This focus on ambience really makes Sky Burial feel like it exists in a very specific, and very secluded, space, and while you probably wouldn't want to live there, it's amazing to visit.

New Dawn is a powerful work from a celebrated artist who has never stopped exploring new territory.

Even more than any music that came before it, this album highlights Rosali's unique voice, one that communicates full-hearted intensity without ever resorting to heavy-handedness or overstatement.

While that may disappoint some waiting for a masterpiece, there's no shame in mining the same ground as long as they make records as tight and tuneful as this.

The forceful sound of Girl Going Nowhere may camouflage the subtleties of her songwriting, but it's also an asset, as the production, along with her powerhouse voice, demand attention.

His hardcore following will no doubt celebrate it abundantly. Given its willful indulgence, however, others may find it a tipping point in the other direction.

Part experimental rock, part electronica, and part hip-hop, Subtle's For Hero: For Fool is a complex, innovative, sometimes bizarre, and usually utterly confusing journey into the minds of lyricist Doseone and his five bandmates.

Though some of the songs here, especially the earlier ones, can be quite simple, even raw at times, there's a sad, clean sweetness that comes through despite the occasional bit of tape hiss, of tinny chords.

Juxx seems to have benefited from Sean Price's mentoring as he works a perfectly cadenced flow and manages to maintain a high energy level throughout the LP. Still, the most exciting moments on The Exxecution come when Juxx's Duck Down elders stop by.

An immediately engaging debut, Seasons of My Soul has the potential to repeat the crossover success of Norah Jones' Come Away with Me and Amy Winehouse's Back to Black, its unquestionable authenticity signaling the arrival of an equally timeless and unaffected voice.

It is interesting to look at the epic, ambitious group by their attempts to cross over, and while not all singles were as worthy as the album cuts, this alternative view has some massive high points.

A wild work of twisted genius and more fun than rabies, that's for sure.

Chris Cornell is a reverential capstone that charts the tortured artist's highs and lows, providing an ideal first step for anyone wishing to dive deeper into the impressive catalog of one of rock's loudest and most emotive voices.

Patience provides the most inspired-sounding one yet. It's just more proof that despite not being the flavor of the month anymore, Sondre Lerche is quietly releasing some of the best and most interesting pop music of his era.

MESTIZX is unlike any other album. It is where the historic cultural past meets present-day conflict and jingoism. Undaunted, this duo chart a direction and unfettered hope for the future, holism, and acceptance.

Assured 11-song set.

Five albums into an already sterling career, Tempest has made no real missteps, keeping his catalog consistently interesting, emotionally engaging, and, above all, incisive.

The Drift isn't an equally severe leap from Tilt [as Tilt was from Climate of Hunter], but it is darker, less arranged, alternately more and less dense, and ultimately more frightening.

Horseback makes extreme underground music from the mysterious South; this compilation is the indisputable proof.

There's a bold stroke of genial Southerness that runs through the music and keeps things tempered, honest, and effortlessly authentic, despite a predilection for eccentricity.

With greater emotional depth and sonic clarity than her past recordings, Working Class Woman is an exciting breakthrough for Davidson.

It's an exciting album that comes on with such subtlety it's easy to miss how immaculately constructed it is the first several times through.

Like a folky, more rough-hewn Blossom Dearie, Sternberg's quavering voice will not please everyone and their musical palette is delightfully out of step with the times, but their candor and warmth of character are universal.

Here's to Thackray seeing a payoff beyond this brilliant and enriching work of art.

Attempted Martyr is a brilliantly brutal debut, one that leaves listeners nearly exhausted when it ends, only because of its nonstop outpouring of magnificent noise.

With Happy Songs for Happy People, Mogwai gets to have it both ways -- it's ironic and sincere, concise and expansive, challenging and accessible, and it's one of the band's best albums, no two ways about it.

This is one of the best rock & roll albums of 2003, and truly the finest, most cohesive work he did after London Calling.

It is the combination of street tales, social criticism, and self-awareness that made him a unique artist, for whom the term gangster rap truly does not do justice.