Artist: Drive-By Truckers Review: Whenever life knocks you down, the Drive-by Truckers are there to remind you that things could always be shittier. On the 10th album from this remarkably consistent Georgia band, a sexually abused woman murders her lover, a two-timing rogue goes missing and is hoped drowned, and, on the very pretty waltz "The Flying Wallendas," a group of acrobats take a tragic tumble. Songs like the raucous "Birthday Boy" show off a ragged-glory guitar attack that was absent on the last Truckers album, but per... Rating: 3.5 Stars
Artist: Alkaline Trio Review: These Chicago gloom punks have long mixed gory lyrics and bright pop melodies, making evil seem like a day at the beach. Their 2008 major-label bid, Agony & Irony, got bogged down in power-ballad overreach, so with its seventh disc, the group is back to its bleak-Blink-182 roots. Matt Skiba yelps stuff like "Eating me alive" over buoyant, cutting jags. The body count rivals a Saw flick, but Skiba eventually finds someone to "exorcise" the "devil inside" — she's named "Draculina,"... Rating: 3 Stars
Artist: Little Boots Review: Right now, every rising nu-disco diva has to deal with the Gaga comparison, and Victoria Hesketh, who records as Little Boots, has neither the personality nor the all-the-world's-a-fashion-runway chutzpah of pop's reigning megastar. What the Brit singer does have is a bunch of shiny, propulsive electro-pop songs. Hesketh is a dance artist with a torchy streak; minor chords creep up, and the lyrics reckon smartly with love and its discontents. In "Remedy," a collaboration with Gaga producer RedOn... Rating: 3 Stars