While Yellowcard's songs still retain the youthful, emo-rock enthusiasm and catchy melodicism that marked the best of their earlier work, there is a weightiness and expansive gaze to many of the songs on Southern Air.

It's a pleasure from the get-go: a nicely ominous plucked guitar rhythm of a couple of notes is the bed for even more moody feedback wails and fading in/out arcs of feedback.

Mature Themes just reveals more levels with more listening.

What is easy to figure out is that they are still operating at top capacity and anyone looking for smart, emotional pop that sounds almost perfect can turn to Stars for all their needs.

Matchbox 20 has never made a record as cheerful or appealing or satisfying as this.

Gallows finds them staying the course, delivering high-octane thrills on every track in a way that feels as if it's meant to reassure fans that Gallows are done playing around and are ready to get back to business.

All the pieces here slot together beautifully, and using more voices creates more complex layers of vocals that only add to the pieces.

The Bloom and the Blight sounds massive enough that Two Gallants could conceivably follow fellow power duo the Black Keys into the big time, but emotionally, this music is as intimate as ever, and all the more powerful for it.

If it's more of an archival release than a necessary one, it's very listenable and catches an eccentric, odd little band of three fine songwriters doing that thing they did--and that they still do.

Coexist's exploration of isolation and intimacy is demanding and rewarding in its bold subtlety and eloquent simplicity.

As always with Dinosaur Jr., underneath all that sound lie some sturdy bones, songs constructed with expert, unassuming craftsmanship and a sly wit, but it's the variety and adventure that makes I Bet On Sky something more than another excellent Dinosaur record.

The near perfect balance of cinematic classical and rock music here may put some off some headbangers, but it will no doubt appeal to anyone with an open mind, and more importantly, an open heart.

The music and images of Hazlewood singing to Axelman's family, running the Gotland marathon, and convincing Swedish children to take sides against Nixon turn both movie and album into a celebration of the enduring friendship between artist and director.

Theatre is Evil bristles, crackles, aches, and moans with surprising efficiency considering its 15-song length, pairing fractured synths and staccato guitar riffs with Palmer's throaty, untamed pipes, sounding for all the world like a brazenly cool, alternate-universe version of No Doubt.

The record may not be their masterpiece, but it is an important piece of a surprisingly strong career.

Above all, Mungodelics practically bubbles with undisguised joy in the moment, a pleasure in activity, and the possibilities they explore.

Overall, though, Liquid Swords is possibly the most unsettling album in the Wu canon (even ahead of Ol' Dirty Bastard), and it ranks with Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx as one of the group's undisputed classics.

Away from the World is a bit of a rare thing: a return to form lacking an ounce of nostalgia.

Forget the limiting rubric of country-pop: this is one of the best mainstream pop albums of 2012.

If it isn't both the most purposeful and moving album to come out of dubstep, it's got to be at least one of the two.

It would all add up to another listen-to-it-once bit of over-serious Americana noir if the songs weren't so good. But they're good.

It may not hit the listener over the head with theatrics or tormented confessions, but the subdued and personal nature of Church's songs here allow for a more intimate connection than on any Sea Wolf material that came before.

It's part punk, part grunge, part riot grrrl, all slamming together in the mosh pit and exploding into a fist-pumping fury you won't soon want to forget.

While it's not as obviously big a statement as Veckatimest was, Shields is plenty ambitious in its own right, and its complexity demands and rewards patient listening.

They're veterans that know how to use their tools, so even if the raw materials may not be quite as compelling as their earliest singles, the overall craft on Battle Born is more appealing.

It's intriguing and at times vaguely unsettling.

Bend Beyond is the most fully realized set of songs yet from Woods, and continues a lineage of each record surpassing their last.

Her livelier numbers, of which there are quite a few, aren't exactly frivolous, but they have a pulse and plenty of color which, combined with album's concise running time, give Charmer the feel of an immediate, engaging pop record.