At the Cut isn't as great a surprise as "North Star Deserter," but if you thought the brilliance of that album was a happy accident, this confirms these musicians complement each other very well and hopefully will continue to do so for a long time to come.

The delicacy and epic sweep of the Twilight Sad's first album is missed occasionally on Forget the Night Ahead, but the progress they've made is fascinating--and rewarding--to hear.

Despite the large cast, All in One is a remarkably unified record; no one makes a larger impact here than Bebel Gilberto herself, while she and executive producer Didie Cunha create a record that's modern in execution but classic in its feel.

Childish Prodigy is split between drunken caterwauling and quiet hangover-recovery sessions, and both sides of the spectrum are fantastic.

Easily the singer's most stylistically wide-ranging album, it is also one of his brightest, poppiest, and most fun.

Little about Embryonic is clear-cut or straightforward -- these noisy, pensive, sometimes meandering songs take awhile to decipher and often feel like they're still in the process of becoming. These very qualities, however, make these songs some of the Flaming Lips most haunting and intriguing music in some time.

Family shows that Le Loup have really come into their own since the release of their 2007 debut.

kee is simply a fantastic listen that showcases Wainwright as both a showman and a deeply creative songwriter with a superb knack for live performance.

It's filled with engagingly warm-sounding tunes mating melodic accessibility with a winning lyrical evanescence powered by the same kind of poetic dream logic that's cropped up in Califone's concepts before.

Neither a straightforward score nor a collection of kid-friendly indie rock songs, it lies somewhere intriguingly in between--and it's just as good, if not better, than the music these artists make with their main projects.

A more hypnotic and lulling ride overall, Tarot Sport may lack some of "Street Horrrsing's" pure visceral impact, but it's just as satisfying on its own terms, as well as an impressive step forward for Fuck Buttons.

Sunset/Sunrise shows that with a bit of judiciously placed accompaniment and a more ambitious use of the studio, the duo can add depth and gravity to music that was fine stuff to begin with.

Dead Man's Bones isn't perfect, but it's often fascinating and nearly always charming--and Shields and Gosling wouldn't have it any other way.

Somewhere Gone is a different animal from Cervenka's acoustic music of the late '80s and early '90s, at once simpler, riskier, and more confident, and it captures one of the great wild talents of her generation in strong and impressive form, still unafraid to take her talent in new directions after more than a quarter-century of blazing trails.

These songs are nearly as wide-ranging and comprehensive as an actual atlas, but Cox keeps charting new territory.

Despite a few upbeat moments that stick out like a thumb that isn't sore, songs like Grizzly Bear and Victoria Legrand's "Slow Life," Editors' "No Sound But the Wind," and Bon Iver and St. Vincent's lovely, truly odd "Roslyn" are morose enough for die-hard Twilight fans and stylish enough to please the most discerning music snobs.

Carlile still prefers sobriety to levity but it never feels affected; it's music that gets under your skin and cuts to the bone.

There's no way around the fact that most of Machine Dreams is icy electro-pop, but it is not as if the truly singular Yukimi Nagano, an enamoring vocalist, has switched to drone mode, forsaking her grounding in R&B.

Banhart's persona emerges intact despite the mainstream sound, however, and What Will We Be becomes a pleasantly fresh album to follow the ponderous, sprawling "Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon."

Somedays the Song Writes You is another choice album from one of the greatest songwriters to ever come out of the state of Texas.

As before, Lyle gravitates toward gentle, moody songs, with Tommy Elskes' slyly sarcastic blues, 'Bohemia,' being the liveliest of the bunch, opting to give Natural Forces some humor and tempo through his originals.

The set is both familiar and fresh-sounding at once.

Rarely does an independent album sound so assured, so polished, and so agreeable.

If you weren't already on the Russian Circles bandwagon, this is the perfect opportunity to jump on.

A tighter, cleaner band than the scruffy renegades of the '80s, but still the same band, which is evident here in ways it never was on the perfectly fine R.E.M. Live. That was a production. This is rock & roll.

