There are points throughout these works where Tesfaye is distinctively gripping, supplying deadly hooks and somehow singing for his life despite the cold blood flowing through his veins.

Still in the salad days, these songs are the sound of the band hitting the ground running. They hold up to any of Fugazi's more realized recordings, sounding fresh and--more importantly--urgent even 26 years later.

A full, concentrated album of ballads may seem startling even for die-hard fans, not just because the new full-on singer/songwriter mode is such a departure, but also because of how beautifully weary and evocative his songs tend to be when he allows a glimpse at his unplugged intimate side.

Jones covers a lot of musical ground on this album, and it's all of high quality, confirming his place as one of the top-tier American Primitive guitarists.

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

The Bats have managed to maintain a ridiculously high level of quality throughout their career, and Free All the Monsters is as good a record as they've ever made.

The love and fire on display here confirm what his best work has always shown -- he's not just a fine songwriter, he's a top-shelf musician who lives for this stuff, and it's a pleasure to hear him dig into this material.

This is a promising prelude to Solange's third proper album.

Madlib has formed a tighter frame around his productions than ever before.

In a sense, this is Built to Spill's pop album: every song is direct and clean, without the long, cerebral jamming that characterized their earlier albums.

Showing more than a trace of the bombast of Arm's Way, a couple of songs like 'Drums' and 'Shining' collapse under their own weight and are the only things that keep Vapours from being Islands' best work. Still, this is a welcome return to form for the band.

Adhering to the old-school MC/producer approach, Well-Done is a promising and cohesive affair which proves Bronson has the raw talent to match his much talked about appetite.

As with any patten release, it takes a few listens to wrap your head around what they're doing, but taking the effort to decode their work proves to be incredibly rewarding.

Easily Forma's most ambitious work to date, Physicalist is a winning expedition.

With Paradise Gardens, Dorval finds the strength to acknowledge darkness instead of feeling trapped by it, resulting in some of her most healing, self-empowering music.

A self-titled EP in 2011 yielded three lengthy songs of the duo's wild combination of airy atmospheres and menacing fuzz, but debut full-length Psychic moves into more compositional territory, though it remains drifty and narcotic in ways similar to its predecessor.

Based on the nuanced opacity of these lyrics and the artful moodiness of the music, the answer will likely remain an elusive puzzle for listeners to ponder. Thankfully, Manchester Orchestra have made an album well worth pondering over.

Technical precision and introspective lyrics mark this album as their most rap-centric project thus far, inspiring both concentrated head-nodding and the thrill of the rush as each emcee's verse impeccably weaves from one to another.

The music is clever and catchy enough to give it merit for repeated listens. Buy the DVD first to get the full story and then pick this up for road trip sing-alongs.

What the Dethroned half of this nearly 70-minute set reveals is that Jesu is still breaking new ground. Contrasted with Heart Ache, this new double EP is an excellent introductory portrait of the project, past and present.

Rain on the City lacks the consistency of Johnston's masterpiece, "Can You Fly," or its follow-up, "This Perfect World," but unlike the albums that followed, this collection is a beautiful example of Johnston playing to his strengths and reminding us why he's one of the best and most singular American songwriters at work today.

Despite the recycling, it's one of his most inventive and potent albums to date, full of aggression, euphoria, and hope--alongside the rage, indignation and bitterness--and powered by idealism, pride, honor, and some of his strongest jams yet.

Adjusting things just enough between tracks that they stay engaging without ever jarring the listener out of their cocoon of atmosphere, while deftly splitting the difference between the passiveness of purely ambient music and the active intellectualization required to fully absorb the skittering glitches of IDM.

This is a beautiful and loving tribute to one of jazz music's great tragic genuises.

Their music is always exciting, soulful, and expertly played; they never fall prey to world fusion clichés.

This is an album that can easily be enjoyed for the songs alone, so while you don't necessarily need to sit down with the liner notes (which include an accompanying story written Corey Taylor) to enjoy the album, it does add an extra layer of narrative action that reveals House of Gold & Bones to be an album of surprising depth.

Best Friends have arrived fully formed on their debut, ready to take their place among the best practitioners of noisy garagey pop around.

Those who still believe that rock & roll can and should make you move ought to put Under the Savage Sky on their playlists pronto; it's the raw real thing.