Over the course of the last month, CDs have stacked up that I think I care about – at least enough to try to say something about them. Now with a hopelessly large stack in front me, it’s time to get real. Here’s a real-time trip through the stacks:

Boys Noize: Oi Oi Oi Remixed (Turbo): I really like the raw intensity of Oi Oi Oi, which sounds like a punkier version of Justice’s arena rock-sized techno. Nothing here hits harder, and the only tracks that didn’t blur into bleeps and blips were the ones that turned the volume and power down (the only place left to go, really).

Esperanza Spalding: Esperanza (Heads Up): Hmmm, a jazz vocalist/acoustic bassist playing animated Brazilian jazz. This moves into the review pile for assignment.

The Raveonettes: Lust Lust Lust (Vice): I like this each time I put it on, and I liked them when I saw them, but all I hear are Jesus and Mary Chain sonics put to less menacing purposes. When I can put that aside or listen to the album one track at a time, the big, distorted guitar, ice princess vocals and deadpan drum programming sounds like very good pop. Why would anybody want more than one CD from this band, though? I can’t imagine that there’s any sonic or lyrical difference between this one and the last one.

The Magnetic Fields: Distortion (Nonesuch): More post-Chain music, and the addition of feedback and feedback-simulating sounds reminds me of the piece missing from the Raveonettes’ sound. Perpetual Eeyore Stephen Merritt shows his sense of humor by donning the Jesus and Mary Chain drag – which ought to suit his po-faced songs perfectly – and letting the comic wrongness of his lyrics and voice amid the sound of idustrial gloom stand there ridiculously. The tip-off isn’t “California Girls” (he hates them); its the Christmas song, “Mr. Mistletoe.”

Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano, Jan Lundgren: Mare Nostrum (ACT): I paid attention to this after Carla Bley made Italian trumpeter Fresu the featured voice on her latest album, The Lost Chords Find Paolo Fresu. Its post-ECM sound is a little bloodless, but a jazz trio composed of trumpet, piano and accordion works to me. And, Galliano’s accordion solos speak. Another CD I listened to while editing the recent issue. Mojo Magazine asks celebrities about their Saturday night and Sunday morning CDs, and I can see this being a Sunday morning disc if I didn’t wake up with my engine running.

Jim Noir: Jim Noir (Barsuk): I tend to fall for electronica-based neo-psychedelia, which puts Jim Noir right up my alley. Moogs, vocoders and big, lush, soundscapes hooked to attractive melodies appeal to the Beach Boy fan in me, but I won’t argue with anyone who finds this twee or a genre exercise in retro pop.

Robert Forster: The Evangelist (Yep Roc): The tension between Robert Forster’s tense, choppy rhythm guitar, the fragments that constitute his melodies, his reserved, expository lyrics and his evident desire to be heartfelt has always been compelling, but it was moreso when his songs sat next to his Go-Between bandmate Grant McLennan’s. The effortless sweetness of McLennan’s songs set off Forster’s by contrast. This is Forster’s first since McLennan’s death, and it takes a little more effort to hear his songs as distinctive, but so far, each one repays attention when I stop typing to listen more closely.

Dolly Parton: Backwoods Barbie (Dolly): I really wanted to like this record because her roots-oriented albums for Sugar Hill put that voice to good use on songs worthy of her attention. Those albums also seemed like a graceful acknowledgement of her place in the world – older, no longer part of Nashville’s mainstream, but still with a unique voice and more musical wisdom than the albums before them suggested. But Backwoods Barbie presents her once again trying to sound relevant by covering Fine Young Cannibals (really?) and singing about her persona (twice in the first four songs). And with so many songwriters available, you’d think she could get better hooks than these.

Was (Not Was): Boo! (Rykodisc): I’ll stand by “Wheel Me Out” as the Was (Not Was) track – truly absurd, funky with guests from all over the board with some particularly hot guitar from Wayne Kramer. After that, albums rose and fell with the hooks. When they had them, I could get around the self-consciously weird lyrics (often with an uncomfortable misogynist streak), and when they didn’t, I couldn’t. Here – hooks missing.

That’s enough for now.