With a name that aptly represents some pseudo-moniker of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, the follow up by Florence Welch demonstrates she is indeed both art and the machine. Bursting with promise from 2009’s Lungs, the UK five-piece have been blitzing across the equator to share their love of music. With more power, and less flower than her contemporaries such as Amy Winehouse, Lily Allen and Adele, Florence embodies the classic art rock of Kate Bush with true emotional grit. Blending pop, soul and baroque arrangements with a headier sound than Siouxsie and the Banshees of the 1980s, Florence + the Machine’s sophomore release defiantly punches the treatise for a spiritual rebirth.

One listen and you feelyou have evidentlywalked through allseasons with LisaHannigan. After a longcollaboration withDamien Rice withalbums O and 9, theIrish singer-songwriterhas stretched her rangeto stand defiantly onher own. Evoking animmediate sense ofbelonging, coupledwith quiet phrasing,sailing guitars and acalm deceptive power,Hannigan’s multiinstrumentaltalents onguitar, keyboards anddrums are showcasedin earnest beauty on hersecond solo album.

To think that the Velvet Underground and Metallica would ever crossover into a time warp, channeling two plays by a German playwright as a muse, would sound ridiculous to most. Yet time does indeed tell on what has spurned from their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th anniversary concert match-up in 2009. Where at the best of times Lou Reed attempted to be an avant-garde minimalist and Metallica turned up the decibels to be metal-maximists, the end result is a proxy somewhere smack in the middle. Returning to their love of long songs, spanning over 10 minutes, the intent remains pure narrative, but things do get a bit ponderous somewhere at the halfway mark.

There’s a standing credo in rap music that reputation is everything. The self-proclaimed ‘Ambassador of Rap for the Capital,’ Wale (pronounced wah-lay) speaks less about the state of the union from D.C. and more on the perfect state to be creative. His vehicle for clever wordplay and music is on par with expensive-sounding beats from the likes of Diplo and Lex Luger. Here he continues to spark cheap clichés and limited reinvention. The end result is an entertaining sound that limits delivery of any real emotion beyond a retro-rad, turboed-up ride of doing things his own way.

Box sets continue to be all the rage. The revival in music sales can partly be lauded to repackaged, re-issued, recelebrated music glory. Achtung Baby’s 20th Anniversary earmarks the dawn of the 1990s. Here, Bono and Co. struck a new trajectory in music signaling a distinct departure from the biggest bands in the world at the time from the likes of INXS and Bon Jovi. U2 brazenly embarked on a fork in the road that paid off handsomely in success. While the bonus material is not essential listening, it is fascinating to hear this rough and final draft of history.