But sometimes when hype arrives—and inevitably fades—a better band remains. With 2008’s astounding “Microcastle,” Deerhunter managed to form real songs out of all the clatter. Songs like “Never Stops” and “Nothing Ever Happened” were instant indie-rock classics. “Microcastle” sounded like something you might discover as a 14-year-old and show-off to your older brother—its accessibility never harming the album’s eerie, impenetrable cool.

“Halcyon Digest” is nearly as good as its predecessor. The record, the band’s fourth proper LP, explores newer, starker territory while investing even further in pop song craft. Much of the later, surprisingly, has to do with guitarist Lockett Pundt, whose two contributions here are some of the record’s most coherent tracks, and also some of its best.

The album’s best moments fall somewhere between the aesthetic extremes represented by the somnambulant electronica of “Earthquake” and the four-track acoustic mumblings of “Basement Scene”—between creepy psychedelia and lo-fi pop. “Helicopter” marries burbling synths to one of Cox’s first genuinely sexy vocal turns. “Oh, these drugs they play on me these terrible ways/ They don’t pay like they used to pay,” he moans.

Elsewhere, Deerhunter go for short and sweet. Lead-single “Revival” is a brisk little number about God, darkness, and redemption—subjects that Cox and co. used to explore at epic length but now treat with a blast of Autoharp and assertive bass. And later, when Deerhunter let loose a few saxophone solos on “Coronado,” you think they’re putting you on until you realize those ragged horn bursts fit Cox’s playfully vindictive mood perfectly: “And if I die before I wake/ I know that it must frustrate some people that need a paycheck.”

But while Cox’s songwriting is as enigmatic and softhearted as ever, Pundt very nearly steals the show with the album’s centerpiece, “Desire Lines.” Over nearly seven minutes, bittersweet pop slowly collapses into an extended coda of relentless Motorik and urgent, glimmering guitars. The song invites hyperbole, sure, but that’s because it’s that good.

The band that arrived on the scene using decidedly 21st-century means has managed to stick around by doing something that’s actually very 20th century: putting out consistently strange, yet stubbornly accessible rock ’n’ roll. This is a good sign.

After the scattershot “A Hundred Miles Off,” “You & Me” was something of a comeback for this Philly/New York quintet. The music came easy—the instrumentation relaxed, never busy. Frontman Hamilton Leithauser sounded a little older ,and certainly wiser. The Walkmen were willing to slide into fatherhood, but not without a drink in their hand and a song on their lips.

This sense of ambivalence continues on “Lisbon.” And though the music is rawer and steeped deeper in Americana (the “early Elvis and Sun Records” vibe that Leithauser mentioned in interviews is certainly here), the record feels almost like the second side of a “You & Me” double album.

Which is just fine. On “Lisbon,” The Walkmen sink deeper into the cozier, sun-dappled corners of their last record, which makes for an even mellower ride. And oh, those horns! The brass that enveloped the gorgeous ballad “Red Moon” on “You & Me” is even more prominent here. Leithauser sounds like he’s singing next to a full Mariachi band on the lead single “Stranded.” “You don’t want me, you can tell me / I’m the bigger man here,” he bellows, while the horns blare in bleary-eyed unison over Matt Barrick’s lazy time-keeping. It’s a song for the last guy left at the wedding—his friends all gone back to their rooms, the streamers littering the floor—and one of the best things the Walkmen have ever recorded.

But while the record is dominated by these half-lit mourners—“Blue as Your Blood” is another good one, all plucky Telecaster and graceful, prewar strings—The Walkmen also make sure to play their first trick, and play it well. “Angela Surf City” is the most fist-pumping thing they’ve done since the “The Rat.” While Barrick pounds away on his snare (it’s a minor tragedy how infrequently this guy gets to flex his muscles) and guitarist Paul Maroon runs up and down the neck, Leithauser  shakes off his summer fling. “I was holding on to you / for a lack of anything to do!” he wails.

The two years it took The Walkmen to record “Lisbon” saw the band touch on many styles—New Orleans jazz, country, what organist Paul Bauer called “these simple songs with just delay, quiet guitar, and singing.” But the 11 songs the band ended up with (whittled down from 25) sound very much like what the band sounded like two years ago, just more assured and playful. “Well, they say you can’t please everyone / but I’m stuck on a winning streak,” Leithauser sings on “While I Shovel the Snow.” Precisely.

