concept island hip-pop record about a floating garbage patch in the Pacific.

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Missing the Pull: The Ruby Suns, 'Fight Softly'

THE FOURTH TRACK on the Ruby Suns' latest release, "Fight Softly", sounds so much like a Panda Bear B-side that listeners may need to check twice to make sure they're listening to the right record. The song, "Cranberry," features jubilant (if incomprehensible) vocals, a glitzy beat and a similar psychedelic vibe to the Animal Collective member's solo album, "Person Pitch."

The similarities, though, are more a testament to common influences, and main Sun Ryan McPhun has made two previous records with the same psych-pop indie-rock vibe, even though "Fight Softly" is a bit more synthy than previous Ruby Suns records. But the overall effect is mixed: "Dusty Fruit" settles into a nice groove but feels overly repetitious, while opener "Sun Lake Rinsed" sounds like a techno track played underwater. "Two Humans" feels like a mash-up of two different songs: a plaintive, slow vocal melody is mixed with an overactive percussion line, creating an ADD-riddled track with conflicting demands for attention.

And on headphones, forget it: McPhun has layered so many different textures, sounds and effects on "Fight Softly" that many of these songs just become overwhelming.

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