THE BIG PINK
Future This
4AD
Rating: 3 out of 3 stars

The swaggering Brit-pop bands of the late twentieth century were never as good as they said they were. How could they be? With all their talk of the Beatles and Second Comings, Oasis and the Stone Roses had egos that flew higher than the Union Jack. Yet in rock ’n’ roll, unlike in customer service, a little attitude can go a long way. That’s a lesson English duo the Big Pink takes to heart on Future This: “I don’t want to hit the ground … like Superman!” Rob bie Furze yelps on “Hit the Ground.” Even better is the buzzy bluster of “Stay Gold,” which sounds marginally like a shoe-gaze band being fed through a jetliner en gine. In Ibiza. Sometimes arrogance trumps ability.

GUIDED BY VOICES
Let’s Go Eat the Factory
Rockathon
Rating: 4 out of 4 stars

Guided By Voices were old when they began. They were even older when they became the toast of the indie scene, and older still when they broke up in 2004 after a dozen or so albums, hundreds of indelible melodies, and un told thousands of beers. Now they’re back, with a set of 21 songs stronger than their redoubtable livers. Factory is the first album recorded by the nineties “classic” lineup since frontman Robert Pollard dismissed them a decade ago, and it’s a punchy, digressive delight. Discordant oddities like “Either Nelson” bump up against shimmer ing pop gems (“Choc olate Boy”) and glam-rock revelations (“The Unsinkable Fats Domino”). Pollard retains his uncanny knack for melody; rare ly have an artist’s golden years sounded this golden.

KATE BUSH
50 Words for Snow
Anti-
Rating: 3 out of 3 stars

You’d be forgiven if you didn’t realize this was the first time Kate Bush sang a ten-minute song from the perspective of a snowflake. Bush has been a witchy, spectral presence haunting the fringes of pop music for more than three decades now, her proggy piano ballads giving voice to nineteenth century heroines and natural phenomena alike. Even so, these seven wintry warbles spread out over an hour are notable for their sheer Kate Bush–iness. On the faerie fable “Wild Man,” she woos an ursine lover (“You’re a big brown bear!”), while on the title track, an unknown warlock recites all 50 words for the white fluffy stuff while Bush eggs him on (“Come on, man, 44 to go!”).

CHILDISH GAMBINO
Camp
Glassnote
Rating: 2 out of 2 stars

“Is there room in the game for a lame who rhymes?/Who wears short shorts and tells jokes sometimes?” Valid questions in the insular world of hip-hop, and it’s admirable that Community star Donald Glover asks them on his debut full-length as a rapper. Unfortunately, Glover mostly comes up shorter than his pants: Camp is an uncomfortable mashup of big-timing braggadocio and emo self-laceration. On “Bonfire,” Glover Hulks-out his reedy voice like Lil Wayne, but his subject matter is strictly Bruce Banner, all shout-outs to UCLA coeds and NPR. He’s best when he swaps dick talk for real talk, as on the racially charged “Hold You Down.”

NOEL GALLAGHER’S HIGH FLYING BIRDS
Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
Sour Mash
Rating: 3 out of 3 stars

The combustion engine that fueled Oasis from their mid-nineties heyday through their muted, midaughts denouement was the enmity between brothers Noel (the songs) and Liam (the voice) Gallagher. If one of them decelerated into a solo career, some wondered, would it stall out before getting into gear? Noel’s solo project suggests otherwise, and if it doesn’t soar as its title promises, it certainly rolls along—particularly on the jaunty “Dream On” and the pastoral “The Death of You and Me.” The record is relaxed, the sound of Abel chasing his Beatles-esque muse without looking over his shoulder for Cain.

MIRANDA LAMBERT
Four the Record
RCA Nashville
Rating: 3 out of 3 stars

While American Idol has rarely lived up to its lofty title—good luck finding Taylor Hicks— its country cousin, Nashville Star, has at least produced the genuine article. Of course, Miranda Lambert finished third, but has since rocketed to No. 1 on the charts. Now on her fourth album, the onetime Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is married (to fellow reality-TV star Blake Shelton) and far removed from the small-town travails she sings about. Thankfully, her muse has a long memory: Four is filled with visceral details delivered in Lambert’s Texan twang. She remains the anti–Taylor Swift: On “Fastest Girl in Town,” Lambert’s drunk, smoking, and packing heat—all before the first chorus.

