At its best, Seeds is a fine tribute to Smith and the sound of enduring unimaginable loss.

The group really did a fine job of crafting something low-key and gloomy here.

This is a modern classical work that, while haunting and beautiful, bears the enduring weight of witness to the madness of a war that was to end all wars yet, as catastrophic and senseless as this shared massacre was, the long shadow of its historical implications remain.

Naturally, what is first alluring about Avonmore is its feel--it's meant to be seductive--but the songs are what makes this record something more than a fling.

The upbeat "Motors Runnin" is a standout, addressing the endless and unpredictable ride of being alive while summing up the restless wonder, excitement, and confusion that lie at the core of the album and find a different voicing from song to song.

Despite a radical switch from digital to analog gear, the album is as bleak and as bracing as Luxury Problems.

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

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.

Casual listeners may find this to merely be a pleasant and inviting ambient work, but a lot of love went into these nine pieces and repeated spins will reveal great depth and many layers to get lost in.

Dear Youth does an awfully nice job of explaining why the Ghost Inside elicit such devotion. There's no posturing here, just peers trying to work things out the only way they know how: through unmitigated volume.

Sea Island feels like an evolution of the sounds and ideas he explored on his previous full-length, 2012's excellent Sketches from New Brighton, and the short-form releases that followed it, the piano-driven Intervalo and his split EP with the British ambient group Fieldhead.

This is most easily recommended to casual fans and folks looking for an introduction to the group's music.

While No One Was Looking confirms plenty of folks heard fascinating things in the music Bloodshot has brought to the marketplace, it's a great listen that's full of fine surprises and passionate music.

Every song has a brilliantly shiny chorus, chord changes that inspire deep nostalgic feels, and a snappy, tough-minded lyrical outlook that fit the era and still sounds right in 2014.

It can be heard both as a portrait of Allen's career as Afrobeat's bannerman rhythmnatist or--perhaps more accurately--the soundtrack to his own musical innovation and evolution through it. Either way it's a stone killer.

By the time Wheeler reaches a place of acceptance, the listener has as well, and while both parties may be a bit ragged, they're both better for the experience.

Darkness has been a frequent companion on She Keeps Bees' earlier releases, but most of Eight Houses seems to take it a step further, verging between sad and threatening, yet ultimately powerful.

The wonderfully weird "Vegas" from Bad Meets Evil (Eminem and Royce Da 5'9) makes one wish the Shady label boss would find more time for the project, but he's already quite stretched behind the scenes, producing or co-producing eight of the cuts on disc one, including Skylar Grey's "Twisted," which isn't hip-hop, but glittery and goth giganto-pop. Great, grand, risky, and clever moments like this make Shady XV the worthy celebratory object that it is, but don't expect a deep roster or a cohesive game plan, because the label has always been more about close friends and family.

The London Sessions just happens to have her best round of songs, productions, and performances since The Breakthrough.

The alternates of songs that were on the albums are interesting but not revelatory, but hearing these early versions of songs that appeared on later albums is pretty fascinating.

It may be no different than what came before, but Rock or Bust is by many measures stronger than most latter-day AC/DC albums, serving as a testament to why their good-humored raunch and industrial-strength riffs made them a rock & roll institution.

Don't call it a comeback, call it a collective, or a compilation from solo artists who sound enthused to be back with an especially inspired RZA as ringleader.

Like the best of any collections of covers, Other People's Songs offers a completely unexpected perspective and at the same time makes us want to revisit the original versions and investigate the differences.

Dark, beautiful, and deft, Natural Selection should only be played at night, but it should be played on most nights, and maybe on some rainy, especially hazy afternoons.

At its best, Chubbed Up plays like a withering exit interview from pop culture; taken with Austerity Dogs and Divide and Exit, it shows Sleaford Mods' music is becoming more vital with each release.

Classics is meant to be pure entertainment and even though most of these songs have been sung before by a variety of other artists, in the hands of She & Him, it comes off less like a novelty and instead sits very comfortably in their growing catalog of fine releases.

The breadth impresses and it resonates stronger because he's funneled all these sounds and textures into a tight nine-song album that lasts barely over a half-hour. For an artist who has fervently believed more is indeed more, this restraint is thoroughly appealing and helps showcase his craft in surprising--and, yes, sometimes dazzling--ways.

It's tough stuff but it's also enthusiastic, infectious fun, a record of three-minute songs that blazes by in just over a half-hour.