The following have appeared in publications both online and off.

The Association: Just the Right Sound (Rhino) Often dismissed as a square and faceless pop hit-making machine from the 1960s, the Association were so much more than a pack of odd-looking gents in Nehru jackets, as this new two-CD set makes evident. Despite not playing their own instruments on record - but, then again, neither did the Beach Boys - the members of the Association created a signature West Coast folk-based sound, which was focused mainly around their crystalline choral work. Beginning with the first album "And Then Along Comes," which was beautifully produced by the Millennium's Curt Boettcher - who is now, many years after his passing, finally receiving his due - the Association was capable of turning out psychedelic whimsy ("Along Comes Mary"), jangly rockers ("One Too Many Mornings") as well as sumptuous ballads ("Cherish"). Although the band thereafter severed its relationship with Boettcher, they learned enough from the master to continue to turn out shimmering singles ("Windy" and "Never My Love") and consistent albums, including "Insight Out" and "Birthday." As the era for this sort of thing faded, so did the band - although "Waterbeds in Trinidad!," one of their later releases from 1972, is something of a lost classic. Still, excluding a few missteps like the of-its-period high-minded silliness of "Requiem for the Masses," this is uncommon music, likely a lot better than you might remember it, and Rhino once again has collected all the prime cuts for you to savor. At long last, no more guilt by Association.

Paul Westerberg: Stereo/Mono (Vagrant) Paul Westerberg has always been schizo - either he's putting on his bratty rocker shtick or he's doing his ruminative balladeer routine. On past solo albums he mixed up his yin with his yang, but on the two-CD "Stereo/Mono" Westerberg separates his two distinct sides into two distinct sides. Now a family man who says he hasn't "left the house since the last century," grainy voiced Westerberg displays his bare bones on the skeletal "Stereo," which finds him playing it for real (meaning live takes with flubs left in) on tough but sensitive tracks like "Only Lie Worth Telling," "Got You Down," "We May Well Be the Ones" and the shambolically majestic "Don't Want Never," all of which have a spooky "Sister Lovers" ambiance about them. The final cut, "Call That Gone," is an up-tempo Mats-like number that segues neatly into the messy "Mono." Credited to Grandpa Boy, "Mono" ups the volume, but it is no less a joyful noise. "High Time" and "I'll Do Anything" bash while "2 Days 'Til Tomorrow" and "AAA" pop. Whatever your preference, Westerberg's got you covered. Tattered elegance.

Damon and Naomi on Tour With Kurihara: Songs to the Siren (Sub Pop) Former Galaxie 500 members Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang started collaborating with Japanese guitarist Michio Kurihara in 2000, the result being the spellbinding "Damon & Naomi With Ghost." The trio then began an extensive tour during which, as Kurihara notes, "we got this real synergy between the vibrations of the audience and the vibrations that we on stage were putting out. I guess that's what people mean when they talk about 'magic.'" This album, recorded in San Sebastian, Spain, seeks to imprint that magic for posterity, and indeed it does. Many of these tracks have appeared previously, but here they are endowed with the color, passion and spirit that come with a live presentation. Especially gorgeous are the evanescent "The Navigator," the searing "I Dreamed of the Caucasus," the haunting "Tanka" and "The Great Wall," whose guitar runs recall a plangent Peter Green. Hovering over the mix is Yang's beatific voice, which floats like a gentle finger of smoke. What "Live at Leeds" was to rendering high-volume, testosterone-fueled mayhem, "Songs to the Siren" is to capturing hypnotic, introspective-filled composure. That's not to say that this recording is somnambulant - if anything, it's full of immediacy and, most of all, life.

