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Maybe we irritating critics will call this Marling’s “transitional album,” but that’s not a criticism. She’s just dipping her feet into the vast sea of musical ideas that her talent can tackle.

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2011 is the year of the comeback pop star. From Britney to Beyonce, everyone who had been dormant for the last year or two has been hustling hard to land their spot on the charts. Not one to be left out, Kelly Clarkson is throwing her hat in the ring with a new single “Mr. Know It All” and her new album Stronger, dropping next Tuesday… 

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Gender is unapologetically performed all over Share the Joy, and to miss that is to listen with one ear clogged. Ramone coincidentally uses that word—“girl”—sixteen times on Share the Joy, as opposed to the one “girl” on 2008’s Vivian Girls, and one on 2009’s Everything Goes Wrong.

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Christopher Drew is different and thus kind of cooler than other famous teenagers, like Justin Bieber, because he is an artist’s artist. Which is to say, the dude is a little cuckoo. And that his priorities aren’t necessarily all about making mad bank and getting his dick wet. Dude writes poetry and distributes it via MySpace for goodness sake.

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I’ve never quite understood how the term “art-damaged” became a rock-critical commonplace, but if I had to explain it, I might play my interlocutor Kevin Dunn’s “Nadine.” The 1979 seven-inch makes creased, crushed junk-sculpture out of a 1963 Chuck Berry song, with Dunn’s treated guitar and Tom Grey’s synths holding a blowtorch to the familiar boogie-barrelhouse interplay…