Aesop sounds stronger and sure after taking this journey, making Skelethon his most rewarding effort to date.

Like an actual confession, this album is equally bold and vulnerable, and all the more real and appealing because of that.

Mission of Burma follow no rules other than following their collective vision wherever it leads, and their musical wanderlust has resulted in one of the most exciting and eye-opening albums they've made to date.

It's a light, breezy affair that seems to take its title quite literally.

While anyone hoping for more of the same old Fear Factory will find a lot to love about The Industrialist, those who have been hoping for something different might find that the album isn't quite what they were looking for.

[Invisible Stars is] a looser, livelier record than Welcome to the Drama Club.

Royal Thunder ultimately sound like no one but themselves.

Gone is a consistently engaging listen.

Spirit Fiction is a confident next step for the saxophonist; its execution and ambition offer a glance at where he's been, but more importantly, a solid look at where he's going.

Landline is cloying, full of soon-to-be-dated production tricks, drab, mediocre songs.

This borders on sorcery.

Rooster Rag doesn't stray too far from the path; it stays right on track, is relatively lean, and amply illustrates all of Little Feat's enduring charms.

Musically and lyrically, it is likely to be among her most enduring recordings.

Despite all the outside input, this is Diplo's show.

It's gimmicky, lightweight, and best taken in small chunks, but get a glitter-friendly crowd together and it gets the party started, succeeding at its one and only goal.

With Gold Motel the bandmembers are wiser, but never weary, simultaneously expanding their sound around their new world-view and fitting it within the candy-pop shell they've crafted so well.

It all adds up to an exhilarating and at times revelatory mash-up of wildly varied flavors, like a really excellent fruit salad.

While some listeners might find the Projectors' rather knowing idiosyncracy off-putting and smug, there are songs here that suggest the band has finally found the formula that finely balances its well-meaning musical intellectualism with actual pop songs.

Jackson may have been cast in the eternal sideman role in Belle & Sebastian, but (I Can't Get No) Stevie Jackson shows without a doubt that he is a pop craftsman in his own right.

Some of the productions, courtesy of the Runners, Adonis, and Kevin McCall, save it from being a disaster.

This work reaffirms her status as one of the leading artists in contemporary folk.

Not everything here clicks together at that level, but each track is inventive, and when the songwriting and arrangements cross paths perfectly, as they do in the above songs, this is a delightful band.

Great Chicago Fire is that rare collaboration where both sides seem to inform one another equally and derive new strengths from teaming up.

Ode to Sentience sports elegant, graceful chamber-folk arrangements that make the most of the space between the instruments.

There's a sense of rollicking craziness throughout, some busting out, some swaggering boogie breakdowns.

When you strip back the eccentric arrangements and lush production, Watkins can still deliver.

Life in a Beautiful Light, at its essence, is the sound of an artist looking for her own voice amidst the deafening roar of her influences.

Brown turns the Versions material, drawing on both released and unreleased sections from the original sessions, into something closer to harsher rock at points, but on balance the various tracks turn into a series of tense counterpoints between loud and soft, always with an eye toward careful flow that transforms the material into slow evolutions.