Any and all of the bands they draw influence from would be happy to add them to the noise club; if they keep making records as good as Distractions, they may end up ruling the club someday.

Bacteria Cult needs a little time to get into your bloodstream before it can be reckoned with, but ultimately, it's an infection worth sweating through.

While not all of Utopia Defeated's tracks are as immediately engaging as the aforementioned highlights, Perry introduces a unique vision and his impressive debut is well worth the time it takes to let it decant.

Even without some of the more advanced effects he's able to use in a proper studio setting, he's still able to do a lot with his limited setup, wringing unearthly sounds and textures from decaying tape loops.

Built to Spill expands on the big sound that they crafted with Keep It Like a Secret.

In the end, however, the album's coherence comes in its incredible architecture of all these ideas, and the way the band sells them with everything they've got, taking what could be incredibly obtuse music back into the realm of pop from which it was born.

For what it is, The Greatest is exceedingly well done, and people who have never heard of Cat Power before could very well love this album immediately. However, it might take a little more work for those who have loved her music from the beginning.

The lyrical content, along with the album's constant energy, make this Everything Everything's most focused effort thus far, one that bundles brawny indie rock with 2010s Zeitgeist.

It's a dense and lyrically challenging record, as you would expect from two highly intelligent individuals who have lived through the bars they deliver, but it ends on their most salient point: "Can't escape yourself, please love yourself," Riz MC's final words on "Din-e-llahi."

For an act that has been operating creatively since the mid-'70s, Amadou & Mariam once again prove their art can thrive in just about any setting.

The experience of The Director's Cut, encountering all this familiar material in its new dressing, is more than occasionally unsettling, but simultaneously, it is deeply engaging and satisfying.

It rivals "Dance Hall at Louse Point" for its willingness to challenge listeners, but it's far removed from "Uh Huh Her," which was arguably more listenable but a lot less remarkable. In fact, this may be Harvey's most undiluted album yet.

Anyone who has already decided that jazz is dead, that the great innovators have come and gone, needs to listen to the Bad Plus to be proven dead wrong.

4eva Is a Mighty Long Time is a mighty long album, at 20 songs and two brief skits, but K.R.I.T. clearly has a lot to say, and he expresses it with vigor and passion on this ambitious work.

Kill or Be Kind is a watermark for Fish. Her writing, singing, and playing all serve the truth of what she seeks here: the heart of song.

It's one of the most affecting works to date from a brilliant, one-of-a-kind band.

Replete with consummate musicianship, Ouroboros is a deliberate work of album rock.

If you want to hear a clever, ambitious, and blessedly noisy set from four people who know how to do it right, then the Dream Syndicate's return to duty will find an honored place in your music collection.

On the whole, Green to Gold reshapes the Antlers' once somber and brooding chamber pop into something bright and smiling. The songs strip away the sharpness and volatility the band reveled in on earlier albums to reveal a pleasant glow that was all too often hidden in the shadows.

While Lanza has never come across as diffident, she is at her most poised and direct on Love Hallucination, another serving of bubbly avant-pop only she could have made.

Saturnalia is mysticism and hedonism, saints and sinners, dark and light, but this is no clear-cut Manichaean collaboration. Both Lanegan and Dulli represent this, both contain all the good and the bad they sing about, sometimes at different moments but very often together, and it's that joined duality, that very disturbingly human quality, telling us things about ourselves we'd rather not acknowledge, that makes the album so absolutely alluring.

While some of the lyrics may be a little too on the nose for some, regardless of age ("This crummy town is filled with wild boredom"), there is no age limit on angst or catharsis.

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.

While Big Ideas could be accused of being uneven, filler is a matter of personal genre preference here, left turns that are fun or even funny dominate, and with a closer like the helium-voiced disco entry "Slay Bitch," any remaining scolds should be few and far between.

Breaking Kayfabe is a cohesive set of songs, backpacker in the best of senses, smart and witty and provocative, experimental and well-produced, but at the same time very raw and very real-sounding.

Jaiyede Afro marks a welcome return for Orlando Julius and overall is an excellent, fingerpopping, ass-shaking collaboration.

The mysteries of love, life, and the world are broached with a light yet nevertheless unshakeable touch on Faithful Fairy Harmony. Foster has made a record that feels like a psychic connection to inner worlds as well as an outer one, and the visions she summons are at once vivid and rarified.

Mixing a sophisticated amalgam of melody, sound, and poetic lyrics, Hawley's artistry lies in his ability to communicate a deeper vulnerability that openly engages hard questions about identity, and the often overlooked yet profound benefits of romantic love.