Dispossession works as a whole, rather than a collection of songs.

Every cut shines with Ndgeocello's brilliantly creative spirit.

Night Fiction is beautifully played, full of the clean, lovely sounds that can be made on traditional rock instruments, but it’s not very memorable.

This is pure, un-concentrated psychedelic boogie rock rooted in West Coast mysticism, Stax R&B and Memphis blues without pretext or pretense.

With consistently strong songwriting and an intrepid grasp on its own talent, the Joy Formidable has in Wolf's Law a near-perfect follow-up record: it moves the band forward while staying true to what made it appealing and exciting in the first place.

Revelation continues to tow that tradition, with every song providing different twists at every juncture.

In the grand scheme of things this is not epochal work. In the world of rock ‘n’ roll this is to the Rolling Stones or Bruce Springsteen as Chausson or Bridge were to Wagner or Mahler. But those lighter composers had their charms and pleasures, and with Herein Wild so does Frankie Rose.

Robert Earl Keen is a master storyteller who blends acoustic, nylon and steel guitar with solid percussion and his pure, distinct voice into the finest Americana has to offer.

Steve Earle and Shawn Colvin sound remarkable together, sharing vocals and guitars on all 10 tracks.

Love Is Love isn’t clear cut, reading at times like the various stages of grief.

Sit back, dig The Cambodian Space Project, and be prepared to be impressed. Very impressed.

Bennett harbors a magic about him that inspires you to become caught up in the beauty of his performance prowess regardless of what artist is playing second banana to him on the microphone.

This is quite overtly a party record.

It has the breadth, intelligence, mystery and ambitious arrangements of a major work. With 19 songs, it's maybe a touch too long, but almost every song is vivid in its poetry and instrumental coloration.

Pop elements ensure that Musostics works pleasantly enough as background music, but it is also complicated enough to reward more concentrated listening.

They eventually return to their swampy shuffles and bottleneck guitars but not before establishing themselves as revisionists and revivalists equally content to also mine their own muse.

It's nearly impossible for Hiatt to put out a bad record. You may not love every song, but there's bound to be a few on there to make the album well worth the price you paid.

Flowers is his third solo record and, unsurprisingly, it’s a collection of lush, textured compositions that, intentionally or not, accurately depict the graceful, exciting and endless landscapes that Iceland is so famed for.

Overflowing with strong writing and excellent playing, City Forgiveness earns every minute of its two-CD sprawl.

Ledges may be a quiet album but it resonates with strong emotions in its own low-key way.

It’s a fierce, fun and unforgettable album that would be an achievement for a singer/songwriter of any age, but particularly for one on the far side of 60.

Future Standards feels a little too respectful, well-done but static and without much animating fire.

There are a few more hooks on this latest release and the production is clearer, but it certainly doesn’t water down the sentiment.

Fantastic Plastic might just be their finest effort. This is the music that stirs your loins and flies in your face like the sweet bird of youth come home to roost. Fingers crossed that this isn’t their Final Vinyl.

Still Living has its share of baroque pop moments, but its strongest songs are the ones that rock the hardest.

More Is Than Isn’t balances vocals with lyricless tracks but at the heart of it all is RJD2’s strength in producing impressive music.

"Det Hester!" and "Dresinen" vary the formula a bit with, respectively, squelchy synth-bass and fuzzy electric guitar, while the album-closing "Aldri Ska Me Ha Det Goy" is a oozing slo-mo ballad that layers Endresen's vocals to suggest The Four Seasons Sing Pet Sounds.

Voyageur resonates with the kind of drama and daring that Edwards has been perfecting all along.

All nine of these slow-moving cuts are built on actual melodies, simple enough to stick right away, radiant enough to hang like this album's overtones, well after they are finished.

Earle has proven that he can embrace the past, look forward to the future and find peace through his music.

Clear Shot, the Brighton, UK band’s third LP, brims with catchy melodies and straightforward performances--only the richly layered production really betrays any overt psychedelic influence.

