Big Head Todd & the Monsters will never be a gutbucket, down-and-dirty blues-rock outfit, but Black Beehive proves that's fine: they have found their own friendly spin on the blues and have become a better band for it.

While the first two I Break Horses albums were heartfelt and promising, at times it felt like Lindén was looking for her true musical voice. On Warnings she finds it and has made a modern synth pop-meets-dream pop classic that is sure to melt the frozen heart of anyone lucky enough to discover it.

The powerful, sometimes writhing, and often transcendent sonic landscape the band creates here is their most inspired work to date, brimming with purpose and assertiveness that goes beyond mere entertainment and reaches for enlightenment.

With Nothing Lasts Forever, Teenage Fanclub have made a poignant, delicately rendered rumination on the passing of time and the enduring promise of love, all of which underscores the timeless lyricism of their work.

Someone to Drive You Home is one of those albums that's honest to goodness fun, and pulling it off with as much pastiche as the Long Blondes makes it one of the year's nicest arrivals.

Wyoming is a bright and promising collection of secretly wrecked songs, and leaves us curious to see how Water Liars will continue to grow as they walk their thorny path.

It can take a while to deconstruct the narrative, but when ignoring the weighty plot, the songs' key themes of mortality, love, and loss still manage to make an impact.

The darkness seems more dire and the fun moments feel more exciting and reckless, making All Her Fault a new chapter in a history of successes.

Though "exciting" isn't exactly the word, there is a sense of both purpose and drive in all of Bitchin Bajas' blurry, diversely composed drone-scapes, and this album as a whole is easily their best and most carefully crafted work up until this point.

Berkeley to Bakersfield is one of Cracker's most ambitious and satisfying sets in quite some time, as good as anything they've given us since Kerosene Hat in 1993.

This is a mature, introspective work from a man looking for answers to the questions of life and love, and it's a brave and genuinely impressive return to the spotlight from a major talent.

The end result is a seamless whole that reflects Nichols' penchant for great melodies, vast melodic imagination, and signature vocal style.

Coldcut and Sherwood remain visionary artists, and Outside the Echo Chamber is (for the most part) a worthwhile hour of futuristic reggae.

Out of the Blues may be an excellent final chapter in this roots trilogy, but stands on its own as one of Scaggs' most sure-footed releases.

B.E.D, is a delight. The performers work to fit their individual skills into a cohesive unit.

Opening piece "Disappearance / Reappearance" recalls the second part of 1994's Treetop Drive, with stark blasts of electronic noise repeatedly shooting out and dissipating into empty space, providing a consistent series of electrifying jolts that are as brutal as they are mesmerizing. Most of the remaining pieces are a series of numerically titled "Occultations," and while they usually aren't nearly as harsh, they're just as striking.

Taken as a whole, Private Lives is the richest rock & roll Low Cut Connie have made to date and it's married to Weiner's most emotionally resonant set of songs, a combination that's both potent and moving.

Cloth's previous releases may have been almost too subtle for their own good, but Secret Measure is an impressive, moving leap forward that fully reveals their music's power and potential.

Deeply bruised, cinematic and graceful Western music is no match for their skills and Sea of Mirrors is another triumph for the band.

Hostile Environment is a triumphant comeback effort, and it continues On-U Sound's run of late-career highlights from veterans like African Head Charge and Horace Andy.

Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years (John's Version) is a potent reminder of how many great songs Fogerty wrote in his salad days with CCR, and shows he still has the energy and spark to give them life, but he might have done a better job of demonstrating the latter if he'd come up with a good batch of new tunes.

This set reveals their mature, fully developed musical language expanded by sonic and harmonic invention.

Their lushest and most spontaneous-feeling album yet, it takes a firmer step toward the dreamy rock side.

A record that's far removed in feel from the stark, haunting Nebraska, but on a song-for-song level, it's nearly as strong, since its stories linger in the imagination as long as the ones from that 1982 masterpiece.

More than a few productions provide the type of slick, West Coast grind that allows Aceyalone to play the Lothario but still sound like he's satirizing the lover-man archetype.

while he doesn't exactly adopt an in-your-face approach to the leading-man role, preferring to become part of the powerful collective he's assembled, Rawlings proves himself fully capable of taking the reins and leading this horse wherever he wants it to go.

A masterwork of composition, control, investigation, and ultimately, realization with aplomb.

As with the self-titled album, this is all glacial, entrancing ambient-neoclassical--with O'Halloran's sensitive and melodic piano a central element--that soothes, suitable for both foreground and background listening.