The main successes of Final Days come with its more complex arrangements as well as more nuanced and exacting performances.

Segall and Company get straight As in terms of delivering big, psych-damaged, garage-infused hard rock, and if you want to hear Segall kick out the jams, Live in San Francisco is exactly what you need.

A serene, thought-provoking album that grows richer with each listen.

While it might be nice to see a little more focus on something nearer to a composite sound, Wishy have already got a good thing going on an auspicious debut LP.

It's intriguing and at times vaguely unsettling.

If you hack off the misguided finish, Fall Heads Roll proves they can still live up to their legend.

With the release of the album DS2--Dirty Sprite 2, named after his hit mixtape -- he becomes a hip-hop version of Lee "Scratch" Perry, a strange and yet in command figure standing at the center of a slick, inventive swirl of music.

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.

Even as Low’s sound twisted into new forms over the years, they never quite got into bluegrass territory, and it takes a few songs to acclimate to the combination of high-spirited acoustic music and Sparhawk’s emotionally powerful but usually subtle style.

Throughout it all Segarra struts her stuff without the slightest bit of arrogance (most of the arrangements are spare, but never willfully so), offering up a confident, yet ultimately amiable set of millennial-informed, urban crafted, Woody Guthrie-inspired, contemporary hobo-folk anthems that play fast and loose with genre tropes without losing the essence that makes them universal.

In many ways, Animated Violence Mild feels like the inevitable sequel to World Eater. Where that album used the full force of Power's music to rail against the world's injustices, this one reflects the resignation, frustration, and emotional overload of its time in its startling and moving tracks.

The album could have been pared down a bit, yet it's a drop in a bucket for Booth and Brown. Prior to this, their discography clocked in at 18 hours or so. What's another two hours?

It all glides by easily enough on its surface, but dig a little deeper and The Magic Numbers reveals itself to be not just a crashing bore, but an irritating one.

It's that perfect balance of sadness, vitriol, and absurdity that makes Hitchcock (when he's on) such a legendary social commentator.

Things start to slow down toward the end of Progress, when Mark Owen, Howard Donald, Jason Orange, and Barlow get their own track to write--each revert to type, Barlow stultifyingly so on the sticky "Eight Letters"--but for seven tracks, Progress is the hippest and best music Take That has ever made.

Utilizing a pit band that includes percussion, melodica, pump organ, bassoon, cello, glockenspiel, tuba, and sousaphone, Regifted Light is largely instrumental, allowing listeners the pleasure of hearing Dee's artfully constructed melodies and arrangements, as well as her truly impressive ivory work, without the arguable distraction of her divisive, thespian-bred voice.

Cosmic Lieder isn't heavy or indulgent; it's deeply focused, curiously open-ended, and deeply satisfying.

While his technical acumen remains uncontested, the addition of blistering bluegrass singer/guitarist Michael Daves and notorious engineering luddite White into the mix has helped to temper Thile's signature refinements into something raw and primal.

The essence of the music might be simple but the band squeezes remarkable emotions from it. The new world order of psychedelia is here.

Purists may, of course, have their qualms, but it would be hard to deny the combination of reverence, proficiency, and sheer exuberance in evidence here -- indeed, it's difficult to imagine any serious limits of this band's appeal.

Libraries retains nearly everything that was memorable about the Love Language's debut as it improves on what McLamb accomplished before.

Quakers is the kind of album where favorite tracks change from listen to listen, and a testament to hip-hop's enduring power.

For a debut album, There Is a Bomb in Gilead sounds remarkably confident and assured.

Obey the Brave's no-nonsense approach, boundless energy and verve, and catharsis-cleansing rage make the songs on Young Blood crackle with the out-of-control power of both the hungriest up-and-comers and all the institutions of power metal that came before.

Ultimately, Where Do You Start is an intimate, impressionistic, and probing release that should certainly appeal to longtime fans of Mehldau's nuanced jazz style.

Free the Music is skilled and adventurous, never succumbing to pretension thanks to Niemann's game sense of humor.

The expert elastic roots rock of the Rumour gives his songs depth, making Three Chords Good the rare reunion that simultaneously looks back while living in the present

On Triple Beams' marriage of the Dead Milkmen's irreverence and Wire's brilliant, repetitive simplicity makes the album one that will definitely scratch the itch for any punk fan, and will make a quick fan out of anyone not already on board with Tyvek's grinding punk goodness.