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.

Musically it’s the performances by Bridges that are the most arresting here.

If anything, the album almost feels like a spiritual sequel to their full-length debut, "Methodrone," with its similarly lengthy tracks and more studio-focused approach rather than live rock & roll bash and crash, but where that album drowned a bit in the end, Who Killed Sgt. Pepper? finds its creators at a remarkable new high.

If there were any justice, Ain't No Grave would be the last album released under Cash's name. It is not only a compelling contribution to his legacy, but an offering that closes the historic American Recordings series with the same stamp of quality that began it.

Dear God, I Hate Myself is also the band’s most overtly electronic album in some time, with several songs composed on a Nintendo DS that gives the darkness of “Apple for a Brain” and “Secret Motel” an unpretentious, somehow friendly feel.

Michael Trent receives co-writing credits for roughly half of these tracks, but I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart is a Butch Walker album through and through. It’s also one of his best, proof that Walker still can’t take a step without bumping into a usable hook.

Yet despite the gadgetry that went into the album’s production, Fight Softly is still a sunny piece of work, filled with gorgeous pop melodies that are complex but rarely challenging.