Fans of Yuck who are coming into Unreal hoping for and album as plentiful of hooks as that album might be slightly perturbed at first not to find anything as tight or punchy as something like “Get Away” or “The Wall,” but after spending time with the album you’ll find that each song possesses an airy, sing-songy hook that’s easy to latch onto.

Kveikur is the band’s noisiest and most muscular record yet. The variety of experience it offers not just from Valtari, but from the band’s entire catalogue, means that it stands among their best.

Saab Stories is the least appealing of those [albums], but that has less to do with the rapper and more to do with the production which doesn’t allow this extra-large personality to conflate alongside it. Action Bronson is a big man; he just needs room to breathe.

Embracism is a record that’ll grab you and bring you close, but also one that won’t hesitate to push you away with a gut punch and expect you to take it like a man.

It’s big, heavy, and worthy to soundtrack plenty of dancefloors. The only thing Ghost System Rave is arguably missing is the real personality from its creators.

The growth in Austra from Feel It Break to Olympia is palpable throughout.

The music on This Is Another Life isn’t the kind that boasts colour, or even deep and dark hues, but rather is full of big strokes of dull greys.

There’s a wealth of sonic variety on display but the concise run-time--clocking in at a fraction over 40 minutes--keeps matters focused and thoroughly engaging.

Soft Will is certainly not as immediately infectious as Smith Westerns’ previous outings, but that does not make it a weaker album. There are still many injections of fun in the wordless gang vocals and theatrical guitar solos.

Sunbather is a future classic, no matter where you pigeonhole it, and that’s the mark of a true sonic masterpiece. Black metal, not black metal, just call it what it is: perfect.

All in all, Hopkins’ roadmap is splendidly plotted, taking the right amount of time to deliver you to your destination and showing you the detours you didn’t even know you wanted to see.

Fair play to them for expanding out on Kids in L.A. and finding appropriate inspiration, but I dare say that the emotion that brought the couple together seem to be their deepest well of inspiration.

If there’s anything Mr. West finds completely alien to his person, it’s restraint, and Yeezus is the perfect, chaotic, and ultimately uncompromising dive into this world.

If Born Sinner proves anything, it’s that he’s not ready to take the fall, but he as a long way to go if he wants to rope off an area all his own in hip hop’s evolution.

Pinned up and thoroughly artistic, Field of Reeds is affecting, but it’s also hard to get genuinely excited about.

As his name implies, Ghostpoet can be vague, mystifying, and a little bit of a downer--but ultimately the best art is the kind that makes you think and broadens your perspective, which this record does in spades.

Desire Lines is undoubtedly a Camera Obscura album, but it might be their first that is more suited to quiet winter nights inside, rather than the sunny side of things that dominated their sound on their previous albums.

He’s fulfilled every promise made by Badlands and then some, and despite whatever depths of pain made such an eruption of shattered awesome possible, he’s managed not just one of the best albums of the year, but one of the most genuinely moving, as well.

Crawling Up The Stairs should be praised not only for its beauty, honesty and sonic specialty, but also for the way it’s sequenced.

Each track posseses different sounds, colours, styles and textures, but they combine to make an odd but strangely appealing whole.

Where Music Has the Right seemed grounded in the real world (albeit a twisted recollection of such) and Geogaddi straddled the line between Star Wars and The Sandlot, Tomorrow’s Harvest finds the duo launching their sound into Lovecraftian orbit. And it sounds terrific.

It’s one of the most gleeful and replayable debuts of 2013.

Now on the other side of forty, this is QOTSA as weary of mortality as they’ve ever been. They also sound as vital, forceful and rough around the edges as they have in over a decade. Welcome back, gentlemen.

On MCII, it’s a dual-edged sword that he brandishes skillfully into a scintillating sophomore record, one stacked with some of the year’s best pop-rock tunes.

Eagle is definitely Marling’s most considered work, and most of that comes simply from the fact she’s stripped away a lot of the decoration, and yet ultimately it feels easy for her, if not a little predictable.

Nocturnes rates better as an album that sounds better with time, as opposed to Hands’ sugar rush appeal. However, it also retains an uneven quality that can make getting through Nocturnes feel like someone trying to drag the party on a little too long.

An aura of mystery and ambiguity hangs over Impersonator. The emotions and resulting thoughts are always present and felt, but their cause isn’t always clear.

Abandon is one of the most cathartic, brutalizing, and beautiful experimental releases this or any year.