Neil Finn: One All (Nettwerk America) Released abroad last year as "One Nil" and now out domestically with a more upbeat title and altered track lineup, Finn's latest is yet another outstanding collection of songs that are as nakedly emotional as they are experimental. Never your average popster, the former Crowded House man, with the help of co-producer Tchad Blake, continues on "One All" to frame his plaintive voice in eccentric soundscapes that evoke an appropriate melancholic air. "I could go anytime / there's nothing safe about this life," a wised-up Finn divulges on "Anytime," a tune so winsome that one might forget he's talking about death. Not everything sounds as sweet. "Hole in the Ice" - which evokes Rilke's admonition, "You must change your life" - begins as brute force before segueing into a heart-wrenchingly dulcet refrain. But on the whole, this is an album filled with deeply rich melodies ("The Climber," "Wherever You Are" and "Rest of the Day Off") in which the cloudy-day sentiments have no silver lining. Finn has long since begun to ratchet downward his estimates of just how much joy he can extract from the world. It's a marvel then that he's able to express his fears, apprehensions and demons with such brilliance and beauty. One for all.

Capitol K: Island Row (XL) A primitivist with a penchant for clanky beats, snaky guitars and wayward effects, one-man-band Capitol K (a.k.a. Kristian Craig Robinson) has crafted an album of exotic charms. With its ever-shifting moods and modulating soundscapes, "Island Row" is an unpredictable blend that has no qualms about starting out with the stuttering electronica of "City" and then flowing directly into the squishy pop of "Pillow." "Anon" drives along as if possessed of a head-trip trauma, while the reverberating "Soundwaves" is not unlike Radiohead tuning into a slightly different frequency. "God Ohm" block-rocks along before nearly decompensating, "Monster" cranks up some savage guitar noise and "Heat" is the sound of a desert ant sizzling under a magnifying glass. "Island Row" may seem disjointed, but it does cohere in its own peculiar fashion. Much like a Chuck Close painting - you have to stand back a bit to get it.

Tom Waits: Alice/Blood Money (Anti) In 1999, Tom Waits, along with collaborator and life partner Kathleen Brennan, returned from a prolonged musical silence with "Mule Variations," an ambitious yet accessible work that offered subtle deviations and updates on Waits' modus operandi. Less steeped in the scabrous aural geography of his last few death-obsessed efforts, although not a pretty album by any means, "Mule Variations" veered toward a sort of bucolic blues while still touching on Waits-ian motifs that embraced both the possessed and the dispossessed. A few short years later comes not one but two records, a mother lode of new material that should have Waits fans firing off 16 shells from a thirty-ought six. Originally performed as an avant-garde opera in 1992, "Alice," a song cycle based loosely around Lewis Carroll's fixation with a girl named Alice Liddell, is, according to Waits, "an odyssey in logic and nonsense." Those words could easily describe most of Waits' canon, and here the croak-throated singer vacillates between the two poles, whether he's whispering lyrics like "Arithmetic Arithmetock / I turn the hands back on the clock" on the title track or madly barking "Dig deep in your heart for that little red glow / We're decomposing as we go" on "Everything You Think." Overall, "Alice" is haunting and somber, flush with longing and loss and minus many of Waits' trademark jagged edges, although not without difficult moments ("Kommienezupadt" sounds like it was tuned in via short wave from another galaxy). "Blood Money's" terrain is more strenuous to navigate, but it's worth the effort. Waits himself says its songs are "rooted in reality: jealousy, rage, the human meat machine." Brutal and forbidding, "Blood Money" begins with Waits braying, "If there's one thing you can say / About mankind / There's nothing kind about man" on the rubbery "Misery Is the River of the World." Colored with bongos, marimbas and clarinets, these tracks transcend their simple forms with deep atmospherics, a hermetic sonic universe that's peerless and absolute. Bleak? You bet. Challenging? Always. But also affecting, sublime, magical.

Jonathan Richman: Action Packed (Rounder Heritage) For most, Richman is seen as an innocent man/child with a gift for telling a tale in the most plainspoken fashion - a point not lost on the makers of "There's Something About Mary." Maybe it's his beguiling eyes or his fey delivery or his artlessness. Richman's cornpone lyrical observations and musical primitivism was possibly at its zenith when these songs were recorded over the course of seven albums for Rounder during the late 1980s and early '90s. Gone were the buzzy new wave affects of his Beserkley years, and in its place was an acoustic minimalism that maximized Jonathan's love of Buddy Holly, rockabilly and, well, just about anything that happen to cross his mind. The songs are the titles: On "Fender Strastocaster" Jonathan, who frequently refers to himself in the third person, expresses his love for the classic guitar; on "Closer" Jonathan wants to get closer; on "You're Crazy for Taking the Bus" Jonathan chastises himself for being, you guessed it, crazy for taking the bus. Yes, his singing is often flat and sometimes irritating and, yes, the performances - a single guitar and rhythm tapped out on a cardboard box - are sloppy and leftfield. But there are probably no musicians on the planet more genuine and sincere than Richman. "Action Packed" is just that.