And yet sometimes the genre’s inherent excess can serve a beneficial end. Exhibit A: Black Mountain’s new record “Wilderness Heart.” Based on concept alone, the synth- and riff-heavy Vancouver band can seem irritatingly backward looking, their music borrowing from the meat of class rock radio: Black Sabbath, the Beatles and, of course, Zeppelin. And yet, as they did with 2008’s “In the Future,” Black Mountain infuse their music with enough originality and creativity to avoid cliché.

“Wilderness,” the band’s third LP, is more accessible and listener friendly than “In the Future”—and catchier too. Gone are the six-, eight- and 16-minutes epics. In fact, only two of the new record’s 10 tracks are more than five minutes long. On the album opener, “The Hair Song,” frontman Stephen McBean harmonizes with Amber Webber over an irresistible beat. The guitar riffs may be effusive, but they’re less meandering than those on “Future.” Meanwhile, on the pulsing “Old Fangs,” McBean and Webber’s creaky vocals speak of dark visions and human cowardice while a hypnotic organ booms in the background.

Black Mountain’s love of Deep Purple and Cream is readily evident on “Old Fangs,” as it is elsewhere on the record. But thankfully the quintet avoids the overindulgence and flat-out ridiculousness of a group like The Darkness. Even when Black Mountain builds a song to a potentially disastrous crescendo, as they do on “Rollercoaster,” there’s something beautiful and sincere that saves the song from self-parody.

There are times when McBean seems more convinced of his lyric’s profundity than his listeners. And as with Zeppelin’s love of Tolkien, Black Mountain’s evident fascination with pagan and medieval myth borders on the tedious. However, for the most part, the band keeps their worst classic rock impulses at bay. “Wilderness” is an album from the past that still manages to be relevant today. Black Mountain may be retro, but they’re anything but retrograde.

“Phosphene Dream,” The Black Angels’ third LP, is still obsessed with bad drugs and the seedier side of the ’60s, but the mood is lighter, less oppressive and the songs, crucially, are much more than simple pedal-stompers. They’re also a lot shorter, yet they do so much more than the best tunes on “Directions.” “Telephone” is a static-charged pop wonder—two minutes of fuzzy guitar, spitfire organ and sweaty handclaps. And you can actually dance to it.

The classic “Nuggets” box set is chock full of “Telephone” sound-alikes—same with “Yellow Elevator #2” and “Sunday Afternoon,” an ode to acid, what else. But then originality was never much of a concern for these guys. The last thing  the Angels want to do is hide their influences—and fortunately, nowadays, they have a better idea of what to do with them.

“Rolling fast down I-35 / supersonic overdrive,“ Alex Maas sings on “Entrance Song,” and there you are with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda barreling down the highway toward New Orleans, the drug money stashed in the gas tank. “Entrance Song” intimates that same feeling of dread, the sense that the good times can’t end well—that the ’60s will inevitably turn into the ’70s—that “Directions” tracks like “Mission District” managed so well. But it does it in almost half the time.

Of course, “Entrance Song” is also a thinly veiled ode to Steppenwolf—and there’s that Pink Floyd song called “Interstellar Overdrive.” But again, originality isn’t the point. What exactly is the point, besides extolling the virtues of vintage guitars and hallucinogens (the liner notes ask you to “rethink your preconceived notions, question authority, and create other methods for survival”), isn’t entirely clear. With “Phosphene Dream,” though, The Black Angels have at least proved they can do more than drone on. And that, certainly, is more than you can say for most record collectors.

Nada Surf’s “If I Had a Hi-Fi,” the Brooklyn trio’s sixth LP in 14 years, attempts to do what all good covers records do: show off the band’s eclectic taste while reminding fans what they love about the group in the first place. In that, “Hi-Fi” is largely successful. (See The Lemonheads’ 2009 covers disc “Varshons,” for another good example.) Nada Surf’s playlist ranges from the relatively well-known—Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence,” the Moody Blues’ “Question,” a supple version of Kate Bush’s art-pop extravagance “Love and Anger” from her 1989 record, “The Sensual World”—to the painfully obscure.

It’s with the more arcane stuff that the trio sounds most inspired. The record’s lead-single is a cover of Bill Fox’s “Electrocution.” Fox, whom you may remember from a 2007 where-is-he-now? feature in The Believer, fronted Cleveland heroes The Mice back in the ‘80s and then went on to release a couple of solo records before dropping out of music all together. (The Believer marveled that after all these years, he was working as a telemarketer.) Fox’s endearingly self-produced “Electrocution,” which originally appeared on a 1998 Anyway Records compilation, “I Stayed Up All Night Listening to Records,” is a perfect distillation of Big Star and fellow Ohioans Guided By Voices—all chiming six-strings and gooey sentiment.

