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.