Imperial Teen: On (Merge) For their Merge debut, Imperial Teen turn back the clock without stopping time, producing yet another batch of caramel-coated treats that summon the days when a rock-steady beat, snappy handclaps and well-placed "whoos!" were all one needed to make a tune go-go. Beatific backups wrap around Roddy Bottum's lead vocals like so much girlie gauze, nicely obscuring the subversive lyrics. The songs generally employ but a few chords, and once Imperial Teen lock into an insistent groove there's little shift in the dynamics, like what the Ramones might've been if they'd grown up on the Ronettes. This is sparkling yet gritty, dreamy yet dark, hooky yet wayward.

Toothpaste 2000: Instant Action (Parasol) Remember shoving a chunk of Bazooka in your mouth? Hard and sweet and impossible not to chew on - that's the sensation one gets from "Instant Action." This is the band's fifth album, but the first to be produced in a real studio, and with legendary popmeister Adam Schmitt at the controls it brims with frothy excitement. The riffs charge, the guitars ring, the drums bash, the vocals are either tender (courtesy of Donna Esposito) or tough (courtesy of Frank Bednash) and the tracks generally don't exceed the 2:30 mark. What more could you want out of a record? Don't let Toothpaste 2000 squeeze by you.

Mull Historical Society: Loss (XL) The latest album to unabashedly proclaim "Pet Sounds" as a seminal influence, "Loss" could be the record that the faithful keep hoping Brian Wilson will eventually release. Mull Historical Society - essentially the love's labor of Colin MacInytre - create songs that feature ringing bells, ascending chord structures, choirboy harmonies and a sense of deep-seated melancholy. Nowhere is this more evident than on "Instead," which implores you to "hold on to loneliness" or on "I Tried," which confesses, "I'm determined to be a loser" or on "Only I," which concedes, "Only I know how hard I try to get nowhere." MacInytre's move from rural Scotland to Glasgow and his stint working as a directory assistance operator for a major corporation informs much of the worldview on "Loss," and it's an outlook tinged with curiosity, wariness and futility. These sensibilities are subsumed into music that's by turns pastoral and urbane. Not to mention gorgeous and nakedly emotional.

Dipstick: Don't Rewind (Weed) These days we are overloaded with remix albums - from chunky Ibiza dance grooves and Cafe del Mar downtempo to the Anotherlatenight and Back to Mine compilations - most of which focus on dance esoterica. Dipstick (a.k.a. Greg Reeves) offers something a bit different - a mishmash of tracks that blow by you like a dry and dirty Santa Ana wind. Reeves, himself a multi-instrumentalist and "retronica" producer, has collected the likes of Chuck Prophet, Mushroom, Russ Tolman and Rocket From the Crypt to find the funk in American roots music. The result is sometimes folksy (Barbara Manning's lambent interpretation of Jackson Browne's "These Days"), sometimes dust-bowl gritty (Calexico's scorching "Stinging Nettle") but mostly just outright freaky (Daevid Allen and Dipstick's "Lightning" and Friends of Dean Martinez's "Through the Whine"). As one track flows into the next, the listener is drawn into a warped Western universe, where Morricone rules over Moby and where folks are high on peyote, not ecstasy. "Don't Rewind" is desert dance floor music.

