Anais Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer – Child Ballads
Harvard professor Francis James Child gathered more than 300 folk songs from England and Scotland during the late 19th century. Known as the “Child Ballads”, these songs form the canon of the modern folk music repertoire; everyone from Joan Baez to Fleet Foxes has recorded them. These tales of witchery and honor, curses and transformations, were old when Child first collected them. Mitchell and Hamer perform seven of them on their new disc. Read the full review on Pop Matters

The Strokes – Comedown Machine
On “Welcome to Japan” the band finally sounds like they are enjoying the music they are playing. Casablancas sings “I didn’t want to notice/ I didn’t know that God was loaded/ I didn’t really know this/ what kind of asshole drives a Lotus.” Comedown Machine has too few of these loose, innately enjoyable moments. “Partners in Crime” gives the latter part of the album a much needed injection of bouncy guitar riffs. The album’s emphasis on New Wave synths and 80′s aesthetic (probably a holdover from Casablancas’ solo work) is fine at times, but tunes like “Partners In Crime” and “All the Time” are simply more fun. The Strokes are a rock band from New York; the songs on Comedown Machine that embrace that are the standouts. Read the full review on Pretty Much Amazing

Wavves – Afraid Of Heights
Afraid Of Heights sounds bigger and more ambitious than anything Nathan Williams’ former backyard solo project has ever recorded. The big-name producer and studio certainly help; so does the three-year break between Afraid Of Heights and 2010’s breakthrough King Of The Beach. But unlike Wavves’ previous records (including two simply titled Wavves), Afraid Of Heights doesn’t sound like it’s filled with first-take toss-offs. Read the full review on the AV Club