Robert Smith's chosen image hasn't worn well with age, but the Cure's music is still, rather timelessly, a reminder of what it's like to be sad and 15. The Goth icons' latest sprawling opus is a typically competent offering of hyper-produced gloom, shorter on the breezy, despairing pop songs of yore than on atmosphere.

"4:13 Dream," the band's 13th album, is marketed as the "happy" half of a scrapped double album. Happy by Cure standards, mind you.

Pull-back-the-curtain epic "Underneath the Stars" is a fine opener in the tradition of "Want."

Three out of four stars

Kevin Barnes' modus operandi on "Skeletal Lamping" is best demonstrated by the first track, "Nonpareil of Favor." A stately harpsichord melody rides atop an insistent drum-machine beat as multi-layered falsetto vocals swirl through the headphones. The tempo changes abruptly about halfway through and the listener is assaulted -- violated, even -- by pummeling bursts of drums, distorted guitar and dischordant riffing that slowly give way to ringing Beach Boys harmonies and smooth guitar lines. Got all that? It's a breathtaking six minutes.

Of Montreal's "Skeletal Lamping"

Barnes, who writes and records Of Montreal's strangely alluring psych-pop albums almost entirely alone, has described "Skeletal Lamping," the ninth Of Montreal record, as a collection of song fragments. That's pretty much what it is, and when the segments cohere into something more than their sum, it's transcendent. On "Wicked Wisdom," Barnes sings, "When we get together / It's always hot magic," and he's right -- Of Montreal at its best runs circles around almost anything in the world of indie pop.

More often, though, the splinters of songs on "Skeletal Lamping" sound like leftover ideas from "Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?", Barnes' previous and much better album. Still, it's an interesting mess through which to sift.

E-mail Troy Reimink: treimink@grpress.com

AC/DC: "Black Ice"

Three out of four stars

If this sounds like you've heard it all before but damn well love it anyway, well then, you're a true-blue, er, true-black AC/DC fan. Because if nothing else, music's version of "thunder from down under" long ago perfected its hard-rock formula for success, with repetitive hard-chugging riffs, screeching vocals, a healthy dose of macho-in-overdrive and a smidgen of humor.

So, Angus Young and his raucous crew's first studio album in eight years -- sold exclusively through Wal-Mart -- pushes all the right fan-base buttons, starting with the opener and lead-off single, "Rock 'n' Roll Train," and continuing through churning powerhouse tunes "War Machine," "Spoilin' for a Fight" and the catchy title track.

Now, 15 tracks of this might rank as overkill, of course, though AC/DC did dispense with any lyrics in the fancy packaging probably because AC/DC lyrics are mostly disposable, superfluous, silly. Heck, four of the album's self-referential song titles are nearly identical: "Rock 'n' Roll Train," "She Likes Rock 'n' Roll," "Rock 'n' Roll Dream" and "Rocking All the Way."

Still, producer Brendan O'Brien deftly enhances the latest AC/DC experience, giving Young in particular a sturdy platform for his bone-crunching guitar leads while adding the occasional-but-inoffensive strings and whistles behind Brian Johnson's bluesy howls.

But what emerges mostly on "Black Ice" is the same ol' full-bore AC/DC. And isn't that just what the diehard fans' doctor ordered?

Lucinda Williams: Little Honey

Three out of four stars

Gotta give Lucinda credit: She can kick some serious Americana butt when given the opportunity. Starting with the opening strains of "Real Love," she proves she can rock her little honey of a country heart, then goes so far as to even cover AC/DC's "It's a Long Way to the Top" (which frankly oozes with way more appealing, Stones-drenched soul than the Aussie boys' version).

In between, there's plenty of Lucinda's signature twang and pain ("Circles and X's," "Well Well Well" and the commanding "Jailhouse Tears," with a guest appearance by Elvis Costello), not to mention some blues for good measure ("Tears of Joy," "Heaven Blues").

Of course, few artists express heartache and frailty quite as candidly as Lucinda, sort of like a slow dagger to the aorta. Even if her more excruciatingly languid songs might cut too deep for some listeners, there's no denying the penetrating power of her music.

E-mail John Sinkevics: jsinkevics@grpress.com

Ben Folds is nothing if not unpredictable, which of course can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on which Ben Folds one admires.

Personally, I appreciate the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde nature of this pianist's musical personality. It makes "Way to Normal" the perfect crazed picture of life from this artist with the bizarre-but-somehow-poignantly-insightful world vision and slightly bizarre sense of humor (which, naturally, leads us to the "strong language" parental advisory sticker on the front of this CD).