In the last ten or fifteen years, only 2005's Magic Time has delivered more consistently enjoyable songs than this thoroughly captivating collection of rants, loves, and dreams.

Hurricane is her first new album since 1989, and it's her best ever.

Here, together again, they pick up more or less where they left off, slipping subdued hooks into strummy reveries and spiking easy breezy tunes with jarring, occasional violent lyrics.

Worship the Sun has the lemonade-y ambiguity of all good pop.

This is the kind of show that often carries a “had to be there” air, especially given the heavy participation of the crowd and the freewheeling nature of the performance. But Chilton’s charm and talent make Electricity By Candlelight wear surprisingly well.

Thanks to this well-constructed compilation CD (including a very informative booklet), his legacy will be exposed to a new generation of musicians, and music fans.

The songs on Palindrome Hunches are certainly pretty and play perfectly as background music for a variety of endeavors (washing dishes, vacuuming, etc.) but not much on here really stands out and catches your attention.

Deer Tick’s fifth and latest offering is a tad darker and surprisingly personal compared to earlier efforts. The result is ultimately a stronger album, but it takes a little time to get to the good stuff.

The Canadian chanteuse offers up a series of deceptively delicate entreaties that quickly give way to the sort of emphatic rhythms and boisterous melodies that reflect an unmistakably bold confidence.

She is better than you would expect, flexing a style that exists between Woody Guthrie and Def Jux as she calls out hypocritical hippies, turtle burning oil companies and the overdose that nearly killed her with effortless wit and grace.

In short, if you liked what you heard on MCI and MCII, MCIII is more of the same, only slathered in lush arrangements with a little less of the raw outbursts of his earlier garage-y grunge sound.

All things considered, Stars and Satellites is easily this band's best effort yet.

Not everything needs to be emoted so hard, not every line requires an instrumental ta-dah! Try a little simplicity next time. It makes the big swells all the more impressive.

There is not a single track on this record that doesn’t belong, each nearly flawless in their own way.

High Bias is the best Purling Hiss album yet, channeling a tidal wave of noise into songs that you can remember almost immediately and even hum to yourself later when the album’s out of ear shot.

They come back hard and a bit more focused on this terrific sophomore effort.

The EP is the perfect cherry on that sweet cake that is Light Up Gold.

While the band clearly has an advantage, being able to handpick songs that were already pretty stellar to begin with, credit is due to the hard Working Americans for not simply churning out carbon copies, but slathering plenty of loose blues, jam band raucousness and stoner charm, to make these songs their own.

A little mellower and a little more introspective, but just as impactful as he was two decades ago when he first started showing up on the radio, Collingwood is proof that growing up and growing older isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Louis Armstrong may have provided the raw material for Ske-Dat-De-Dat: The Spirit of Satch, but make no mistake: this is a Dr. John LP through-and-through. As it should be.

Those two bumps aside ["Cruel Intentions" and "I Should Have Stayed in Bed"], it's overall a solid album from a band that's honestly been missed.

While Burdon himself remains indignant, and indomitable, his tenacious stance is coached in songs that rarely measure up to the classics credited to him early on.

Too often, it seems like the singer is leading us into blind alleys, stringing words together willy-nilly on bead chains, then scattering them like sparkling baubles in a heap.

At a half hour, Too True might seem brief, but Penny makes the most of every minute.

For those a bit put off by the overt club friendliness of The Field but intrigued by Willner's affinity for glitch, Loops is definitely your conduit into the abstract nature of this BPM bard's state of mind.

Lovingly named after Rod Serling's cult post-Twilight Zone program and, in all intents and purposes, is just as thrilling.

Derivative? Sure. But also blissfully compelling and entertaining.

Moments of stark beauty do chime or trill within the trio's overall locked-in-the-engine-room sound.

Free Reign, co-produced by Oneohtrix Point Never's Daniel Lopatin, is subtler, jazzier and ever-so-slightly sexier than previous Clinic outings.

So its songs aren't exactly of the hum-along variety. No matter. There's no denying Sun Kil Moon's luminous glow.

