Remy's greatest gift has always been her unique ability to dismantle and reassemble the pop form in a single song, and Gem is the most vivid document of that gift yet.

While Payback's status as a concept album makes it a rarity in the hip-hop world, even rarer for that realm is an album that's more focused on a continued narrative than creating a breakout single, making the album something that's to be experienced in its entirety.

On their fifth album, One Wing, the Chariot avoid the pitfalls that have caught up many a band, striking just the right balance between technique and raw fury to create a sound that is both emotionally and intellectually satisfying.

Everything Touching is far more direct, less convoluted, often shamelessly anthemic.

Rogers' guttural growls sound more menacing than ever, and what the album lacks in originality it makes up for with feverishly inventive riffs and melodies, making The Parallax II: Future Sequence the band's most inspired release since Alaska.

Ultimately, while Vital is Anberlin's most challenging album to date, as the title implies, it is perhaps the band's most rewarding album.

A promising debut and one more considered, nuanced, and realized than most bands achieve deep into their tenures.

With a sound this strong, Miglis could quite conceivably have gotten by with a series of random abstractions, but in fact her lyrics show a strong poetic sense that enhances Hundred Waters' promising maiden voyage even further.

Nothing on the album truly startles or surprises, its sources are clear, and its impact song for song is the kind of satisfying fix one might expect from labels like m_nus and Kompakt as much as Ostgut Ton itself. Where things stand out are in the smaller details.

At 15 tracks, it's a bit too full for newcomers to take in one go, but by mixing the strongest bits of their early days (song structure, smoky attitude) and their later years (technically gifted musicians who form a tight, but swinging band) the Herbaliser return to greatness and no fan should sit this one out.

Though having an entertaining show backing it up will make Dethalbum III an easy purchase for fans of the program, it's an album good enough to stand all on its own.

Traveler reveals that with its four brand-new songs and revisioned versions of live staples, Anastasio's creative force is healthy and his taste is, as ever, impeccable.

Even though Information Retrieved is an excellent album, it won't do a whole lot to win over anyone who has already decided that Pinback isn't for them. For everyone else, the album delivers plenty of the gloomy/sunny/plaintive/happy pop that has made them one of the more instantly recognizable bands in the indie landscape.

This may or may not be Williams' final album but if it is, it serves as a superb coda to a career that always found deep meaning in ease.

The three songs for The Ganzfeld EP manage to go all over the map in under half-an-hour.

The pristine sound is easy on the ear and easily appreciated. That said, it can sometimes detract from more organic surprises inherently written into these songs.

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.