Both Ways... fuses folk, indie rock, electronica, and avant-garde pop with unusual percussion including bottle tops, plants, and saucepans.

Take a couple listens, let it sink in, and then discover that Cole World is one hell of a debut.

Fear of the Dawn isn't often a pleasant listen, but it wasn't meant to be: it's a dark adventure, an album designed to provoke and stoke fears, not to soothe them.

True North shows flashes of their earlier work, and is a step up from their last album, 2010's The Dissent of Man, in terms of aggression.

Whether the album seems ridiculous or spectacular (or both), Rihanna's complete immersion in the majority of the songs cannot be disputed. That is the one thing that is not up for debate.

This beguiling little album is another feather in DeMarco's baseball cap, and will live on in his growing catalog, but you might want to head over to Queens for that cup of coffee before it's too late.

Satisfaction enough for those who kept Mezzanine near their stereo for years on end, but a disappointment to those expecting another masterpiece.

Each of these compositions reveals not only an imaginative use of trace musical elements, but also a maturing sense of how to arrange them.

While obviously talented and often inspired, it is unclear if the Bad Plus are avant-garde enough to appeal to hardcore jazz fans, or pop-oriented enough to grab the attention of rock listeners.

Shaddix's woes connect directly to a large and equally confused audience, and that nobody this side of Kurt Cobain communicates them with as much power.

This time out, Eitzel has built his arrangements around spare keyboard lines, atmospheric electronic samples, and percussion loops that blend with his voice and acoustic guitar to create an effect that suggest a more spare, organic version of Portishead, or a Jon Brion production that's stuck in a blue funk. But the new surroundings suit the songs quite well...

With Molé, Jourgensen has mobilized the fatalism and fury that always rumbled through industrial and thrash music, and left everything else in the staging area.

The Photo Album does not quite meet the standard set by 2000's stellar We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes on a song-for-song level, but it's still a moving and intelligent collection of wistful pop.

Muse have really done it this time.

It lays down incontrovertible proof that Sondre Lerche can make a convincing and exciting straight-ahead modern rock record.

As an album, Orchestrion is as ambitious as "Secret Story and The Way Up," but it is no less brilliant. Here Metheny exceeds our expectations, and perhaps even his own.

The result is a globe-trotting pop album that sounds like nothing he's attempted before, yet still retains enough of his signature arrangements to make Rouse’s multi-ethnic transformation a believable one.

Robyn Hitchcock doesn't really make bad albums, but he doesn't always make legitimately great ones; Propellor Time thankfully feels like one of the high-watermarks of his post-millennial body of work, and it's beautiful, essential listening.

No doubt, Diddy injects so much of his unfiltered self into the album that no hater can be swayed, but it's his unique attitude that makes Last Train such a delight.

The band's sophomore debut tempts fate with a nearly 30-second fade-in (you may think you have a defective disc on your hands, but wait for it), then takes off into a crazy welter of power ballad, electro-glitch, dubstep, atonal, acoustic-based, waltz-funk weirdness that occasionally gets tiring but rarely stops being interesting.

Throughout it all, Rimes hits her marks with ease, and the new version of her breakthrough hit "Blue" illustrates just how far she's come--how she's become a stronger, more nuanced singer over the years.

The Kid's voice has aged, lowered, and mellowed, but otherwise you'd think this witty genre-spanning, time-jumping collection of tropical kitsch and too-cool nostalgia came from the group's golden era.

Wright sounds terrific, navigating through the upbeat, attitudinal jams and slower, romantic cuts with finesse and strength.

It all adds up to a beautifully redemptive album, one of Bibb's best.

Evans the Death is a stunning debut that may not change the way you think about indie rock, but the band plays with so much passion and the songs are so good, it doesn't matter that maybe you've heard it (in some form) before.

On Christian aTunde ADJuah, Scott and company create a seamless, holistic 21st century jazz that confidently points toward new harmonic horizons.

While longtime fans might be a bit perplexed by the shift, they will find plenty of familiar ground to cling to as the record plays and the smartly written and tear-filled songs follow one after another.

The Blue Room is a brave experiment, but one that pays off handsomely.