It may not have the sugar rush immediacy of the Strokes, and at times it's downright indulgent, but Phrazes for the Young shows that Casablancas has more than enough ideas for several albums on his own and with his band--and perhaps most importantly, he sounds more enthused about making music on it than he has since "Is This It."

Amerie returns with In Love & War, an album that is much more creative than its title indicates while also playing out a bit like Because I Love It redux.

The sonic touches Hagg adds to her songs only makes them better. The combination of their gifts has resulted in something pretty special, possibly the best work either of them has done to date, and hopefully something that will continue.

This is an impulsive album, an odd piece of work that manages to be puzzling without alienating the listener.

The biggest complaint has to be that the early single 'Nike Boots' is missing, but otherwise, this unique debut does not disappoint.

Love Comes Close is a strong debut not just because Cold Cave embraces their darkness so fully, but because they find so many shades within it.

Impressively impressionistic, New Clouds is a rare mix of restful and engaging, and a significant step forward for Forkner.

While there are melodies and hooks that certainly dig into the skull, what impresses is chemistry, how the three play together, how they instigate each other, and how they spur each other on, to the point where their familiar tropes sound fresh.

With its captivating set of beer-stained rockers and heartfelt ballads, 1372 Overton Park offers a triumphant example of gritty, sweaty, all-American music.

Sometimes needlessly complex and, at its worst, goofy for the sake of being goofy--proper boots-in-a-dryer bizniz with shrill flotsam swirling about--these tracks can be as off-putting as they are exhilarating.

June. Though half of Real Estate was already released by the band as singles and EPs, that just adds to the album’s instantly familiar feel--which is a large part of this unassuming debut album’s appeal.

Lambert sounds larger than life on these, just like he wants to be, and if there’s no sense of danger here, at least there’s a lot of pure pop pleasure here, more than any immediate post-Idol album has ever delivered.

Whether the album seems ridiculous or spectacular (or both), Rihanna's complete immersion in the majority of the songs cannot be disputed. That is the one thing that is not up for debate.

The lead single is a powerhouse of dance waves and infectiously produced beats, but the album doesn't always stand out as definitive, even though it's consistently fresh and innovative.

Jones' faith in her own creative judgment is well-founded, and this is a work whose modest scale belies its emotional strength.

This is the most compelling recording Youngs has cut since 2004's "River Through Howling Sky," though it doesn't resemble it a bit, and is, in its way, considerably more beautiful, unquestionably more accessible, and equally as magical.

If this is not the most live-sounding dance album made with synthetic instrumentation, it must be pretty close.

Everything sounds livelier, more active. Huisman fills the empty spaces, never over-stuffs them, and the percussion is practically spring-loaded--from several angles--in comparison.

While Midnight Soul Serenade may not be the best Heavy Trash album (their debut takes that honor), it's still some of the best rock & roll around. Anywhere, anytime.

There’s plenty of dazzling wordplay related to coke dealing and showing off, but the album carries a more redemptive tone and a higher level of self-awareness.

The album serves as a reminder of the flexibility and resilience that have allowed Snoop Dogg to remain an enduring figure in hip-hop.

Seconds is a worthy successor to the classic Red Hash, but more than this, it is hopefully a new beginning for Higgins; god knows we need more songs like this in the world.

Few debut albums are audacious enough to call to mind Odetta, M.I.A., and the Raincoats--often all at the same time--but this is just such a rare bird.

Flashmob is some of Vitalic's most artful, even subtle work. It may or may not be as profoundly influential as "OK Cowboy," but it's just as engaging and even more cohesive.

Not so much a soundtrack to a film that was never made as it is music that demands images to accompany it, this is a welcome return after the four years of silence that followed Tender Buttons.

This certainly goes a long way to illustrating that Petty & the Heartbreakers always delivered the goods, but it's somewhat at the expense of forward momentum; it's hard not to wish that it was arranged chronologically, to be able to hear the raw energy give way to easy skill, but that's just nitpicking--any way you look at it, this Live Anthology offers an overdose of prime rock & roll.

