Sonic Youth's freedom to follow their bliss is what holds The Eternal together; just as paradoxically, the changes they make on this album not only bring excitement to their music, they reaffirm just how consistently good the band has been--and continues to be--over the years.

While it's hard not to wish there were a surprise or two along the way, the familiar warmth certainly has its charms, too.

Most of this stuff is just too damn weird for all but the most experimental music listener.

Like all Ron Sexsmith albums, Time Being is reliable and expertly crafted, and contains a handful of cuts that will kick around in your head until the next one swoops in to replace them.

Dedicated to Bobby Jameson is a weird, catchy, thought-provoking celebration of individuality that offers one Pink's most appealing balances of sugary accessibility and irreverent indulgence.

Even if listeners lack that namesake self-assurance that the band seem to care so much about, by the end of Confident Music for Confident People, they might believe they can achieve anything with this album as their effortlessly cool soundtrack.

Loverly is the only reason to avoid imposing a moratorium on the very tired standards genre that has become the bane of jazz in recent years. It cannot be recommended highly enough.

Rock and Roll Night Club is a confusing record, but not a mess. On the contrary, it's so deeply calculated that the intentions and possible motivations of its songs are likely to be lost on most.

Presenting raw emotion and over-the-top braggadocio with such exacting balance is part of IDK's talent, and he delivers on USEE4YOURSELF like never before.

Sunrise Bang Ur Head Against tha Wall, her first major-label release, is a more accessible refinement of her already fully formed aesthetic.

By focusing less on quotidian (i.e., boring) experiences of the proletariat and more on less-tangible allusions to death, troubled romance, and loneliness, Wagner's music is simply more approachable and meaningful, if still hard to puzzle out in its specific intent.

In the main, the purpose is bedroom listening, though the tone is so bright that daytime play seems most suitable. The lyrics are packed with metaphors, yet they are expressed in a heartrending and inviting manner.

While its seeming contradictions make it a slightly more challenging listen than Shamir was, Heterosexuality acknowledges how complicated just existing can be with the wit, creativity, and unguarded emotions that have been a vital part of Shamir's music since the beginning.

Ambitious in its reach, Remedy keeps close to the ground in in its inspiration and execution.

Seventeen years old and already turning the heads of critics, producers, and session musicians alike, Sarah Jarosz is not only a jaw-dropping talent but a multidimensional one, as well.

With The Velvet Trail, Braide, with his consummate skill and sensitive brilliance combines Almond's theatrical and lyric personas with the emotional honesty in the grain of his voice. As a result, his lyric creativity, at once direct, defiant, vulnerable, and deliberately excessive, is out of the mothballs and back out where it belongs: front and center.

If Only There Was a River rewards return listens with a deepening flow of new revelations and curiosities, as the power of the songs grows more apparent with each spin.

Not many musical acts reach their 40th anniversaries and fewer still make music worthy of their legacies, but with The World Is to Dig, They Might Be Giants remain wonderfully different.

A debut album that could pass for a greatest-hits collection, Days Are Gone will provide musical comfort food for some, and possibly an introduction to irony-free pop for others.

While Numan's work remains strictly sulky stuff destined to ruin any party, he proves he's not a robot at all on his most connectable, personal, and palpable album to date.

Its flame flickers at best, and the feeling of deja vu that pervades the album means that Los Campesinos! need to change something before they hit the studio again, or the next record will be an even more faded copy of their glorious early days.

With Paradise, White Lung have ultimately crafted an album of hooky, infectious songs that still retain all the rage and D.I.Y. punk creativity of their previous work.

The release seems like a major personal achievement and he deserves to be proud of it, but there isn't anything here that matches the best tracks on his first two albums.

Smart guy that he is, Rubin doesn't eliminate surging melodrama from Groban's bag of tricks but he does limit and mute the palette, making sure the strings don't soar so high and that the singer doesn't bellow.

At the Crossroads delivers what its title promises: a portrait of the Organ Trio at the point where they look back at B-3 jazz history and move it ever forward.

Sermon on the Rocks is an album where Josh Ritter allows himself to have some fun while showing that his skills as a songwriter have emerged unscathed after his divorce, and it suggests that his future is as bright as ever.

While the Frkwys series is known for its (mostly) consistent excellence, this volume is a clear standout within it.

With its environmental sound and complementary lyrics, Mowing seems to encourage daydreaming, even verbally acknowledging a return to reality when airport noise invades the closing track. Regrettably, hammock not included.