Nada Surf adds a throbbing rhythm section and big, power-pop guitars, which simply makes “Electrocution” another great Nada Surf song—something that could have shown up on any record since 2003’s masterful “Let Go.” You could fault the trio for a lack of creativity, but whatever it is, “Electrocution” is a great reminder of what Nada Surf does well.

Nada’s Surf’s take on Spoon’s “Agony of Lafitte” is a reminder of something else entirely: each band’s agonizing experience with major labels. Both Nada Surf and Spoon released albums in the late ‘90s on Elektra (Nada Surf’s “High/Low” in 1996, Spoon’s underrated “A Series of Sneaks” in 1998) and both were unceremoniously dropped soon thereafter. Both bands eventually found stable homes in the  greener pastures of established indie labels (Nada Surf at Barsuk, Spoon at Merge). Spoon’s “Laffitte,” released as a single by Saddle Creek right after the band’s break with Elektra, is essentially a big “fuck you” to their former A&R man, Ron Laffitte. (“It’s like I knew two of you, man / The one before and after we shook hands.”)

This makes Nada Surf’s cover—which takes the lo-fi acoustic original and transforms it into what sounds like a Spoon tune from the “Gimme Fiction” era—a brilliant joke. The subtext is so rich you could cut it with a knife.  It almost makes you wonder if Nada Surf had to deal with Laffitte, too.

So yes, “Hi-Fi” has its pleasures, and its surprises. The Francophiles who dug “La Pour Ca,” the “Let Go” tune sung in French, will certainly warm to Nada Surf’s over of Coralie Clément’s “Bye Bye Beauté.” Matthew Caws’ French is as impeccable as his band’s post-punk arrangement of the folky original.

But in the end, “Hi-Fi” is just a covers record, if a pretty great one. If Nada Surf is going to sound like themselves even when they’re playing other people’s songs, why don’t they just play their own?

The New Pornographers — “Together”

Both times I’ve seen The New Pornographers play live, the show has been outdoors, and it has rained. Somehow this works out OK: Their busy, buoyant music is pretty much the perfect thing to cut through gloomy weather. The thing about this band, though—maybe more than many others—is that you either love them or you don’t. While I wouldn’t exactly call them divisive, no one who’s not really psyched about their brand of feverish, pop-infused rock is going to have much patience for it. But those of us who think they’re damned charming will happily let them play on…and on, till we reach a total saturation point and need to take a break from them for at least a month.

Not surprisingly, if you’re in the latter camp, you’ll feel right at home with their new album, “Together.” On each of their four previous albums, AC Newman and his super super-group have been amazingly consistent, tossing us a handful of infectious songs loaded with layered voices and swelling instrumentation, one or two Dan Bejar-led tracks where the Destroyer frontman enunciates in his distinctive half-annoying, half-endearing way, and a lovely slowed-down ballad or two that let Neko Case’s pipes shine while serving as a sort of mid-course breather. But there can be a fine line between consistency and repetitiveness, when it comes to individual tracks as well as the band’s catalog as a whole. When the hooks are great, they’re like some kind of delicious, addictive candy. When a song is just OK, the things that are usually the Pornographers’ assets can become kind of a drag.

The Pornographers are at their best when belting out insanely catchy, subtly unhinged songs like “My Slow Descent into Alcoholism” (from 2003’s “Mass Romantic”) offset by chillingly pretty ones like “Bones of an Idol” (2005’s “Twin Cinema”). Building somewhat on their previous album “Challengers,” “Together” finds them in muddier territory, coasting largely on charm.

Over the course of twelve tracks, there are plenty of predictable lalala’s and nanana’s, along with copious vamping and a song that clearly relishes it’s repeated use of the word “Byzantine” (that would be the bouncy “Sweet Talk Sweet Talk”). In “My Shepherd,” Case gets to deliver a stirring refrain—“You’re my lord, you’re my shepherd/Careful kid, no one gets hurt”—that’s pretty much ruined the moment more voices join in to confirm the lyric (with a boisterous “you made me!”) as if they just couldn’t hold back.

“Put put put your hands together / for the silver bullet make me,” Newman and Co. shout-sing insistently (and somewhat nonsensically) in “Your Hands (Together),” which comes close to being the album’s straight-up biggest and most satisfying song. “Valkyrie in the Roller Disco” is comparatively simple and lovely, capturing a night floating on skates under a disco ball. The final track, “We End Up Together,” uses a string section and a relentless-bordering-on-threatening refrain of “ma-ma-ma-ma!” to signal that we have reached the end of the record (the place where, as Newman gently croons, “we end up together”).

