Simian Mobile Disco's debut is a dance record that shows a surprising amount of subtlety and flair.

He does his best job yet at balancing smarts and accessibility.

The Shepherd's Dog goes a long way towards validating all the attention I&W have been getting; it's their best, most diverse and listenable record yet as Beam and co. take another leap away from the lo-fi one dude in a bedroom beginnings of the group.

This album was well worth the wait and should win over some new fans and please the old ones too. Best of show.

Sojourner is an aptly titled monolith, one that invites fans of Magnolia Electric Co. with a "thank you for believing," even as it urges them to take in more of the picture than ever before.

This stands as a very good album by Keyshia Cole, also the point where Cole's voice grows from an occasionally powerful emotive device into a versatile instrument.

Civilians has as many stories attached as any record Henry's written, but they're so finely crafted now that the singer almost disappears in their flickering appearances on the wall of the mind of the listener.

In Rainbows will hopefully be remembered as Radiohead's most stimulating synthesis of accessible songs and abstract sounds, rather than their first pick-your-price download.

Night Falls Over Kortadela is witty, pretty, silly, and wise; and filled with instantly memorable melodies, thrilling moments of surprise in the arrangements, and laugh-out-loud lyrics.

There's a real fire to his writing here, turning Revival into a missive as immediate, effective, and telling as Neil Young's "Living with War."

It gets better with each listen, and stands so far outside the realm of anything her better-known peers are doing today that it's almost scary.

Play It as It Lays is, without doubt, the record where Scialfa gives us the full fruit of her exceptional gift as a writer, a singer, as an artist.

This is the kind of album you can live with and hear new things in with each listen, and proves that the album is an art form that still has plenty of life in it.

Pink is easily the most cohesive, adventurous, and straight-ahead rocking recording of their 12-year career.

It's an awesome thing, this album, and anyone, virtually anyone who encounters it will be in some way moved by the impure music it contains.

It can be inaccessible and terrifying all at once, but in a genre overly saturated with formulaic groups, Ire Works is a true standout.

If you can appreciate the style of dubstep employed by Burial, it's easy to fall head over heels for Untrue, an album on which there are absolutely no mainstream-crossover concessions, no ego trips, and no willful stylistic variation--an album where the music, a singular style of it, takes center stage with no distractions or sideshows, where there's never the urge to skip to the next track, because they're all part and parcel of the greater whole.

We All Belong is a little bit cleaner and dressed a little bit nicer than "Easy Beat," but the rustic appeal of the music still comes through loud and clear.

Alone will stand as an idiosyncratic gem in his catalog, showcasing him at his eccentric best.

The newly varied arrangements, moods, and textures of this album, from the mournful piano-led cover of the Kinks' 'I Go to Sleep' through the horn-based R&B swing of 'Electric Bird' to the sarcastic bounce of 'The Girl You Lost to Cocaine,' make Some People Have Real Problems Sia's most engrossing and satisfying album yet.

DYLRM should be a mess, but the band has crafted a wintry, nuanced, and bold collection of epic songs that integrate the sweeping theatricality of Arcade Fire-era indie rock without all of the insularity.

Less than three weeks into 2008 it's hard not to escape the feeling that with this disc we may already have the best album of the year.

Really though, just about any song could be singled out for praise. It's that strong of an album, strong enough to satisfy a desire for tattered glamour, for dramatic, inspired and powerful guitar rock that kind that only maybe the Bad Seeds at their best could once conjure up.

This should have been the album where the Mars Volta either wore the formula down to nothing or abruptly turned in a different direction, but instead the band created an album that nearly perfects what they've been working toward.

Fully realized debut albums like Vampire Weekend come along once in a great while, and these songs show that this band is smart, but not too smart for their own good.

Crow hasn't been this free or fine since "Sheryl Crow," but there is an emotional directness on Detours that makes this a progression, not a retreat.

So even when Lucky tries to turn down the glow, it still radiates with the oomph of a solid power pop release, making Nada Surf's fifth album a fine finale for a weekend well-spent.

It's a consolidation of Mould's considerable strengths, an album that showcases his gifts as a writer and record-maker, one that touches upon almost every phase of his career, yet it's filtered through a maturity that feels vital because of its unadorned honesty.