LOS CAMPESINOS!
Hello Sadness
Arts & Crafts
Rating: 4 out of 4 stars

The songs on the first few Los Campe sinos! al bums were as earnest and impassioned as a freshman year romance. But beneath the wild-eyed intensity there throbbed undercurrents of spite and melancholy, if not nastiness and de pression. Now Los Campesinos!, who all attended the University of Cardiff in Wales, have matriculated into masters of self-laceration. While frontman Gareth David tries to talk tough (“I’ll have my hot hands over her soft parts soon,” goes “Songs About Your Girl friend”), he’s best when battered: “By Your Hand” dreams of post-romance death, and the bruised yawp of “The Black Bird, The Dark Slope” makes disembowelment sound like relief.

There’s a lot of cultural clutter surrounding She & Him. A collaboration between dour axman M. Ward and profession al pixie Zooey Deschanel, the duo traffics in the sort of smoky jazz-pop simulacra that can enrage as easily as it enchants. The pair’s previous two albums are rarely judged on their considerable, catchy merits; instead they’re treated like balloons set adrift on the constantly shifting headwinds of hipster taste. But perhaps, in the spirit of the holidays, it’s best to drop all preconceptions about this stocking stuffer: It’s an unpretentious collection of merry standards (“Silver Bells,” “Baby It’s Cold Outside”) and zippy curios. “Giddyap, it’s grand!” Deschanel coos sweetly, and it’s not hard to picture her standing under some mistletoe.

CLAP YOUR HANDS
SAY YEAH
Hysterical
self-released
Rating: 4 out of 4 stars

The line between internet sensation and internet cautionary tale is thin: Just ask Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The New York quintet rode bloggy buzz to virtual acclaim—along with some corpo real sales—for their 2005 self-titled debut. But 2007’s Some Loud Thunder vanished as quickly as a kitten video on YouTube. Now they return, older and wittier, with a batch of charismatic tunes built to last. Over the key board hum of “Same Mistake,” cracked-voiced singer Alec Ounsworth opens his heart to the open road. On the beautiful “In to Your Alien Arms,” his crooked declarations of love are downright otherworldly. It’s a true album in a pre-digital sense—with zero need to hit refresh.

FEIST
Metals
Cherrytree/Interscope
Rating: 2 out of 2 stars

Feist is a singer (first name Leslie) and a project responsible for two highly regarded albums (2004’s Let It Die and 2007’s The Reminder). But in 2011, Feist is, above all, a brand. It’s a delicately jazzy sensibility that can be used to sell iPods and cell phones—a nonthreatening form of hipness suit able for your mom’s hair salon. Yet even by Feist’s (the person’s) own flighty standards, Metals is maddeningly vague: a tasteful potpourri of finger-plucking and crooning. The best track, “Bittersweet Melodies,” can’t decide if it’s a dreamy pop song or an ornithology exam. “Birds are telling me stories / say ing you were meant for me,” she coos. We’re surprised they didn’t try to sell her an iPad as well.

WOLVES LIKE US
Late Love
Prosthetic
Rating: 3 out of 3 stars

In winter, there are parts of Norway that see mere hours of sunlight per day. We’re not sure, but it sounds like those are the parts that produced Wolves Like Us, a quartet of Nordic ax men whose grungy bluster veils a fjord-size heartbreak lurking underneath. On swaggering, big-bottomed cuts like “Old Dirty Paranoia” and “We Speak in Tongues,” frontman Lars Kristensen’s menacing but clear voice cuts through the post-punk haze like a blast of arctic air. “Secret Handshakes” suggests that there’s some soft-packed snow below the ice. As his band eschews metal sludge for minor-chord riffage, Kristensen bellows like a bluesman over a deal gone wrong—either with a woman, the devil, or both.

Thirty-six years ago, with the release of Welcome to My Nightmare, Alice Cooper was transformed from a platinum-selling hard-rock quartet to the sole alter ego of Vincent Furnier, diabolical Detroiter and smiling face of conservative America’s greatest fears. Now the former Furnier—who’s clean and sober, an avid golfer, and owner of a sports bar—has reunited with many of his old hell-raisers to cook up a sequel of sorts. Cooper remains an unthreatening devil and his winking shtick has aged well, whether he’s be moaning being “on the wrong side of the dirt” over the agro boogie of “A Runaway Train” or dueting with Ke$ha (!) on the electrofilthy “What Baby Wants.” For good or ill, Cooper remains the only restaurateur who can get away with a song called “I’ll Bite Your Face Off.”