This is a splendid recording of ten fine songs from an artist poised to become one of the leading singer/songwriters of the day, and if it lacks the sense of surprise that accompanied her first effort, Angela Desveaux & the Mighty Ship is on repeat listenings an even more satisfying work.

The first disc, Elephants, pitches its tent closer to the Happenstance camp with lushly textured ballads, while Teeth Sinking Into Heart plays up the singer's debt to rock artists like PJ Harvey. The latter CD is the biggest surprise here, as it displays a swaggering confidence that wasn't as evident on Yamagata's previous releases.

Victory Shorts is an assured, confident, and quite often brilliant album by a band that is clearly influenced by the past but never falls prey to easy nostalgia.

Smalltown Supersound has done fans of the band and of the modern shoegaze sound a huge favor by putting them together and putting them out, extras or no.

Their brisk, efficient indie rock hasn't changed radically, but the insertion of an instrumental here and an electronics-heavy track there makes for needed counterpoint.

It's easily their most fully realized project to date and rather than simply a pastiche, they've managed to create something that's completely their own.

"Hold on Now, Youngster" is still the more magical of the two records, it's the one to play when you want to feel joy, but We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed has more depth and feeling.

Fans of the goofy rock send-ups Hughes and Homme did on "Peace Love Death Metal" and "Death by Sexy" might think the pair are taking themselves too seriously here, but they add just enough maturity to the mix to make Heart On a consistently great album.

Ferndorf's appeal is closest to the work of Bertelmann's FatCat labelmate Max Richter: Richter and Hauschka both have a remarkable talent for honing in on the sweet spot where classical, avant-garde, electronic and pop music meet.

This album is a big step forward for Department of Eagles, a playground of sound that celebrates the pull of memories and music.

The album wholly warrants Snow Patrol's fame, presenting a band that aspires to pop/rock grandeur without developing the accompanying ego. As a result, this is the group's best work yet.

Peace Queer is a short and bittersweet gem, a rant that's funny enough to make the venom sting all the more and a cry of protest with joy and compassion in its heart.

Microcastle proves that Deerhunter can make music that sounds very different from what they'd done before, yet still feels of a piece with their body of work.

These are modest pleasures but these days Ryan Adams is all about careful measured craft instead of big statements, a trade-off that makes his albums more predictable but also more satisfying as Cardinology quietly proves.

Still sounding like no other artist on the planet--whether because of talent or intent--Squarepusher succeeds again with a radical, challenging piece of music.

An 11-song set of dusty, horn-laden, highway driving, drink-spilling heartache that stands as the group's most solid piece of work to date.

At times, Temper's focus means it doesn't have quite as much sweetly mysterious atmosphere as Pioulard's earlier work, but when the final track, 'Hesperus,' evaporates like waking from a dream, it's proof that there are plenty of moments to get lost in here.

An open-minded rock record that relies on a wide array of familiar signifiers but never once sounds like it could have been recorded or released any earlier than it was.

El Guincho's debut album Alegranza is as bright as the feathers of the parrot, as sparkly as the fireworks, and as warm as the palm trees that adorn the cover.

Ultimately a modest and compulsively listenable set of nocturnal electronic lullabies, Double Night Time's use of two- and seven-year-old tracks is not unwarranted.

Devin's target audience, on the other hand, embraces sleaze, porno, weed, and hip-hop with plenty of memorable stingers, and seeing as how Landing Gear delivers on all counts, fans of Texas' most blunted rapper will once again be pleased.

A laid-back and easy to digest album with no grand statements to absorb or deeper meanings to dig for, it's made up of simple songs recorded simply and sung sweetly.

Not only are each of the songs on Río unique; they're all impressive, adding up to a complete full-length album experience filled with highlights.

It's a good album, no less and no more.

Swift's gentle touch is as enduring as her songcraft, and this musical maturity may not quite jibe with her age but it does help make Fearless one of the best mainstream pop albums of 2008.

For its lack of rush-inducing highs and novel sounds, the album is immensely pleasurable, with fleet keyboard vamps and percussive effects that stab and flick ricocheting off pliant, bounding basslines.

Taken together, they position Love Is All as one of the best post-punk revivalist groups, and arguably the equal of their influences. Whether you stand behind that statement or not, A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night is as good as indie rock gets in the late 2000s.

Compare 'Here Comes The' with 'Vessels,' a breakup tune that eschews inconsolability for bright key changes and high anthemic vocals, and you get the full spectrum of Walker's songwriting ability, which is as razor-sharp in 2008 as it ever has been.

What makes Soul an overall success isn't just Seal's caressing vocals and obvious knowledge of how to interpret these songs faithfully without drifting away; it's the subtle yet effective production work of 15-time Grammy-winning producer David Foster.

Beautiful, thoughtful, and sad on a grand scale, Fordlandia is nearly as ambitious as the stories it tells, but unlike its source material, it's another success for Jóhannsson.

This is one of the finest chapters yet in Audika's continuing retrospective. Let's hope there is still more where this came from.

Of course, the songs are amazing, but just as impressively, Stuart Murdoch's vocals are heartbreakingly sincere and soulful, and the band definitively belie their image as shamblers by sounding tight and together.

