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.