The experience of hearing the band's ebb and flow as they organically develop the performance in real-time--as opposed to hearing a package of material that has been cherry-picked after the fact--is one of several advantages that the Live in New York (2009) anthology has over its predecessors. Another is the stunning fidelity throughout, thanks to the work of Doors' original producer/engineer Bruce Botnick and the exhaustive processes of restoring the eight-track, open-reel master tapes.

At the end of the day, The State vs. Radric Davis delivers the full spectrum of Gucci Mane, showing both the cash and yellow diamond-loving side, as well as his more reflective (or at least more self-aware) side.

Themes may be revisited, but Escape 2 Mars stills comes across as fresh and meaningful and fun.

Greatest Hits isn't arranged chronologically, which isn't a detriment; if anything, skipping through the years emphasizes just how consistent the Foos have been, always delivering oversized rock & roll where the hooks are as big as the guitars.

The melding of clinical technology and human elements -- i.e., real instruments -- as a way of bringing the listener in made it nearly unbearable, but so utterly original that it compelled one to engage it.

This is elsewhere music one can feel eternally at home in, no matter your place of origin.

It's less of an issue to find an epochal band among them and more of one to find a band that is consistently a pleasure to listen to in its own right. Well into a decade's worth of performances and recording, Early Day Miners manage that feat again on their sixth album, The Treatment.

So Far Gone shows that Drake is for real, and works as a tantalizing teaser for his first full-length record.

With Contra, Vampire Weekend make Auto-Tune and real live guitars, Mexican drinks, Jamaican riffs and Upper West Side strings belong together, and this exciting lack of boundaries offers more possibilities than anyone could have expected.

This is a unique if occasionally discomfiting album that finds great beauty in surprising places.

The Colossus finds Rjd2 back to doing what he did when he first began recording: simply curating excellent productions instead of wooing a new audience by creating expressly written songs or telling a story with his full-lengths.

It’s a wide, spacious, summer storm of a record that bounces around genres like an open-world RPG game, and while there may be only 12 locations you can fast-travel to, there is enough treasure in each to keep the adventurer occupied for a month of afternoons.

Rain on the City lacks the consistency of Johnston's masterpiece, "Can You Fly," or its follow-up, "This Perfect World," but unlike the albums that followed, this collection is a beautiful example of Johnston playing to his strengths and reminding us why he's one of the best and most singular American songwriters at work today.

Given Spoon's reputation for consistency, it's not a surprise that Transference is good. However, it manages to be good in surprising ways.

This is a dark, sparse, elegantly--and enjoyably--somewhat mopey, paradoxical album. It’s emotionally raw, but devoid of self-pity. It's charming in its sense of irony and self-awareness.

Where her previous album was ethereal and ephemeral, IRM is exciting and eclectic.

Even after ten years of navigating the new millennium's punk-emo scene, Motion City Soundtrack sound positively hungry. My Dinosaur Life is a sugar rush without the crash at the end, just the insatiable need to hear it all again.

All in all, this is a rare sophomore album that widens the band's sound without narrowing its appeal.

Ultimately, Hidden is the sound of an ambitious young band as eager to use every tool at its disposal as it is to avoid studiously doing what's been done before.

It doesn't offer any answers, but The Sea is a testament to Rae's artistic growth as it provides comfort to those left on the wistful side of eternal love, and insight to those who are not.

Falling Down a Mountain isn't exactly a major reinvention, either, but it does back up the golden-hued sky gracing its cover with some of their most upbeat and optimistic songs to date (keep in mind those are relative terms), and a liberal extension of the looseness they've been gradually settling into since 1999's Simple Pleasure.

While it isn’t as immediate as High Time, fans of that album and hypnotic, improvisatory music will love getting lost in The Flexible Entertainer.

Granted, 25 songs of fast, furious, gravelly hardcore punk may seem like a lot to take--and some of the raw alternate takes are in best form in their fully evolved multi-tracked versions on the excellent Chemistry of Common Life and Hidden World albums--but even so, most of the songs included on Couple Tracks are absolute necessities.

Why You Runnin’ may only be an EP--one can only hope Lissie has enough slow-smoked melody in her arsenal to sustain an entire album--but it's one of 2009’s finest folk releases regardless.

