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With a knack for unforgettable hitmaking (“Surrender”) and a weakness for song-doctor capitulation (“The Flame”), these iconic smartasses have always seduced and subverted, remaking the mainstream while wallowing in it. Not for nothing did Kurt Cobain dub Nirvana the Cheap Trick of their day.

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This spazzy quartet's second album belies their unfit-to-fully-print name: It's an amiable, compact collection of synth-pop fizz that lands between Gary Numan's "Cars" and the Cars on the neo-new-wave spectrum.

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On his fourth solo album, Jeremy Enigk takes songs that, in demo form, would likely reveal him as a geek folkie, yet tries to press them into angular, orchestral shapes. "April Storm" and "Restart" draw the blueprint -- two ace tunes that tart (and art) up strummy jangle pop that's reminiscent of Freedy Johnston, whose voice Enigk's occasionally conjures.

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Elvis Costello has always been an idiom savant, pin- balling through arsenic-laced pub rock (My Aim Is True), amphetamine-addled soul (Get Happy!!), and highbrow chamber pop (The Juliet Letters). His latest showcases another readymade style: dirt-floor Americana.

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A cardinal rule of commerce: Never compete against yourself. A cardinal rule of Neil Young: Screw commerce. His fourth release in roughly two years, Fork scans on first listen as a curmudgeon’s take on torn-from-the-headlines issues.

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Bookended by lumbering psychedelic bubblegum ("Born on a Day the Sun Didn't Rise") and a prog-ish miniature that combines Minutemen brevity with Jethro Tull pomp ("American Face Dust"), Eating Us won't alienate Black Moth's cult following: The band's deep disinterest in subtlety survives a traditional-studio trip.