Swift's gentle touch is as enduring as her songcraft, and this musical maturity may not quite jibe with her age but it does help make Fearless one of the best mainstream pop albums of 2008.

For its lack of rush-inducing highs and novel sounds, the album is immensely pleasurable, with fleet keyboard vamps and percussive effects that stab and flick ricocheting off pliant, bounding basslines.

Taken together, they position Love Is All as one of the best post-punk revivalist groups, and arguably the equal of their influences. Whether you stand behind that statement or not, A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night is as good as indie rock gets in the late 2000s.

Compare 'Here Comes The' with 'Vessels,' a breakup tune that eschews inconsolability for bright key changes and high anthemic vocals, and you get the full spectrum of Walker's songwriting ability, which is as razor-sharp in 2008 as it ever has been.

What makes Soul an overall success isn't just Seal's caressing vocals and obvious knowledge of how to interpret these songs faithfully without drifting away; it's the subtle yet effective production work of 15-time Grammy-winning producer David Foster.

The craft of Our Bright Future is impressive and Chapman's talents are as clearly evident as ever, but unfortunately this album offers precious little in the way of anything fresh or unexpected from this artist.

That's a lot of repetition but whether it's taken in either its single-disc or double-disc deluxe editions, The Sound of the Smiths is the best of these posthumous overviews.

Trying Hartz is a far more inclusive, pure and honest testament to faith than the soulless, over-produced fast food that passes for contemporary gospel in the 21st century.

Lesser producers would ride out these tracks for eight or nine minutes, rather than the six-minute average here; this producer keeps things tight and ever-developing, never straying into formlessness.

In that regard, this self-titled effort is often a tribute rather than a new way forward, but Reinhardt's work is nonetheless very enjoyable, a way to regather these various strands from any number of limiting genre associations and reuse them in a new fashion.

Apart from a couple fumbles, By-the-Numbers turns out to be a successfully executed concept and a very pleasant listen.

Ode isn't quite as strong song-wise as "The Boy" but it makes up for the difference with its deepened palette--again, this palette may not be as rich as some of their peers, but compared to Travis' other work of the past decade, this is richer and livelier as sheer sonics go.

His long-awaited return on The Renaissance is no disappointment, offering more of the same understated, aqueous grooves and fluid rapping that the Abstract Poetic has built his peerless career on.

These ventures into pure '80s shred go a long way to illustrating just how versatile a guitarist Brad Paisley is, and they wind up as accidental autobiography, revealing a side he's previously camouflaged--but now that it's surfaced, it's easy to see why his albums are always among the most adventurous and best country music of this decade.

A laid-back and easy to digest album with no grand statements to absorb or deeper meanings to dig for, it's made up of simple songs recorded simply and sung sweetly.

The repetition hammers home Hinder's stultifying lack of imagination and even that would be excusable if the group had a scintilla of sleaze but like anybody too beholden to their idols, they tread the familiar ground too carefully, winding up as bland by-the-book bad boys.

In its own way, the Wild Beasts' volatile flamboyance is more difficult to embrace than an overtly dissonant experimental band's music, but that's just another way that this group sets itself apart from the rest of the pack--and there's something very liberating about that, even if it's baffling at times.

Galore the band isn't as distinctive as its influences, and many of the album's songs are so polished and streamlined that there's little chance for Dragonette's personality to shine through. However, their more adventurous side surfaces on the album's second half.

An ambitious exercise of restraint, it's a lumbering beast that's minimal but still feels expansive. Epic, even.

Berlin was a work of tremendous ambition that didn't quite live up to its own high standards, and this live recording seems to trade a roughly equal number of new flaws for those of the original album, but this performance sounds like a legitimate attempt by Reed to revisit his past without being shackled to it, and on that level it's a brave and compelling experiment that (often) works.

Beautiful, thoughtful, and sad on a grand scale, Fordlandia is nearly as ambitious as the stories it tells, but unlike its source material, it's another success for Jóhannsson.

Silence Is Wild is a solid step forward for Frida Hyvönen and a record to check out if you like singer/songwriters with a unique approach to be singing and songwriting.

Surfing definitely won't end up on many end-of-year lists, but it's easygoing where "Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon" was often self-serious, and overall a pleasant diversion for Banhart fans.

Adamson's heady blend of Odelay-era Beck, Roky Erickson paranoia, cosmic hip-hop, and general Animal Collective weirdness sounds like a train wreck in print, but his knack for odd melodies, stealthy programming, timely pitch-shifting, and macabre (and occasionally hysterical) subject matter helps to keep things consistently interesting throughout Ropechain's easily digestible 45-minute runtime.

Fans of esoteric underground rap should take notice. Worth investigating.

Season of Poison is bound to please fans of goth metal and electro-laced rock, and the gorgeous 'Frozen Oceans' appealingly finishes the album with lush balladry. Even so, this seems like a slight stumble after "We Are Pilots'" strong start, although Shiny Toy Guns have yet to lose their momentum.

At times, Intimacy feels rushed and predictable, and at others, it's almost painfully ambitious.

Certainly, it's not the embarrassment of the live album, but it has its own internal logic that keeps it humming along, and that's good enough for a listen and to get the band out on tour again, even it's not good enough for a second spin.