It's that line between accessible and alienating that MellowHype have so brilliantly walked, making Numbers an engaging album from some of Odd Future's best and brightest.

Despite a few tracks that should have stayed unreleased, Daughter of Cloud succeeds by showing the most extreme versions of several different sides of Of Montreal, from their most intense and suffocating to their most uncommonly tender.

Scorpion isn't an album for the good times, but its portrayal of dark days is gorgeous.

It's a sonic monument to marvel at, not a piece of art that's asking for your engagement.

Unknown Rooms is spare, gorgeous, and haunting, offering surprises for her established fans and likely winning her new ones in the process.

Months after scores of music fans went bananas over an opportunistic resuscitation of a deceased peer's studio scraps, Brandy, a superior vocalist ignored or disregarded by many of those same people, released one of her best albums.

Certainly, Night Train is huge, but its size feels derived by divine proclamation: it is big simply because it was intended to be big but at its core it feels weary, a little hollow, and not at all fun.

What's delivered is another robust collection of business as usual, with the surprising diversions adding just enough dimension to the album to even it out.

With Monster, Kiss hit the mark best when rewriting the sound they developed as youngsters and when they keep it simple, predictable, and fun.

Johnson doesn't attempt to draw attention to himself, but instead, presents a series of excellent performances of Cochran's songs with himself as an anchor.

Fans of the deep-friend earth tones that made up the group's earlier works may not be completely sold on the hi-definition beats and growly synth tones of Cobra Juicy, but newcomers to the band will still have a lot to digest and enjoy in trying to sort out the catchiness from the craziness.

It is a compelling, engaging, and emotionally powerful set of songs from a strikingly talented singer and songwriter, and this is her most intimate and affecting work to date.

DeMarco is still a befuddling character, but the compressed landscape of 2 takes steps away from his cartoonish beginnings toward something equally strange, but possibly more grown up.

Dept. of Disappearance shows that far from vanishing, Lytle is making a claim to be one of the more interesting and consistent singer/songwriters around; willing to take sonic chances, but always delivering music that's as much about feel as it is about meaning.

While it's odd that The Origin of Love doesn't work as well in practice as it might have in theory, it still has enough bright moments to please most fans.

Long a master of obfuscation, Fagen plays it straight on Sunken Condos, tightening his songwriting and letting his music swing, and the results are an absolute joy.

Fortunately, adding more shape to their songs doesn't pin down their sounds too much.

Out of the Black works either on the dancefloor or at the workstation, offering beat nuts from the Front 242 generation to the Deadmau5 kids their deep, dark, and delicious fix.

At their best, Daphni and Jiaolong definitely have a vitality that some dance music--and even some of Snaith's other work--lacks, but its hyper-simple approach actually makes it more challenging to appreciate than something with a few more flourishes might have been.

For a guy whose 40th year as a solo artist is appearing on the horizon, he's sounding as full of ideas and energy as a guy half his age, and Mystic Pinball confirms he's still delivering the goods in an impressive fashion.

For enthusiasts or obsessive fans, this unpolished look in will be a treat, but for everyone else, the album is not without its highlights but little more than a glorified practice tape.

With all its clean-cut melodies and smirky introspection, even Death Cab fans might have a hard time finding Former Lives more than a collection of melancholy, whimsical tunes.

A Different Arrangement might not be the kind of album that one could cozy up to on a sunny summer day, but on a cold, wintery night it just might be the kind of sound you want to hear as you burrow under the blankets.

In some ways, The Connection is perhaps the band's most contemporary-sounding album, though it still remains reverent to the nu-metal sound of the late '90s when it comes down to the overall feel of each tune.

While the duo might still be learning how to balance all the things they can do well into a cohesive whole, ERAAS' whispers and shadows offer a different and welcome take on dark sounds.

It's hard to complain when the results are this stunning.

Bootlegs may not be essential Sondre Lerche, but it's a thrilling document of his live set and a reminder that he's not just a brilliant songwriter, but a rocker too.

The Afterman: Ascension is so ambitious it's actually a bit of a mess, but with so much here that works, this small lapse in focus can easily be forgiven.