In lieu of my monstrous “I’m back from Europe and lord am I behind on my iPod Chicanery” update, here are my thoughts on some recent music.

Feedle - Leave Now for Adventure: A former member of 65daysofstatic provides this solid album as evidence of what his former mates’ newest album is missing: nostalgia mixed in between fuzzed-out electronic loops and thumping beats. It’s not quite the long-awaited sequel to Accelera Deck’s Narcotic Beats, but it’s certainly held up well to a near continuous stay on my laptop for the last week and a half. Start with “Go Home Revolving,” “Man vs. the Hallucinations,” “Song for Dogs,” and “The Way Things Turned Out” and it’s not long before the rest of the album falls in line.

Minus the Bear - Planet of Ice: Sounding like early ’80s Yes and Genesis now counts as creative development, since the vaguely progressive half of Planet of Ice is more intriguing than the echoes of Menos el Oso’s serious party music. I’ll take “Knights,” “Dr. L’ling,” “When We Escape,” and “Lotus” and imagine some sleight of hand that would bridge the enormous gap between Jake Snider’s lyrical inspiration (“Here’s my progressive rock concept album!”) and execution (“So there’s this chick…”).

Lights Out Asia - Tanks and Recognizers: This album is quite a departure from the balance of power between electronica and post-rock displayed on their debut Garmonia. The mix is fuller and more instrumentally varied, but at times—the lunging “Four Square” in particular—Lights Out Asia sound more like Aurore Rien and less like Garmonia’s compelling mix of electronica and Talk Talk–esque vocals. Not feeling it yet.

Lindsay Anderson - If: One half of my beloved L’altra finally has a solo album to supplement the live set from 2005 that I downloaded from eMusic. I’m only one listen in, but it hasn’t quite grabbed me in the same way as Different Days, and not for lack of trying. Most of these songs are fleshed-out, full-band editions with the unfortunate tendency of overwhelming the headliner’s voice. Here’s hoping that If is a grower.

Smashing Pumpkins - Zeitgeist: I made it through almost half of this album, which I felt was some kind of accomplishment given the ear-splitting vocal mix. The sledgehammer combination of the ultra-compressed riffs and Jimmy Chamberlain’s drumming occasionally hits the spot, but more often it just makes me long for spacious mix of Siamese Dream. Oh, “Soma.” At the very least, I can finally agree with my best friend from eighth grade, who insisted that Billy Corgan’s voice cripples the band.

Interpol - Our Love to Admire: The amazing thing about the initial hype about Interpol was that it wasn’t just centered on Turn on the Bright Lights, but salivated equally over their potential as a band. I don’t think there’s much talk of that nowadays. “Pioneer to the Falls” begins the album with a delayed guitar lead that sounds like it’s been Xeroxed twice already, and aside from more Paul Banks lyrical buffoonery, the record holds few surprises and little of my interest.