Billy Bragg and the Blokes: England, Half-English (Elektra) On "England, Half-English" everyone's favorite agitpropist - recharged from his experiences working with Wilco on the two Woody Guthrie "Mermaid Avenue" records - pens a series of vignettes that explore England's continually evolving multicultural landscape. The album, Bragg's first collection of his own songs since 1996's "William Bloke," begins with the rollicking "St. Monday," a peek into your average workaday clock-puncher. In the spare "Distant Shore," the narrator, intoxicated with yearning, "escaped my tormentors by crossing the sea" - but what he can't escape is his memory. Perhaps the title track, with its ironic Latin lilt, addresses the album's themes best in the wry lines: "Dance with me to this very English melody / From morris dancing to Morrissey / all that stuff came from across the sea." Sometimes Bragg tosses subtly out the window altogether, as he does on the polemical "Take Down the Union Jack," a call to action that strains to be heavy but is merely heavy-handed. Preferable are the less pedantic, more intimate numbers like "Jane Allen," a wistful tale of near infidelity, which sports a warm and limber musicality that's undoubtedly a byproduct of Bragg's "Mermaid" experiences. In fact, unlike his past efforts where he employed various outside players in the service of his songs, "England, Half-English" with the able assistance of the Blokes has an atmosphere and spirit of collaboration - which, in this time of extreme intolerance and unrest, is really what it's all about, isn't it?

South: From Here On In (Mo' Wax) With their wigged-out guitars and tub-thumping beats, South are a departure for James Lavelle's trip-hop label, but nonetheless there's something cool to the point of chilled-out about this London trio. Joel Cadbury, Jamie McDonald and Brett Shaw whip up a dreamy blend of post-psychedelic space dust that combines the thorniness of the Stone Roses with the decaying elegance of bent-back tulips. Looking for a taste of the melancholy? This record's got it in spades. The harrowing "Recovered Now" swirls and grinds like an unsettling fever dream. "I Know What You're Like" finds a loping country groove that pushes along a haunting melody while numbers such as the somber title tune and "By the Time You Catch Your Heart," with their gauzy acoustics, could easily be slotted alongside Coldplay and Travis tracks in your CD changer. The simmering three-part mellotron-driven instrumental, "Broken Head" dials up comparisons to Radiohead, but overall South has its own distinct vibe. At 70 minutes, "From Here On In" wears out its welcome in the home stretch. Still, this is a promising debut, one that's both balmy and barmy.

Concrete Blonde: Group Therapy (Manifesto) Having disbanded in 1994 after playing no small part in the same Los Angeles' post-punk scene that also produced the likes of X and Dream Syndicate, the original line-up of Concrete Blonde re-formed last year and, thus inspired, quickly recorded "Group Therapy." Although the reunion of this band - which includes Johnette Napolitano's tough-as-nails vocals and thrumming bass, Jim Mankey's lacerating guitars and Harry Rushakoff's cavernous drums - might not exactly send a frisson across the land, even those not familiar with the group's better known songs like "Joey" and "God Is a Bullet" should give this a chance. The album - sharply produced by Mankey's brother Earl, himself an L.A. underground vet - eases into gear with "Roxy," a sentimental ode to either the classic West Hollywood music venue or Bryan Ferry's band - or both. Things rev up on "Violent," in which Mankey spits out fiery licks and Napolitano moans sinisterly. Throughout "Group Therapy," it's dark and dirty stuff that lumbers along with brutal imagery and fierce honesty - especially on "True Part III," in which Johnette confronts her mortality against a primordial beat and glistening guitars. Things turn moody and bleak on "Your Llorona" and "Take Me Home," and then start circling the drain altogether on the lugubrious "Inside/Outside" and the mangy "Fried." Much like Los Angeles' Echo Park neighborhood that members of Concrete Blonde once inhabited, "Group Therapy" is steeped in Latino mysticism and mystery. It's a record that insinuates itself into you as if it were possessed with a spell from a Santeria shop. Let it do its work.

