Glen Campbell
Meet Glen Campbell
Capitol

Meet Glen Campbell finds the country-icon covering modern pop songs by such artists as Tom Petty, U2 and Green Day. Thanks to producers Julian Raymond and Howard Willing -- who enlist the help of plenty of modern pop thoroughbreds, including Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. and Jason Falkner of Jellyfish and Cheap Trick's Robin Zander -- Meet Glen Campbell evokes the soft, warm haze of his classic '60s and '70s, when he turned Jimmy Webb's eccentricities into pop standards.

The Fiery Furnaces
Remember
Thrill Jockey

Leave it to the Fiery Furnaces to make a live album that is just as challenging as their studio work, and even more fragmented. Remember's sprawling scope includes over 40 songs performed by four different versions of the touring Furnaces lineup playing in all kinds of venues, splicing together very different performances of each of its songs into dazzling, and sometimes bewildering, musical collages. Newcomers to the band might be lost, but diehard fans will love this heroic dose of the Furnaces' hyperactive creativity.

Juliana Hatfield
How to Walk Away
Ye Olde

Arriving just before the publication of cult alt-rock muse Juliana Hatfield's autobiography, How to Walk Away is a candidly confessional work that abounds with self-examination, but it's not a journey through her back pages -- it's a break-up album.

Staind
Illusion of Progress
Atlantic

Staind's sixth album The Illusion of Progress finds the Jacksonville, FL, rock band stubbornly refusing to evolve. If anything, with each album their aggression erodes and the angst of frontman Aaron Lewis mellows into a mild grumpiness that surfaces only when he's not singing profane songs of devotion, which is most of the time.

Stereolab
Chemical Chords
4AD

Stereolab's 4AD debut presents some of "the groop"'s most concisely playful, poppy music in some time. Their trademark lockgrooves and epic jams are nowhwere to be found; instead, Chemical Chords' pop vignettes fizz with urgency and hooks. Sixties lounge, Motown and Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys -- as well as Stereolab's previous pop zenith, Mars Audiac Quintet -- are touchstones, but Chemical Chords' charming immediacy sounds impeccably fresh.

The Stills
Oceans Will Rise
Arts & Crafts

Another Stills album, another change in direction. On their third LP, the Montreal natives sift through a mix of rock & roll bombast and sonic experimentation. “Being Here,” “Snow in California,” and “Snakecharming the Masses” are some of the band’s best tracks in five years, and Oceans Will Rise ultimately emerges a worthy successor to 2003’s Logic Will Break Your Heart.