When DJ mash-ups appeared a few years back, they were all about linking strange bedfellows -- Nirvana and Destiny's Child, the Strokes and Christina. The best ones made you hear something new in both songs involved -- which Collision Course does only in snatches. Billed as the first commercially released mash-up record, this six-song EP is well-constructed: The mix of brassy rhymes and heavy electro-rock on "Big Pimpin'/Papercut" and "Dirt Off Your Shoulder/Lying From You" -- featuring new verses and music from the band and Jay -- is way more interesting than most rap metal. But too often Jay's world-class flow leaves Linkin Park in the dust, and the juxtapositions are pure novelties and less fun than they should be. If Jay really needed another batch of out-there beats, he only had to hit up Timbaland again. (CHRISTIAN HOARD)

Skating Club The Unfound Sound (Kimchee)

For his third release under the Skating Club banner, Aubrey Anderson marries the DIY simplicity of 2001's Skating Club debut with the band-produced ballast of last year's Bugs & Flowers. The languid sway of "The Long Hot July" sets the pace for his low-key melancholy. The easy-voiced Bostonian wrote, produced and performed the rainy-day disc mostly by himself, with Club co-founders Bruce MacFarlane (drums) and Colin Rhinesmith (Rhodes) barely aboard. Sinewy guitar and Sean Drinkwater's lazy organ help flesh out the melodic title track, and Anderson pulls brightness from woe in songs like "San Francisco" (boosted by the chorus "Don't stay home, I don't blame you") and "Count to Ten," where he muses, "I want to know your hiding places." Twinkling layers lend a shoegazer echo to "Headphones and Distance," with its fading mantra "All that distance stands between us." Though he's clearly still searching, Anderson has found a more satisfying sound. (PAUL ROBICHEAU)

Styrofoam Nothing's Lost (Morr Music)

The space-jam pops and woozy melodies that Belgium's Styrofoam offers on his latest album, Nothing's Lost, would be intriguing and, perhaps, inspiring, if they didn't sound so much like the Notwist or the Postal Service or a smattering of other indie-electronica groups. Incidentally, the Postal Service's (and Death Cab for Cutie's) Ben Gibbard sings on Nothing's "Couches in Alleys"; and, like the rest of the album, the song is whiney, embittered and catchy. Styrofoam (Arne Van Petegem), though, indeed proves quite capable at synthesizing atmospheres and weird noises -- song after song beeps and pulses along in chill grooves, providing ample canvases for his hushed, gentle vocals (and those of the six guests). Much of the tunes describe the brokenhearted and their bewildered reflections, while all of them -- their stoned electronics, their achy singing, their familiarity, their hooks -- make for a positively niche collection that's sometimes haunting, but too often just rote. (BENJAMIN FRIEDLAND)

Transmissionary 6 Get Down (Film Guerrero)

On Get Down, Transmissionary 6's Terri Moeller plays harmonica, drums and percussion, but her voice is what gives this album its indelible print. Like the Cowboy Junkies' Margo Timmons and Wild Colonials' Angela McCluskey, her alto has a languid, droopy-lidded quality; it's lullaby-like, but not at all snoozy. Moeller, of Walkabouts fame, and guitarist/pianist Paul Austin (Willard Grant Conspiracy) enmesh those vocals with airy vibes, Mellotron burbles, sweet pedal steel slides and a warm cello, creating an alluring, Morcheeba-like veil of sonic beauty. But they don't let it shroud the troubled urban landscape they traverse, visiting places that sound as downtrodden as Springsteen's Asbury Park -- places where one might meet "another carny girl, drunk and on the Tilt-a-whirl" (in "Novanna"), or a troubled Witness Protection Program participant who reveals, in "My New Name": "I could be safe again, that's what they say. I keep forgetting my new name." The name may be missing, but the seduction is complete. (LYNNE MARGOLIS)

The Flesh The Flesh (Gern Blandstein)

Ever since Brooklyn outfit the Flesh's sexy "Death Connection" single sleazed up dance floors in 2003, fans of have been clamoring for the band's full-length debut. Well, they've got it. Unfortunately, even though this eponymous album is full of the madcap, sinister organs and tortured yelps that have come to define the Flesh's sound, it plays like a thin, plodding experiment sabotaged by the distracting moments when singer Nathan Halpern lays on the hipster pose too thick. The strongest moments occur when the band lets down its guard, as on the catchier songs like "Sweet Defeat" and "Lonely Little Hunter." Elsewhere, the group's fusion of jerky rhythms and a morbid, Cure-ish ethos falls a bit flat. (SARA CARDACE)