No doubt about it, these guys have enough charisma to fuel them for quite awhile. But when you try to dissect the songs beyond their straightforward magnetism, they start to fall apart a bit. “You can only cover so much territory of course / Belting carols at the sun about the things you’ve lost,” the posse sings in the most self-aware lyric of the record. In the end, The New Pornographers sound like…The New Pornographers. And that’s fine, even if it means you have to avoid thinking about it too hard. —Eryn Loeb

Broken Social Scene — “Forgiveness Rock Record”

The central appeal of Broken Social Scene’s music is its ramshackle quality—the sense that, at any moment, a wheel might fall off the bus, sending the whole thing careening into a ditch. Co-leaders Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning’s epic struggle to keep their rusted, squealing behemoth of a band—with its outsized horn section, three guitarists and rotating squadron of supremely talented female vocalists (hello Feist, Stars’ Amy Milan and Metric’s Emily Haines)—on the road and moving toward the horizon has always been a thrill to watch. Every song felt like a collision narrowly avoided.

Besides the band’s size (at the moment, there are nine full-time members along with 13 “additional members”), it’s been David Newfeld’s pastiche production style that’s contributed most to the band’s free-for-all sound. 2003’s glorious “You Forgot it in People” and BSS’ self-titled follow-up two years later both sounded like the sonic equivalent of a Bob Pollard collage—indie rock with its guts removed, rearranged and shoved back in the carcass.

So what to make then of new producer and Tortoise mastermind John McEntire—he of the cold, clinical Chicago post-rock sound? What would BSS sound like barreling down an empty highway—without the imminent threat of destruction? Just like themselves, mostly. “Forgiveness Rock Record” is still Drew and Canning’s old band. The difference is largely one of degree. “Forgiveness” is calmer and quieter, its instrumentation sparser and more calculated. And, surprisingly enough, it’s the record’s most measured moments that are also its most successful. “All in All” skips along atop skittering synths, strings pulled straight from Chicago’s Sea and Cake (whose Sam Prekop shows up later on “Romance to the Grave”) and Lisa Lobsinger’s sugared vocals. On “Sweetest Kill,” a rueful Drew sings—his voice buffeted by a touch of auto-tune—over a simple 4/4 backbeat, a lazy bass line and a soft haze of synths: “I thought you were the sweetest kill / Did you even know?” It’s the subtlest and, well, sweetest BSS has ever sounded.

Yet something is clearly missing. “Forgiveness” doesn’t have an anthem, no standout rocker with guitars blazing. There’s no “KC Accidental” or “7/4 (Shoreline).” “Meet Me in the Basement” has the requisite arena riffage and galloping percussion, but without vocals or a fist-pumping chorus it doesn’t quite make the cut. Opener “World Sick” has hooks aplenty, but gets a little too muddled to qualify. It’s odd: “Spirit If ..,” Drew’s 2007 solo effort, actually feels bigger, more robust than “Forgiveness.” And yet, of course, the latter is an actual Broken Social Scene record (if only in name). Which is not to say that “Forgiveness” isn’t a good trip—only that, with McEntire behind the boards, one misses seeing BSS nearly drive off the road. —John SW MacDonald

Five years later, Clap Your Hands have largely disappeared, slain by the brutal expectations of the blogosphere, while The National, whose fan base has grown slowly but steadily over the course of four albums, are playing a sold-out show at Radio City Music Hall next month. While the music industry collapses under the weight of Clap Your Hands’ countless children, it’s nice to know that there are still folks who do it the old-fashioned way—basically, that bands like The National still exist.

And that they’re this good. “High Violet” is a near-perfect summation of the band’s career, pairing the brittle elegance of “Alligator” with the baroque pop of 2007’s “Boxer,” while managing something still darker, even more cinematic. Sufjan Stevens guests, as does Bon Iver—folks were recruited from the Midwest to sing “ethereal” harmonies. “High Violet” broods like nothing else, but does so with such wit and grace that you won’t miss the sun.

