The Fiery Furnaces put ot an album in July. It was pretty good. Maybe we should have told you about it.

On a weekly basis, the bridge trolls here in the music department at Fast Forward Weekly strive to keep our readership apprised of the best and brightest in new releases. Inevitably, there are albums that slip through the cracks —- in some cases, reviews are assigned but never written; in others, ambiguous release information makes it difficult to know when it would be right to run a timely review. As such, every now and then it's good to purge the pipes, play catch up and atone for some of the worst omissions. This iteration of “the ones we've missed” highlights some of the most notable releases from the past few months. Curiously enough, though, we begin with an album that was never released at all.

• Dangermouse and Sparklehorse with Guests — Dark Night of the Soul (Independent, No official release):

At South by Southwest last spring, music nerds from every corner of the globe captured furtive camera-phone snapshots of a poster advertising a laundry list of collaborators for this project, topped by A-list producer Danger Mouse and reclusive genius Sparklehorse, and the indie world braced itself for a massive entry in the “various artists” column. Don’t waste time foraging through record bins though, as the album’s release has been postponed indefinitely due to a mysterious copyright conflict with EMI. Even the eager beavers who forked over big dollars for a companion book of David Lynch photography only received a CD-R; fortunately, a reasonable-quality leak is readily available all over the web, giving those fans something to put on their blank discs.

For the most part, the disc puts its guests at the helm for songs that wouldn’t sound out of place being sung by Sparklehorse mastermind Mark Linkous. Some of the chosen vocalists are better suited to this than others: Iggy Pop and Black Francis flounder, but Wayne Coyne (of The Flaming Lips) scores huge with his beautiful lament on “Revenge” and Suzanne Vega’s turn on “The Man Who Played God” is a perfect fit. Several other strong performances ensure that the duds are easily forgiven thanks to the winners.

• Health — In Color (Lovepump United, September 8):

The princes of the L.A. noise scene follow up their acclaimed self-titled debut with an album that hits harder and faster, playing off dozens of vaguely industrial rock tropes in machine gun succession. Where the band’s first-wave predecessors milked a musical theme for several minutes, Health has the good sense to shelf each quirk before it starts to feel campy. Throughout the album, synth lines are a huge focal point, weaving in and out of reach, caked in more kinds of distortion than you’d think possible. In Color only deviates from its rapid-fire pacing on the closing track, “In Violet,” which is distinct from the rest of the album in its lack of restraint and focus. Clocking in almost twice as long as any other song, it starts out strong but loses traction about halfway through and the album undergoes an unfortunate tapering. Nonetheless, preceding strong points like “Die Slow,” “Death+” and “Eat Flesh” make for a wild musical ride, even if the titles raise a spectre of concern that if you could understand what the hell they were saying, this band might be exceedingly disturbing.

• Mew — No More Stories / Are Told Today / I'm Sorry / They Washed Away // No More Stories / The World Is Grey / I'm Tired / Let's Wash Away (Sony, August 25)

The members of Denmark’s Mew describe the band as “indie stadium rock.” While the fact that its records are released by Sony makes part of that statement mildly ridiculous, the second half is reasonable accurate; whether that’s a good thing is up for debate. On its fifth album in just over a decade, the Mew continues to inhabit a tightly carved niche of progressive power pop, but in the quest to produce huge-sounding anthems, it has lost quite a bit of the grit and ambition that made 2005’s ...And the Glass Handed Kites such a successful outing. No More Stories is strong out of the gate, with utterly irresistible tracks like the throbbing “New Terrain” and the saccharine “Beach,” a crossover hit waiting to happen, but the rest of the album ranges from bland to downright insipid.

• Wye Oak — The Knot (Merge, July 21)

On its second album in as many years, Virginia’s Wye Oak smashes together smoky vocals, alt.country twang and fuzzed-out guitar porn, unabashedly embracing the loud-quiet-loud esthetic to a degree that will surely inspire more than a few eye-rolls from critics and fans alike. At times, The Knot feels like a cliché, but if you’re the type of person who craves unhinged steel guitar solos or great rolling crescendos that end in distorted breakdowns, there’s a good chance you’ll be having too much fun to notice. At the very least, highlights like “For Prayer” and “Take It In” showcase the talents of a duo with tremendous potential to make the nicest kind of noise.

• The Fiery Furnaces — I’m Going Away (Thrill Jockey, July 21)

Like every Fiery Furnaces record, I’m Going Away has its own character and tone, but the band’s usual sense of light-hearted musical playfulness remains intact. Where albums like Widow City and Bitter Tea tended to drift towards unhinged guitar solos or extended noise jams, I’m Going Away is content with relatively mellow grooves. Musically speaking, the weirdest thing about gems like “The End Is Near,” “Even In the Rain,” and “Lost At Sea” is the fact that the players pass up all the clear opportunities to degenerate into musical chaos, opting instead to keep it silky smooth.

While this stylistic shift may not work for everyone, devotees will be pleased to know the band stays true to form lyrics-wise, giving the psycho nursery rhyme treatment to a bizarre smattering of stories with oddly named characters in mysterious locales seeking out strange curios and engaging in deviant behaviour. In other words, standard fare for the Friedberger siblings.