Morning Glory stars Rachel McAdams as Becky Fuller, a young and passionate news producer with a can-do attitude so over-the-top that it borders on naivety. After being let go from her position at “Good Morning New Jersey,” she embarks on a relentless mission to find a new job. When she’s given the opportunity to produce the struggling national morning show “Daybreak,” she jumps at the chance, although the ratings are just about as dismal as the budget.

Over 13 million in album sales, multiple Grammy awards, media saturation unheard of since Britney Spears’ heyday, and Taylor Swift still wants us to see her as the proverbial girl up the block. “We got bills to pay / we got nothing figured out,” Ms. Swift laments on first single “Mine,” and if there’s a few of us in the audience rolling their eyes, who am I to blame them? That’s always been the first step in accepting Swift as a legitimate artist and not a prefabricated Top 40 icon, that realization that, for all this girl’s justified success and eye-popping numbers, it’s just this down-to-earth, eerily relatable quality that makes Taylor Swift, well, Taylor Swift. Lady Gaga may have stolen the pop crown by doing everything in her power to mask herself under a veneer of shock fashion and shock statements, but Speak Now has Swift doing just what she does best: being herself, and Swift has come far enough as her own artist to make Speak Now the best pop record of the year.

Unlike many of their contemporaries who decided to burn out in a temporary burst of creativity or fade away in repetitive ignominy, the Walkmen have only continued to get better. It’s a bit of a surprise when you consider the band predicated their success on a piss-and-vinegar brand of youthful fire and youthful anger, that New York City vigor and rage exemplified in “The Rat,” the band’s best known song off their 2004 breakthrough Bows + Arrows. It’s the kind of spirit that’s all too easy to dissipate as the years pass, and the Walkmen, truth be told, have been no exception. But as 2008′s excellent You & Me proved, the Walkmen know how to age gracefully, transforming their earlier ragged edge into a stately procession of horns, spindly guitars and powerful drum work, all anchored by Hamilton Leithauser’s cracked croon. It was still the same Walkmen, as the innovative instrumentation and Leithauser’s gloomy lyrics made clear, but they had found a way to take their best qualities and shift them into a more expansive sound, the kind of sound that spoke of possibilities for the future. With Lisbon, the Walkmen have realized those possibilities, but in a decidedly strange way: for the first time in years, the Walkmen seem content.

Dear Katy,

I thought you were different. I used to think your sprightly personality, subtle sarcasm and jabs at more established musicians, and defined sense of style suggested a deeper dimension than your average pre-fab pop star. Despite admittedly simple, straightforward pop like “I Kissed A Girl” and “Waking Up In Vegas” along with lyrics and photos meant to stir up controversy and firmly place you into the bracket of commercial whore, I always thought there was more to you than your run-of-the-mill Ke$ha or Pussycat Dolls. You even sort of look like my future wife Zooey, and that’s always a plus…

What made Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’s debut album Broom such a delight was its simple charm and beautifully unassuming melodies. Sure, it was home-recorded in a pointedly lo-fi manner and slightly derivative of bands like the Shins and early Apples in Stereo, but there was something inspiring about these three Missouri kids pulling off some truly gorgeous indie pop with a miniscule budget. It meant the songs had to be good, not fluffed up with studio tricks, and they were. The songs on Pershing were just as solid, no doubt, but a more confident SSLYBY began to lose some of that production innocence and amateur sensibility that colored their debut, seeming instead to be searching desperately for that hit single to put them over the top. Now we finally have The Indie Band Making Good – Death Cab’s Chris Walla behind the boards, a honest-to-God studio to play with, and a summer release date, the perfect time to listen to a band as breezy and lighthearted as SSLYBY generally sound. Unfortunately, what they end up with sounds more like contemporary Weezer than something you might find at the back of your local discount record store, something that was perhaps not groundbreaking but definitely yours.

Following a hype train can be a dangerous thing. Follow the right one and you can end up discovering something new and revitalizing, like a Surfer Blood or a Tallest Man on Earth. Follow the wrong one and you could spend hours convincing yourself to like the newest Black Kids CD because, well, dozens of bloggers can’t be wrong! When precocious Long Beach young ‘uns Avi Buffalo released their anticipated debut earlier this year, they had all the prerequisites for their own hype machine: hot single(s), Pitchfork approval, a fairly surprising rating on Metacritic (82!). I listened to one song, judged them as an early Shins knock-off and promptly forgot about them. That’s the problem with hype – too much of it and you go into the listen expecting something utterly mind-blowing, something that will live up to an almost mythic status all this blogosphere talk builds up yet rarely matches. Avi Buffalo is not mind-blowing, nor is it even one of the best debuts I’ve heard this year. Simply put, it’s great, solid indie-pop music, music that merely portends the arrival of a band that has more potential than most their age and some pretty slick songwriting chops.

Oh how I love Milano! It is such an incredible city, the vibe is just incredible. Everywhere you look there are fashionable people walking around like living, breathing advertisements. For Spring 2011, Etro showcased its runway in a perfectly green environment, evoking those beautiful patterns that seem so natural to them. They reminded me of McQueen’s previous to last collection where all the colors of the rainbow came together.

My most cherished bands have always appealed to me not only with a sense of timelessness but with a feeling of placelessness as well, as if they could be from anywhere or, even better, if they evoke the sound of a region or era without coming off as copycats or sycophantic rubes. By only their second album, Delta Spirit is already rapidly becoming one of my favorite unsigned bands, thanks largely to their ability to pull off just that aura of sounding like a region whose music I unabashedly love (the South) while hailing from a place I’d love to visit (San Diego). These are two dots one would likely not be able to connect listening to the band – singer Matthew Vasquez’s whiskey-soaked voice calls to mind the Allman Brothers Band or the cracked rasp of Walkmen vocalist Hamilton Leithauser, while the band pumps out a genuinely raucous Southern-fried blues rock that has matured well since their 2008 debut. History From Below is just what a sophomore effort should be, equal parts a step forward and eleven songs stronger, all the red-blooded rock and soulful vitality of their debut while expanding on their trademark Americana sound.