Dream Get Together is the rare 2000s album that sounds better played end to end than it does broken down into pieces. A track might sound good in a random mix, sure, but taken together, the effect is somewhat magical.

The Soft Pack allows this band an almost completely clean break with their past while showing they’re dynamic no matter what they’re called.

Everyone makes sample-based music these days, but very few people use found sounds and prefab musical snippets as creatively and thoughtfully as Blockhead does.

These are huge, Motown-sounding set pieces that frame Hynes as a male Dusty Springfield backed by symphonic strings, jangly guitars, and urgent, driving percussion.

Forty years after his debut, I’m New Here contains the artful immediacy that distinguishes Scott-Heron’s best art. The modern production adds immeasurably to that quality, underscores his continued relevance in reflecting the times, and opens his work to a new generation of listeners while giving older ones a righteous jolt.

There's something quietly but persistently unique about the duo's work that suggests its own realm, quirky and wry but not simply a showcase for lyrical wit, gently swinging and twangy without losing a sense of calm hush.

To Realize is an album that will certainly reward those willing to give in to the band's grand design.

The RK has been making weirdly wonderful recordings for over 40 years, but this one, as lovely and angular as it is, is one the of the strangest. Yet, it’s also -- if you stick with it -- among their most enjoyable.

As an album, Orchestrion is as ambitious as "Secret Story and The Way Up," but it is no less brilliant. Here Metheny exceeds our expectations, and perhaps even his own.

While all of Foster’s work is provocative, this proves the warmest, loveliest, and most beautifully articulated recording in her catalog.

It's no surprise that Downtown Church is a beautiful album, as Patty Griffin has been making beautiful albums since 1996, but here she's reaching for something deeper than she has on much her previous work, and the search that informed these 14 songs is compelling and joyous to hear, regardless of your religious convictions.

Their combination of crunching riffs, hard-driving rhythms, and howling vocals isn't exactly unique, but their spin on the sound, which adds some touches of classic, early-'80s pre-glam metal to the usual blend of Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, et. al, has a lot of appeal.

If Crows was the first album from a new artist, it would certainly be hailed as the debut of a powerful new voice, and the fact that it comes from someone who has already been making fine music in notably different styles makes the accomplishment all the more impressive.

Boca Negra is the most sophisticated and improvisationally complex recording CUD has ever recorded, while easily being its most accessible.

Black Noise can't help but feel ever so slightly like a letdown after the consistently mesmerizing rapture of its predecessor. But make no mistake: Weber is still making some of the most enchanting electronica out there, and if this album brings him the increased exposure for which he seems well-poised, there are few producers more deserving.

Rather than showing the humble beginnings of an experimental band, this album highlights the fact that, even from the very beginning, they were the enigmatic and impossibly heavy group that they are today.

This is another chapter in the sonic evolution that began with the name A Silver Mt. Zion, and contains many more dimensions, layers, and textures. It pushes harder and further with much less, yet comes across as no less raggedly and poetically majestic.

There is enough variation from song to song to keep listeners engaged; plenty of thoughtful, almost heavy ballads to balance the jumpy, uptempo tracks, lots of different instrumentation in the arrangements, and an assortment of moods from quiet melancholy to slightly louder melancholy.

Ya-Ka-May is not merely a collaborative amalgam of tracks, but rather a unified whole reflecting NOLA’s musical vitality and reveling in it all simultaneously; it's the sound of a musical community being itself for itself, while screaming--in full party mode--into the world that it's alive and evolving.

Peace & Love remains something of a mood piece--it’s ruminative, not rousing, never succumbing to navel-gazing but not suited for large crowds--which does mean it doesn’t quite have the undeniable power of How to Walk Away, but when a softly melancholy mood strikes, this provides comforting consolation.

An album that thrives on sparse, tickling productions that are more about atmosphere than anything else.

The Family Jewels is a record that is creatively ubiquitous and aggressive, traits that make this album not unlike Amy Winehouse's Back to Black or maybe even Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville.

Though they may lose a few fans with their new sound, You Say Party! We Say Die! do a fine job of growing into a truly interesting band on XXXX.