The Chemical Brothers: Come With Us (Astralwerks) "Come with us" they beckon - and who can resist? With its neo-psychedelic farrago of polyrhythmic textures, the Chemical Brothers' latest is a perfect album for the dance floor of your mind. The set kicks into high gear with the block-rockin' title track, and from there it's a magic carpet ride that's by turns impressionistic, boombastic and danceable. "It Began in Africa's" clattering drums whip up the dust of a vast desert plain, "Galaxy Bounce" locks into a we-mean-business back beat and "Star Guitar" wanders off into the cosmos propelled by a Kraftwerkian-powered pulse. The hyperactive "Denmark" sounds like someone triggered the orgasmitron button while "Pioneer Skies" pictures itself on a boat on a river with tangerine trees and ... you know the rest. Guest stars? Previous collaborator Beth Orton announces "The State We're In" and newbie Richard Ashcroft puts us to "The Test." Both know the formula: keep it spacey, stupid. Chemical reactors Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons' gonzo mix-and-match approach has never been more acute, and "Come With Us" gleefully filches a myriad of styles - techno, house, samba, jungle - to wondrous effect, not affect. Follow them.

Neil Halstead: Sleeping on Roads (4AD) Recorded at home during his downtime from Mojave 3 using the usual acoustic arsenal as well as employing "computer skills and technical stuff" and "funny noises," Brit Neil Halstead's first solo disc is, unsurprisingly, wistful. Although it's intended to be more expansive musically and looser in approach than his day gig, "Sleeping on Roads" remains, like his prior work, ethereal and ruminative, its colors that of a gathering storm. With its muted trumpets, gently thrummed guitar and sashaying rhythms, the opener "Seasons," heralds in a maundering mood, one that's sustained throughout. "Two Stones in My Pocket" flickers like a waning candle while "Martha's Mantra (for the Pain)" and "High Hopes" are both as delicate as gossamer thread. The only track to work up something even resembling momentum is "See You on Rooftops," whose extended fade raises the volume level a tad by suddenly going wonky. Overall, "Sleeping on Roads" could be considered a bit too twee, but I recall whispery-voiced Nick Drake - an obvious Halstead inspiration - being initially dismissed as such. Who knows, perhaps 30 years from now a new generation will be discovering this stuff on a VW commercial.

Belle & Sebastian: I'm Waking Up to Us (Matador) "I'm Waking Up to Us" is a three-song quickie from a band that's consistently accused of being overly twee by those who aren't really listening. The strings, flutes and oboes on the title track opener do make that accusation tough to dispute - until you notice the melancholic lyrics about loss and regret. The harpsichord-driven "I Love My Car" may sound like "Mellow Yellow"-era Donovan at his most quaint, but again there are knowing twists in the words that make it anything but slight. In both melody and mood "Marx and Engels," a wistful ditty about detachment, closes the EP on a ruminative note. Ah, life in a Belle jar!

Ashby: Power Ballads (Marina) Plucky and pretty without being overly fussy or saccharine, Ashby don a fuzzy, Cardigans-esque musical wardrobe. Using electronics to enhance rather than to simply decorate, the band - essentially the Boston duo singer/songwriter Evelyn Pope and multi-instrumentalist Bill Cowie - has on "Power Ballads" crafted a breezy set of tunes that linger like so much colored air. Pope's voice is both alluring and hypnotic, and the well-sculpted production puts it center stage, ahead of all the bloops and bleeps, on the Left Coast vibe of "West Coast Town" and out in front of the giddy, Pizzicato Five jaunt of "Trip 66." "Old Gold's" gentle flutes and even gentler back beat will have you aaah-ing, "Horizon's" clattering rhythms will have you oomph-ing and "Last Another Day's" sensual samba will have you ooh-ing. Such are the disparate sensations one feels after experiencing 45 minutes of Ashby. Ballads, yes. But not without a certain power.

