Again, it's easy to name great songs that are missing, but what's here is sublime, some of the best rock & roll ever made, and the best overall Stones comp to date.

For all the progress and growth Del Rey shows in the vocal realm, her songwriting appears to be in stasis and the productions behind her have actually regressed from Born to Die.

Another fine example of how versatile this band actually is.

Though front-loaded with its most energetic and moving songs, Our House on the Hill is an intriguing statement from a band shedding their better-known affiliations for a whole new ideal.

It's hard to blame her for playing it safe, particularly because she wound up with such a strong pop album, one that reconfirms her gifts as a singer and savviness as a pop star.

Clearly, all the partying caught up to [Billie Joe Armstrong], but while he was racing recklessly, he cut this terrific little party record.

One Direction deliver another immediately catchy mix of dancey pop that maximizes the group's shared lead-vocal approach and peppy, upbeat image.

This is a surprisingly strong reunion, one that puts the band back on the track they abandoned long ago.

Artistic progress is as much about subtraction as it is about addition, and on III, Crystal Castles have made room to be sad, angry, pretty, and danceable at the same time.

There are points throughout these works where Tesfaye is distinctively gripping, supplying deadly hooks and somehow singing for his life despite the cold blood flowing through his veins.

While a lot of bands out there have been tinkering with the loud/quiet dynamic for decades now, what makes Deftones so special is their ability to do both at the same time, effectively blending the calm and the storm into a single sound.

There is great reward in actually focusing on what "happens" in this quiet landscape, because Lux betrays the implication of vastness and musical adventure just underneath its dulcet tones and restrained palettes.

The nine songs here represent her most ambitious and daring experiments yet, while retaining the considerately dreamy core that sets her work apart from any number of other soft-spoken spaceheads.

[A] completely respectable collections of tunes from a well-oiled machine, but falling short of the almost accidental brilliance of their best work.

A sophisticated pop pleasure from start to finish.

The combination of his [Mac McNeilly] careful, aggressive-when-needed playing and the core duo's performances makes this four-song collection a wonderful surprise.

This soundtrack stands tall in the man's wide-reaching discography, offering fans a Wu-flavored vision of a world where both the damned and cursed still swagger.

Macklemore's a mix of all of the above with some distinctive qualities, and with Lewis putting that kaleidoscope style underneath, The Heist winds up a rich combination of fresh and familiar.

The man behind the Gangsta Grillz mixtapes and the man literally behind T.I. and his Grand Hustle crew continues to do the improbable on his 2012 release Quality Street Music.

Psychedelic Pill [is] yet another oddity in a catalog filled with them: it's noise rock as comfort food.

Whether you want to label it post-rock, post-Krautrock, electro-rock, or some appellation of your own devising, Den does the Kreidler discography proud.

It finds Morgenstern honing her popcraft and scaling back her artier impulses to yield her most concise, song-oriented and--relatively speaking--immediate work to date.

All Time Low swallowed their pride, rededicated themselves, and ended up making the best record yet in a very consistently satisfying career.

The continuing work of Mika Vainio--especially given his longtime association with Touch for a variety of releases--has been at once reliable and sometimes quite surprising, with a certain restlessness that has served him well in his various explorations in sound. Fe3O4: Magnetite continues this.

Deer Creek Canyon is a work of modest genius that, like falling in love, manages to be simple and richly complex at the same time.

Though none of this will be particularly useful to anyone who isn't already familiar with the band (and if you're one of those people, run out and buy Oceanic and Panopticon right now), but for the initiated, Temporal makes for an essential and illuminating listen.

It's not uncommon for artists to lose a little of their music's heart when they upgrade their sonics, but The Inner Mansions is equally emotional and polished, and some of Teen Daze's finest work.

Unfortunately, on Top 10 Hits of the End of the World, PR were so involved with their campy concept, they neglected to write and record music capable of carrying its weight.