Devil Dirt is almost a carbon copy of Broken Seas in every way (except for the decidedly cheap looking album art). This similarity could be problematic and make the album less impressive or desirable; fortunately, the formula is strong and worth revisiting.

The nice thing about Day & Age is that not only is Flowers' voice relatively buried, the Killers are unwittingly comfortable with their ludicrous, outsized pop, which turns the album into terrifically trashy pop. Not the serious rock they yearn to be by any means, but these fashionable threads fit them better anyway.

Despite its occasional lapses into schmaltz and generic R&B, Heavy Rotation is still a charming and versatile record that has her unmistakable voice and personality stamped all over it.

Maestro never sounds the least bit unfocused. Being eclectic comes naturally to Mahal, who sees to it that Maestro is a consistently engaging celebration of his 40th year as a recording artist.

The only thing that stops Droppin' Science Fiction from being an instant masterpiece is that Lateef and Gift of Gab don't do quite enough to make these tracks shine; great productions and great rapping still need a few big hooks (vocal or musical) to snare listeners right from the get-go.

Happy in Galoshes isn't quite as textured or bright as "12 Bar Blues"--the smaller budget is evident in its muted colors as well as Weiland's sleepy delivery--but it has the same emphasis on churning psychedelia and clomping glam.

Mannered English eccentricity never sounded so deliriously thrilling.

Strongly recommended to all adventurous dub fans.

Fans of Chesnutt, Elf Power, or smart and adventurous pop music in general should put this one on their shopping lists.

He's come into his own carrying on the tradition of Afro-beat, but putting his own beautiful signature on it as its original heir.

Silence Is Wild is a solid step forward for Frida Hyvönen and a record to check out if you like singer/songwriters with a unique approach to be singing and songwriting.

Emeritus is not the usual, very serious good-bye record, but in so many ways, it's a typical Scarface record. It's just better than usual with the rapper sounding liberated by his decision to move on.

Whether intentional or not, there's a certain glee to FOB's pop absurdity because their cheerfully careless genre-bending has no reverence: fitting all these sounds and jokes into a pop song is all a game and it's one listeners can share, whether they're playing spot-the-allusion or just succumbing to the sugary hooks clustered within one track.

Cohesive, eclectic, expansive but never ponderous, Cream Cuts proves that Tussle don't have to do something radically different to craft music this exciting.

It's their most glossy, most consistent, most calm, and surprisingly, their most socially relevant album, despite their approach toward middle age on a teen-oriented punk playground.

No filler and a logical running order makes Tronic an instantly satisfying effort, an album to return to, and maybe the best entry point to a discography already filled with vital material.

Trying Hartz is a far more inclusive, pure and honest testament to faith than the soulless, over-produced fast food that passes for contemporary gospel in the 21st century.

Lesser producers would ride out these tracks for eight or nine minutes, rather than the six-minute average here; this producer keeps things tight and ever-developing, never straying into formlessness.

Adamson's heady blend of Odelay-era Beck, Roky Erickson paranoia, cosmic hip-hop, and general Animal Collective weirdness sounds like a train wreck in print, but his knack for odd melodies, stealthy programming, timely pitch-shifting, and macabre (and occasionally hysterical) subject matter helps to keep things consistently interesting throughout Ropechain's easily digestible 45-minute runtime.

Whether or not you can get with Malin's other records is immaterial; this one should be embraced by anyone who loves rock & roll.

There's a core of at least seven songs here that rate as highly as the best from the first two albums, and they're anything but reheated.

At least a third of the album's contents would have to be part of any representative introduction to Hamilton. In fact, this puts a cap on a three-album run as remarkable as any other in 2000s R&B.

With the music provided by orchestrations from woodwinds, strings, brass, and much more besides, the feeling is one of playfulness, a resistance to and celebration of easily grasped pop forms and a sense that the world is there to be amused at and with.

All of Never Never Love is a satisfying step forward for Pop Levi--a congruent collection of tunes that temper an enjoyable excess of rhetoric with a workman-like adherence to properly serving a hook.

More than anything, though, it's the album's crystal-clear emotions and sweetly fleeting melodies that make it Mangia's finest work yet.

This is one of the most compelling releases yet by one of the new jazz's finest bands to emerge in the 21st century.

Expanding and improving upon their already striking debut, No Way Down is a stunning accomplishment on so many levels: the amount of care and attention to detail that so clearly went into its creation; its stylistic uniqueness; and its sheer, subjective beauty.

The result is a masterpiece, and a master class in what songwriting is really all about. Songs.

The material is stellar.

Anyone who can craft a record that sounds and feels as good as Get Guilty deserves to keep on making records forever.

It's painful that this will be the only Royal We record ever. Many of the band's members moved on to other quite good bands (Sexy Kids, Bricolage, Correcto), but the chemistry they had as the Royal We will be hard to replicate.

Whatever romance he lacks in the textual medium he more than makes up for in melody.

Disenchantment with the state of rap, and society as a whole, is a major underlying theme, but the statements never feel too preachy or in your face. Instead, the vocal freestyles hover just slightly above the music, delivered in an amorphous mumble that matches the sonic abyss of the background perfectly.

