Ghost Notes is their most consistent--and consistently enjoyable--album yet.

Instrumentals 2015 feels like a successful reinvention after such a lengthy absence, but at the same time, it could've been beamed in at any point during FSA's existence, as its elemental, bare-basics construction isn't beholden to any trends, and therefore it feels timeless.

The majority of Ego Death is tighter. Bennett has refined her songwriting without reducing the candid approach that colors her past compositions. Additionally, the tangents are fewer and more substantive.

Low on drama but high on seemingly effortless jangle pop brilliance, Calling Out feels like a long-lost classic and an exciting discovery.

Magnifique doesn't show a ton of artistic growth or progression; it's more of a rebranding that tightly focuses on their strengths and passes them to the consumer like a sharp, swift punch to the brain and feet.

Any and all of the bands they draw influence from would be happy to add them to the noise club; if they keep making records as good as Distractions, they may end up ruling the club someday.

The album offers a fresh perspective on minimal techno, keeping things energetic and more than a little bit apprehensive.

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

Born in the Echoes is an excellent mash of familiar and vanguard, the very same formula that lifts all the duo's best albums above expectations.

This possible soundtrack takes a more abstract route while offering the same love and reverence, and it's also an almost-solo album from Lauryn Hill, the driving force behind six of the album's 16 tracks.

Their album is all thriller, zero filler.

The sound on Decency is truly an adventurous move for the group, and one that's paid off with possibly their best album to date.

All of Container's recordings are amazing, but this one is his most concentrated burst of energy yet, and it cements his status as one of the most exciting and inventive artists in the underground American electronic music scene, as well as one of the most successful in merging noise with techno.

It's kaleidoscopic but crisp.

These songs find the group's leader on more comfortable ground, and the tone of Star Wars is that of some good friends tossing ideas against the wall and discovering that a surprising number of them stick.

These performances mark the apotheosis of a creative journey that began at Newport two decades earlier.

The CD edition is especially nice--a fold-out cardboard package with sharp, true-to-the-era artwork for each disc. It tops the double-vinyl edition, a truncated and smart selection made by the Roots' Captain Kirk Douglas, released months earlier for Record Store Day.

Works for Tomorrow stands alongside their best albums.

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.

Throughout it all, co-founders, producers, and arrangers Ben Ellman and Robert Mercurio sonically map out a NOLA that's as vibrant and forward thinking as it is steeped in the region's rich culture, cementing the band's reputation (20 years in) as both innovators and stalwart defenders of tradition.

Sometimes suggesting a cross between Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade and Bruce Springsteen's The River, The Most Lamentable Tragedy is as big, smart, and heartfelt as either of those albums, and a striking example of what Titus Andronicus can achieve.

The notions of conflict, turmoil, and regret are certainly well-worn staples of the genre, but with Sturm und Drang Lamb of God have accrued a significant amount of experience in all three, and have distilled those concepts into pure unfiltered adrenaline.

An already impressive album that's quite an improvement over his previous effort and on par with the best chilly, spacy avant pop around in 2015.

This work leaves the debut, impressive as it was, in the dust.

Bittersweet is a strong, satisfying album from one of the best and most distinctive singer/songwriters of her day, and this confirms she can move in any number of different directions and still offer her listeners something remarkable.

Some of the most accessible and personal music of Hammond, Jr.'s career with or without the Strokes.

As a stage experiment, Watkins Family Hour has thrived for 13 years, and now with a fine record to document their efforts, they've hit on a format that could offer boundless possibilities for years to come.

Early Public Enemy was formatively innovative, but on this latter-day record PE explore and deepen that signature not unlike master jazzmen -- or the Stones, for that matter--and that's not only worthy of an album, it's groundbreaking in terms of hip-hop.