The Cyrkle: Red Rubber Ball; Neon (Sundazed) With the songwriting support of a young Paul Simon and the backing of no less than the Beatles - a spot on a Fab Four tour; clout from Brian Epstein; John Lennon coining the group's name - the Cyrkle is a classic example of '60s might-have-beens. What's unfortunate is that the band's career might-not-have-been-more, because these two albums demonstrate nascent talents that begged to be fully realized. Yes, the big hits, Simon's bouncy "Red Rubber Ball" and the breezy "Turn-Down Day," were composed by outsiders, but members of the Cyrkle themselves - most notably Don Dannemann and Tom Dawes, who went on to write such memorable ad jingles as Alka Seltzer's "Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz" - were more than capable tunesmiths. Self-penned tracks on "Red Rubber Ball" like the beat-group influenced "Cry" and the Byrdsian "How Can I Leave Her" are easily equals of Simon's whimsical "Cloudy." With "Neon," things got a bit more sophisticated, employing the songs (and the sashaying style) of Burt Bacharach and lush production from John Simon and Roy Halee. Packaged with scads of worthwhile bonus tracks and dense with historical liner notes, these two Sundazed releases have come, um, full cyrkle. Definitely for fans of '60s harmony pop.

Montage: Montage (Sundazed) Here's a baroque pop masterpiece from the mastermind of baroque pop, Michael Brown. Following his departure from the Left Banke, Brown teamed up with the members of Montage to produce, perform on and co-write most of the songs on the band's sole album. This could easily have been a lost Left Banke LP, with the arrangements and vocals resembling closely those found on the classic tunes "Walk Away Renee" and "Pretty Ballerina." Montage even does a version of the Left Banke's "Desiree," which with its sparser production nearly trumps the original. Throughout, the tunes on "Montage" are mostly brilliant, filled with striking symphonic flourishes, Zombies-like harmonies and downhearted themes. For example, "She's Alone" is a tale of loneliness that's sentimental without being mawkish - credit Brown's unusual use of strings, which convey an atmosphere of sadness and desperation. And "Men Are Building Sand" employs dissonance to beautiful but jarring effect. Brown went on to record with the Stories and the Beckies, and then he seemed to fall off the map. Thanks should go to Sundazed for restoring this luminous chapter in his musical history.

Beth Hirsch: Titles & Idols (K7) No mere Air head, Beth. Once associated with the electronica duo famous for freshening up Paris pop, Hirsch is now positioning herself as a solo artist with an identity that's distinctly different from the one she was known for on "Moon Safari." To that end this former Floridian living abroad produced last year's "Early Days," which found her in a spare, folky terrain, and now "Titles & Idols," which adds a folk-hop backing that will be familiar to fans of Beth Orton. This is an extremely smooth-in-the-groove listen, due in no small part to Hirsch's pipes, which are subtle and sensual, capable of transporting the listener into the smoky cosmos on tracks like "Captain Daylight" and "Let It Live." At times, though, some songs seem to lose their moorings and drift into still (and featureless) waters. But overall, "Titles & Idols" is the perfect music to induce or subdue a blue mood.

Harpers Bizarre: Feelin' Groovy; Anything Goes; The Secret Life of Harpers Bizarre; 4 (Sundazed) Could any band from the late '60s be as groovy as Harpers Bizarre? But listening to these four albums now, one has to wonder, and marvel, at just how peculiar this band was. Originally, they were five lads from Santa Cruz, Calif., and they called themselves the Tikis, but believing that their surfing-sounding moniker would not fit their soon-to-be feel-good hit "Feelin' Groovy," it was decided that Harpers Bizarre was more suitable because it was "tricky and perverse, but it made sense." Never was a description more apt for this band, which combined Tin Pan Alley tunes and the sunshine pop sound of Curt Boettcher with the sardonic sensibilities of Van Dyke Parks and Randy Newman, who composed many of the songs here. The group's vocals were certainly airy and angelic, and the music was exceedingly twee, and no doubt many moms across the nation considered this stuff safe as milk. In actuality these four records were not far off from the works that both Parks and Brian Wilson were fashioning at the time - music that's idiosyncratic and cinematic. Each album is loaded with strange but fascinating aural details, with perhaps "Anything Goes'" sepia-toned program the oddest of the lot. What makes them all truly subversive is that beneath the choirboy veneer and candy-sweet orchestrations there's a subtle but affecting yearning to escape to a time that no longer, or perhaps never did, exist (remember, these recordings came out in the midst of intense civil strife and the Vietnam conflict). A line from Newman's seemingly cheery "Happyland" makes it plain: "I was better off when I was pretending / Everything's far too real."