Dear John shows that Svanangen has really gotten his act together; it makes good on all the tremulous, tender, wistful promise of his debut.

The soundtrack to the Notorious B.I.G. biopic Notorious is a welcome surprise. Selections from the past (a bunch of old hits plus some wonderfully raw demos) and the present (Jay-Z's infectious collabo with Santogold) along with a hint of the legacy's future (an appearance from Biggie's son, Christopher "CJ" Wallace, Jr.) are sequenced in a way that avoids any of the bombast or misguided majesty of Born Again or Duets.

Doolittle is nothing if not steady, making all the right moves at the right times, sounding at once like a seasoned pro and someone who feels everything she sings while never forcing or faking anything out. It's one of the smartest, most likable albums from an American Idol alum yet.

It's Not Me never hits heights as blinding as "Smile" or "LDN"--but this approach does wind up spotlighting just how special a pop star Lily Allen is, how she captures all that's wretched and glorious about her time without falling into any of its traps, probably because she's clever enough to avoid them in the first place.

These are chilling sounds from a dark place that, nonetheless, shelter the listener. Between the European and stateside physical releases of the album, Cooper passed away. Knowledge of that could only intensify the album's most passive spins.

Paranoid Cocoon establishes its sound early, so anybody initially put off by all of the cloudy skies and soft, neo-psychedelic mountain melancholy will inevitably come away disappointed, but fans of James Yorkston, Richard Hawley, M. Ward, and mild hangovers will eat this up, and rightly so.

Hold Time will do little to entice listeners for whom Matt Ward's sepia-tone charm holds no sway, but for fans who have enjoyed the ride thus far, this looks like the sunniest stretch of road yet.

variety here, but Keep It Hid never draws attention to Auerbach's eclecticism, especially because it moves along at a rapid clip, never staying in one place too long.

That magic might be missed a little on Mirror Eye, but its fever dream-like intensity is more than compelling in its own right, and feels as subtle and natural as a shadow or a reflection.

The Mountain is a more diverse set than the old Heartless Bastards gave us, it's still rooted in the same emotionally direct songwriting and performing that is this band's trademark, and for all that's changed with the band, Wennerstrom has held on to her core virtues.

Nothing here is surprising, of course, but Years of Refusal is a full-bodied, full-blooded album that also happens to be fully realized--even if it is on a rather modest scale.

Years later, however, the well-networked songwriter appears to have finally found her own voice with Light of X.

Bottom line: the album is one of the stronger pop-R&B releases of the last few years.

Common Existence is largely an enjoyable record that gives as much attention to mood and melody as muscle and might.

The Century of Self is compelling proof that the only way a band as fiercely ambitious, righteous, and single-minded as ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead can do things is on their own.

Just barely out of his twenties, he writes with the well-worn weariness of someone twice his age, but Isbell's youth nevertheless breathes energy into a formula that's been revisited by many Southern-born songwriters before.

It might not be the best album Vetiver have made, but it's the most consistent and beguiling.

Brilliant.

Goodnight Oslo is good enough and engaged enough that you can hardly believe Robyn Hitchcock has been making records like this since 1979.

If the Drones have grown a touch more polished and focused with time, it's not at the expense of creating compelling music--if anything, Havilah even more clearly places the band as one of Australia's best rock bands ever.

On Compass, Redman has finally learned the greatest trick from his mentor--to walk out on the wire with his horn more, trust the fluid abilities of his incredible rhythm section(s), and let his inner sense of song and freedom take precedence over his already well-established sense of discipline.

Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl is not Astral Weeks, but it's brilliant and emotionally intense; it's honest and spiritually revealing.

This one is solid from top to bottom.

If this is a somewhat more sedate effort than the hot-wired Flat Duo Jets of yore, Ruins of Berlin shows Dexter Romweber's passion and gifts are as strong as ever, and the result is a compelling album from a one of a kind talent with plenty to offer.

Among Sheik's albums this ranks among the best, showcasing his subtle skills and sense of quiet adventure in ways his sometimes fussy earlier records never did.

Moody, cinematic, and engaging throughout, Cyclone is another tour de force from Neko Case, if not as immediately arresting as "Fox Confessor."

All in all, Copeland has delivered a solid set of music, easily recommended, that should please her fans and translate to some dynamic performances on tour.

Mr. Lucky works because Isaak and crew don't overplay their hand.

Blue Lights on the Runway is one of those rare albums that you can pretend to like for its alt-credibility while secretly just enjoying it for the hooks.

That said, try as you might, you can listen a hundred times and not catch all the utterly magical, deeply moving, and beautifully arresting aural majesty to be found on Choral.

Compared to prior outings, their Zorn-like freewheeling spirit has been toned back and songs feel more like actual "songs" with defined structure and greater emphasis on the individuality of the performers and the negative space surrounding them.

Lucky One isn't the Mavericks, but it's closer to what made that band great than anything Malo has recorded in a while, and shows that he remains a great singer and powerfully imaginative musician regardless of the context.

Bare Bones is a remarkable work from one of the best artists in vocal jazz.