Vocalist Matt Berninger, for one, has never sounded more at home. On “Boxer,” his mumblings could get buried in the clamor. (“Mumbleberry Pie” is one of Berninger’s many nicknames. “Dark Lord” is another.) Not anymore. “I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees / I never married / but Ohio don’t remember me,” he sings on  “Bloodbuzz, Ohio,” an ode to his Cincinnati childhood, his sad-bastard baritone soaking the words in tender nostalgia. And while he seems to have sunk deeper into depression (“Sorrow”), cynicism (“Little Faith”), and even paranoia (“Afraid of Everyone”), Berninger’s eye for detail and dark sense of humor have only sharpened. “Lemonworld,” one of the record’s rare sunny spots, has Berninger, finally free from the city, lounging poolside and enjoying some chemical relaxation: “This pricey stuff makes me dizzy / Guess I’ve always been a delicate man,” he notes sheepishly.

On “Boxer,” critics fawned over The National’s (not so secret) weapon, drummer Bryan Devendorf. Now he’s the clear MVP. Besides metal’s athletic stickmen, there are few drummers today who wield such control over a band’s aesthetic, or who do so with such subtlety. On “Sorrow,” another stunning brooder (“Sorrow found me when I was young / Sorrow waited, sorrow won”), Devendorf’s fluttering high-hat runs and sharp kick drum sound out misery’s strange attraction, and the sickening pulse of anxiety. The song is a skeleton without him.

“High Violet” has its small disappointments: The ballad “Runaway” runs a minute longer than it should, the only minute when the album’s melancholy wears thin. But the record also features some of the quintet’s very best moments. Built around a languid four-chord piano motif, “England” is The National at their biggest and most theatrical. It’s a song about everything and nothing much at all: the rain in London, Los Angeles cathedrals, babysitters, marriage, middle age, regret, loss. And like the band’s career, it’s a slow-burner, calculated and uncompromising—and the climax is well worth the wait.

But everything’s cake until you hit that dreaded sophomore record. That’s when things get interesting—when our protagonists either emerge victorious, having proved the haters wrong, or fall flat on their faces. Yet for all the hype and feverish anticipation, MGMT’s “Congratulations,” strangely, does neither. It’s neither an unabashed success nor an abject failure. It’s simply the sound of two talented guys with nearly every tool at their disposal finally making the record they wanted to make.

With “Congratulations,” Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser make a clean break with the MGMT of “Time to Pretend” and “Kids”—the hook-drunk gems that made the duo the toast of pop’s shrinking royalty back in 2007. In their place, they’ve fashioned an album of ambitious, tangled, stubbornly arty odes to Bowie, Syd Barrett and Brian Eno (to whom they dedicate the cleverly named “Brian Eno”). Recorded with Spaceman 3’s Peter Kember, the record features no singles or Sparks-sticky party anthems, no big hooks or billowing choruses. This is that “difficult” second album. But remember, it’s only difficult for a band on a major label.

Here’s Columbia Records chairman Steve Barnett speaking to the Times (with, one imagines, a very tight smile): “Listen, I think Andrew and Ben are very smart, creative guys, and I think they understand the right path that MGMT should take, and from our perspective we’re happy to support that. Sometimes I think we have to sit down and talk to them about consequences—if you do this this way, this is going to happen—and we’ve had that conversation.”

In the end, “consequences” or not, MGMT did what they wanted. And for that they deserve whatever debaucheries await them. Unfortunately, the music isn’t quite the quirky triumph it so desperately wants to be. The problem isn’t a dearth of ideas; it’s a surfeit of them. Van-Gold stuff a double album’s worth of material into nine tracks. It’s all very proggy and very 70’s—every acoustic guitar dancing with a spritely organ, every voice drenched in vintage reverb.

Much of “Congratulations” sounds like a bloated version of their debut’s second half (the half no one listened to). Brilliant ideas fly by before they have a chance to rest and spread their wings. The record’s centerpiece, “Siberian Breaks,” opens with a sublime, Bryds-esque refrain buoyed by a fleet of electric 12-strings that has VanWyngarden singing, “If you can’t save it / leave it dying on the road,” before it suddenly, inexplicably, shifts into a tipsy waltz. Huh? The track, astounding in some places, maddening in others, keeps shifting gears for the next 12 minutes. It’s five songs jerry-rigged into one. MGMT shoot for the second half of “Abbey Road” but don’t quite make it across the street.

As with “Siberian Breaks,” though, “Congratulations” has its pleasures—you just have to know where to look. And the best places are usually the ballads—the moments where Van-Gold let their ideas settle and percolate. “I Found a Whistle” could be a Nuggets classic slowed down a few bpms and rerecorded by the Flaming Lips—all acoustic guitars, flittering synths, giddy Theremin and big, sing-along melodies. “Hey, I found a whistle / that works like a charm,” VanWyngarden gushes in his ageless tenor, and it’s clear he could be talking about anything—a girl, a drug or sometimes, just sometimes, his band.

