It's another week teeming with releases. Falling between the cracks this week is the Vampyros Lesbos LP reissue, Cotton Jones, and Dalek's Gutter Tactics. Elsewhere DJ Rupture and The Ex's Andy Moor release Patches, Kylie Minogue gets remixed, and Omar Rodriquez-Lopez tries besting Bob Pollard by putting out yet another record everyone will forget about in one month. Here are some of today's highlights:

Bruce Springsteen - Working On a Dream
CD (Columbia)
Working On A Dream is the latest Bruce Springsteen record, recorded with the reconvened E Street Band. Seems like the dreams they've been working on together for the Boss' 24th record have become pretty standard of his more recent full-lengths, like The Rising and Magic. It's kind of underwhelming. But his gift for a passionate, tuneful lyric is still there and the music will resonate deep in soil of America and in the hearts of his lifelong fans. He has already taken home a Golden Globe Award for his song The Wrestler, featured in film of the same name, which is included here as a bonus track.

Franz Ferdinand - Tonight
CD/LP (Sony)

Forgive my ignorance, I haven't listened to anything this band has done besides their first record, which I grew to dislike more and more every time I heard it. Nothing about that band's music interests me. So I asked my FFFF (Favorite Franz Ferdinand Fan), Crocodile booker/talent buyer Eli Anderson, if he would like to share the virtues of their latest.

Franz Ferdinand went ahead and made a third record even though no one cared about their pretty damn good second record. Apparently Americans just don't like music unless it's hitting them over the head with a golden hammer.

The press on this record so far seems to be "Ooooo! Keyboards!" And there are some neat production tricks and cool arrangements. But no one is reinventing the wheel here. This is pop, plain and simple, and frankly it's some of the most forceful pop anyone is likely to hear all year.

The Franz do their best to hide their inner-Wings (read: the band who willingly played "Silly Loves Songs" in front of people…total sissy move, great song though it may be) under ball-busting choruses, but really this is a collection of songs about kissing your ex's picture, being a doormat, getting some girl's phone number written illegibly on your hand and staring at your cell phone hoping it will ring. But they make it sound cool, even somehow desirable, and that is really the effortless brilliance of this band. They just sound cool and I think we'd all be hard pressed to think of another band that does that effectively.

Also, this is a really good album for listening to while you wear sunglasses. Bonus points for having the best pop drummer in the world and writing the best simile I've heard in years ("Eyes like marbles on a washing machine").

My faith in Touch & Go isn't as strong as it was in the nineties and early parts of this decade, but it has quickly been coming back over the last few months. First, T&G reissued Crystal Antlers blistering EP, now they're issuing All The Saints Fire In Corridor X, both products of the demand-repeat-listening variety. The Atlanta-based All The Saints saturate the record with squalls of feedback and thunderous drumming amid ominous drones and dreamy vocal reverb. Heavy. Narcotic. The grudge renaissance is now.