Ultimately, in I Was a Cat from a Book, Yorkston has delivered a measured, wise, and life-affirming record, which has the power to inspire.

Solid, purposeful, and crafted in a manner that betrays both Drew's age and the album's hurried road to release, Ill Manors makes heavy-hitter number three for the rapper, suggesting that Plan B doesn't issue albums, just milestones.

It builds nicely upon The Heavy's previous work and should please fans of the band's quirky take on rootsy soul-influenced music.

With just a few exceptions, The Midsummer Station's would-be mainstream anthems of youth, love, and longing come off generic, hollow, and barely enjoyable.

A surprisingly compact album, Tracer covers a lot of musical ground in under 40 minutes, and on the whole it feels like a love letter to electronica's formative days (or like an album they might have sampled from in the past).

It is the most organic record he's issued in almost two decades; and, more importantly, it restores topical protest music to a bona fide place in American cultural life.

When they're on a roll, Guantanamo Baywatch deliver some ripping surf tunes, and they clearly know how to deliver a good time with a beat you can dance to, but Chest Crawl is never quite as exciting as it wants to be, and the flat, confined sound of the audio doesn't help one bit.

The bulk of Made in Germany is undoubtedly still an acquired taste, but as an overview of the country's biggest rock export, it's a fairly representative collection and showcases them at their best.

His sound was a forward-thinking and richly engaging blend of African roots music, the makossa (urban popular music) of his native Cameroon, and the then-emerging electronic music movement.

Suffice to say that In the Lair of the Sun God delivers from start to finish, and can't even be marred by Dawnbringer main man Chris Black's strained singing, which falls somewhere between Lemmy, Slough Feg's Mike Scalzi, and frequent collaborator Blake Judd of Nachtmystium, but fits right in with his band's lo-fi aesthetic.

What's charming about this album, beyond the sheer quality of the songs and the arrangements, is Pizzarelli's obvious and genuine love for this really broad gamut of material, and his insight into the varied qualities that make them all great songs.

Foxygen has made something that reaches out for so many possibilities it ends up reverting inward, ultimately sounding insular, like a highway of endlessly firing synapses in someone elses' brain.

Billy Joe Shaver is one of a kind, and this set proves it; it makes an excellent introduction for anyone not familiar with his singular talent.

This does have the familiar tunes, so it serves its purpose.

An unusually satisfying tribute album.

He's equally adept at almost any kind of music.

One of his most accomplished efforts since his Chess/Impulse! heyday.

There aren't really any new rules on this album, just old-school honky tonk dressed up in shiny new boots.

Rather than offer anything new, they instead focus on re-introducing the band as a creative unit whose capacity for musical excellence is undiminished.

A truly engaging listen, Tree Bursts in Snow should see the band build on their unexpected transatlantic exposure.

White Lung make their case as one of the best bands of their kind anywhere with Sorry, picking up where they left off two years ago almost seamlessly while innovating just enough to ready them for a larger stage.

Some of the songs are restrained and bare to the point of being plain and easy to disregard, but they succeed in accentuating La Havas' thoughtful and often sharp words.

Instinct is a vivid and varied debut, and ultimately a more rewarding listen than if Niki and the Dove had just explored one facet of their sound.

Not only is it their best-sounding album yet, totally alive and raw, but it contains some of the hookiest songs and most thrilling performances of their almost-35-year career in rock & roll.

This "less is more" approach shows off the wealth of songwriting these two have cultivated in their other projects, and makes Criminal Heaven a beautifully blissful debut that is warm, comforting, and typically Swedish in the best way possible.

The Riverboat Gamblers have shown they can evolve without losing the plot, and if The Wolf You Feed isn't their best album, it's smart, ambitious, and rocks with authority, sounding fresh and exciting in ways you might not have expected.

It lives up to the title and provides an enjoyable contrast to the darker moods earlier in the album.