Black Tambourine’s music is unabashedly pop—the sound of The Breeders and Le Tigre minus the outright aggression. Formed in Silver Spring, Md. in 1989, Black Tambourine’s songs are highly emotive without ever being saccharine or self-indulgent. The band ranges from the deeply melancholic “Black Car,” where lead singer Pam Berry mourns “I watch you, but you don’t see me,” to the violently hostile “Throw Aggi Off the Bridge,” a song that envisions the murder of one member of a love triangle. “Throw Aggi” exemplifies Black Tambourine’s skill at being lyrically direct without resorting to the obvious or mundane, a clear sign of the heavy influence of punk bands like the Ramones. Berry, her voice dreamy and distant, sings, “So throw her off the bridge / Just toss her in the drink / She’s coming in between us / You know the girl I mean / It’s time we were together.” And yet the intensity of the words are softened by the boppy rhythm of the drums and the nonchalance in Berry’s voice. Crime has seldom seemed so fun.

Black Tambourine’s greatest achievement is their ability to evoke a distinct mood. Like the Pixies, Nirvana and other influential bands of the early ’90s, Black Tambourine’s songs deal with modern alienation in all its many permutations. But whereas the Pixies and Nirvana responded to this isolation with anger, Black Tambourine opts for quiet introspection. On many of the tracks on “Black Tambourine,” the individual components—Berry’s lyrics, the insistent drums, the scratchy guitars—matter less than how they all come together to push the listener into a reflective state. Berry seems to be reach outing, desperate for real human connection. Yet she always comes up empty-handed. Black Tambourine cleverly contrasts this deflating state of human affairs with foot-tapping melodies, giving pop a much-needed complexity. Instead of revealing a band whose time has past, “Black Tambourine” reminds us why we’re still listening to the quartet today.

Dressed in a black party frock with a puffy skirt, her thick brown hair shining, Diamandis looked more like the sort of girl you’d take home to meet mom than take to the anarchy meeting. You could also probably put on the Welsh-Greek singer’s debut album, “The Family Jewels,” for mom, without fear of offending or even annoying her. That’s not to say that Marina is the new Norah Jones, just that Diamandis seems to have it both ways with her indie pop. Her debut album landed at No. 5 on the British charts earlier this year, placing her alongside pop powerhouses like Lady Gaga, Alicia Keys and the British boy band JLS, while drawing comparisons to everyone from Regina Spektor to Debbie Harry to Kate Bush. Once upon a time, indie cred and commercialism used to be mutually exclusive, or at least feign to be, but that’s not part of Marina and the Diamonds’ fairy tale.

Marina Lambrini Diamandi

“The Family Jewels” (released in the UK in February) begins with “Are You Satisfied?” and Diamandis sing-speaking, ala Spektor, “I was pulling out my hair / the day I cut the deal / chemically calm / was I meant to feel happy / that my life was about to change,” she muses with an underlying brashness. Then the bouncy beats come in and her sing-speaking grows bolder and faster until it’s interrupted by the chorus. She quickly changes direction, as she does throughout the genre-hopping album, sweetly trilling “are you satisfied with the average life / do I need to lie to make my way in life.” It’s an almost sickly saccharine sentiment; Diamandis doesn’t traffic in irony but rather a brash, fun-loving but intelligent sincerity, helped, in part by her charming, perhaps pumped up, British accent—more London street than Welsh.

She’s an indie pop princess for Generation Y. The old Generation X concerns don’t seem to apply to her; she’s debuting on a major label (Atlantic for her album’s U.S. release), she barely searches on Pitchfork at this point and she commands the stage in a dress that isn’t self-consciously vintage or lingerie-like. No matter. Critics love her, as did the South by Southwest crowds, and she gets to avoid that unsatisfying “average life” she sings about on her album’s opener.

She continues to have it both ways as the album progresses. On the second track, the painfully titled “Shampain,” Diamandis morphs into a Pat-Benatar-esque ’80s chanteuse to sing about “drinking champagne to forget yesterday.” But, if that’s a bit too pat for you (pun intended), she gets a bit deeper and darker later in the album on tracks like “Hollywood,” belting “I’m obsessed with your mess that’s America.” Still, it never gets that deep. Diamandis’s main aim seems to be to have a good time—but with a bit more intelligence, quirky charm and vocal range than your average pop songstress—while making sure her audience does the same. Mission accomplished.