Ben Folds
Way to Normal
Three-and-a-half out of four stars

Starting out with the insanely infectious, and apparently autobiographical, "Hiroshima (B-B-B-Benny Hit His Head)" with its nod to Elton John's "Benny and the Jets," the album then plows directly into "Dr. Yang," a wondrous bolt of power pop with a rambunctious chorus and, yes, a delicious Elton-like piano solo.

Of course, there's also Folds' lilting duet with Regina Spektor, "You Don't Know Me," which may put off some at first blush with its string-enhanced, pop giddiness but actually meshes perfectly with the rest of this collection. Anyway, darn it, it has that stuck-in-your-cerebellum catchiness that can only be attributed to the considerable talents of both artists.

Plain White T's: "Big Bad World"
2 1/2 out of four stars

To say a pop-punk band has gone commercial seems sorta redundant. After all, the world of pop-punk is inhabited by shrieking teen fans raised on MTV and reality-TV junk food. But Chicago's Plain White T's have clearly retooled their approach to follow up on the surprising success of the omnipresent, acoustically sticky single, "Hey There, Delilah," which earned a Grammy nomination even if it quite frankly didn't sound a whole lot like the rest of the rock band's repertoire.

Despite hanging perpetually on the edge of a larger break, the Kings of Leon have always played to roughly the same size of audience.

They linger on the fringes of both mainstream and hip culture, with an equal number of characteristics for either group to accept and to feel suspicious toward.

"Dear Science,"
TV on the Radio
4 out of 4 stars

More anything? More everything! TV on the Radio's "Dear Science" is somehow bigger and more important-sounding than 2006's "Return to Cookie Mountain," which was itself not exactly small potatoes.

The new album, surely a future list-topper here and elsewhere, is more complicated, more melodic, more restless, more angry, more funky and more sonically impressive than anything the band has yet done.

Opener "Halfway Home" is everything the band is great at. It wastes no time plunging the listener into a din of noise, handclaps and nonsensical vocalizations reminiscent of that old "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" song.

It's a new world: Due to space constraints, CD reviews of releases by national artists no longer will appear in Wednesday editions of The Press but instead run in "Sound Check," "Medium Fidelity" and other entertainment-related blogs at mlive.com/music.

And remember to return to "Sound Check" for reviews and audio samples of new releases by West Michigan artists every Sunday.

Review: Okkervil River, "The Stand-Ins"

Since the Decemberists have been in a rare period of nonproductivity, fans of rich orchestrations, grandiose melodies, clever wordplay and nautical themes have found a substitute in the surging Okkervil River. Okkervil River is to Sarah Palin as the Decemberists are to Barack Obama. Think about it. I should get some kind of analogy award for that one.

Dragonforce

Ultra Beatdown

Metalheads probably won't agree with the general public on much, but here's something: Dragonforce must be the world's silliest band.

The British power metal act made its name because, among other things, "Through the Fire and Flames" is like the Rosetta Stone of the Guitar Hero series. Those other things are ridiculously complicated double guitar solos, unbelievably fast drumming, high-pitched vocals and standard-setting levels of for-its-own-sake instrumental wankery.

Hey, everyone. Good day so far? That's cool. Here's what happens to your body if you're sucked into a black hole.

Anyway, continuing to look back at the summer ...

Sonya Kitchell, "This Storm" (Decca/Velour) 4 stars.
At the age of 19, singer/songwriter Sonya Kitchell is growing by leaps and bounds.
That is very much evident on her sophomore album, "This Storm," the follow-up to her fine 2006 full-length debut "Words Came Back to Me."

The new album is more rhythmic, and a little less likely to draw the Norah Jones' comparisons of its predecessor, thanks to the tougher edge heard on songs like the positively upbeat single "Here to There," the subterranean grooves of "Borderline" and the restless, propulsive, lyrically-intriguing "Every Drop."

New Kids on the Block "The Block" (Interscope) 2 1/2 stars
Without New Kids on the Block there would have been no Backstreet Boys, no N' Sync or probably none of the other boy bands that sprung up in the aftermath of NKOTB's success. So blame them, praise them, do what you will, but don't write off their influence.

They've returned with their first new album since 1994 and Jordan Knight, Jonathan Knight, Donnie Wahlberg, Danny Wood and Joey McIntyre haven't strayed far from the formulaic brand of slickly produced pop that turned them into sensations.