Policy is actually all over the musical map.

Sunlight on the Moon is utterly pleasant, slightly off-kilter and melodically memorable, but if you listen to it hard enough, it’s also a bit disturbing.

Mollestad gives us a generous and welcome taste of that classic sound, which her own twist on it that would hopefully make McLaughlin himself proud.

Finds the Present Tense reconciles past with future and makes for a compelling connection.

Raw in places, expansive in others, and rife with Williams’ patented street-corner-talking, pimp-swagger style, I Wanna Go Back to Detroit City is as good a postcard for the Motor City as you’ll likely find all year.

In terms of pure triumph, Port of Morrow provides its listeners with safe harbor regardless.

The band is tight, and the music ebbs and flows as usual; it just doesn’t go anywhere original. I hope the band will be able to right the shjip on their next effort.

The steady driving "Mulholland Drive" and the Roy Orbison-worthy "Here Comes My Man" are among the band's best and could have easily come off their breakthrough 2008 release The '59 Sound.

As its title suggests, Use Me offers a lesson in how to stay true to one's muse.

Badwater is more accomplished but also less astonishing, a victory of craft over pure sensation.

The combination of the two disparate methods of performance made for quite an extraordinary menagerie of styles that will definitely appeal to hip-hop, art pop and world music fans alike.

His latest is a bit of a challenge, but worth it for those willing to put in the time.

Waiting for Something To Happen is an excellent record.

Garage Sale is mostly devoid of throwaways, and yet chock full of hidden treasures instead.

Looks can be deceiving, especially when you have an album's worth of decent songs to back you up. And despite a so-so start on their debut full length, they do.

Their often-dark songs have a triumphant dimension.

Too much of The Politics of Envy sounds like the mid-'80s acts that glued British pop back together after bands like the Pop Group smashed it to bits.

Holy Ghost finds him coming across as remarkably unassuming, a casual, somewhat weary traveller bound for a yet undetermined destination.

Soft Will is certainly pleasant enough (which shouldn’t really be what you’re striving for with a rock album), and I’m sure is being hailed by indie taste makers everywhere who like their rock on the sterile side.

Though the sound is stripped down--limited mainly to voice, guitar and unusual atmospherics--the effect is also fairly frenzied and typically creepy as well.

This band stirs a noisy pot of rock sounds, but vapors that escape smell delicious.

Tom Jones is almost 73 years old, is singing as well as he ever has while refusing to conform to his stereotypes, is artistically and perhaps spiritually searching and restless, and is recording perhaps the finest music of his long career.

Half a century later, Look Again to the Wind serves as a stirring homage to an album that remains as daring and defiant now as it was when it was first offered to an indifferent populace.

On record, Teen Men come across as your average, edgy modern pop combo, all shimmery, engaging songs with few constraints and even fewer darker designs.

They still have that dirty, carefree, uncompromising vibe, but on Underneath the Rainbow it’s able to be tamed, morphing into melodic garage rock that’s as catchy and easily digestible as it is rugged and in-your-face.

Divine Providence apparently isn't a realm for the faint of heart, but those with the verve to vent their all may find it a welcome retreat.

All together, this is a very classy compilation, and an essential piece of the global puzzle of 20th century music.

These songs are like pearls, lustrous, unknowable and happiest next to bare skin.

It’s doubtful anyone will stroll about humming these tunes, but so too, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to find there’s something about them that’s all but impossible to shake.

Hellfire is a brilliant album with no weak cuts.

What James Brooks has accomplished as Land Observations should easily make Roman Roads IV - XI a record anyone in tune with the works of such new school guitar giants as Christian Fennesz and Dustin Wong must hear now.

Cosmic concoctions of this sort are all too rare these days, so it’s rather refreshing to hear this sound revisited, particularly with the added investment in melody that Elephant Stone tends to allow.

If energy and enthusiasm count for anything, then The Pack A.D. comes out a step ahead. The problem is, they don’t seem to know when to pull back.

This is a collection of songs that sparkles in its own excellence.

"Old Ash" and "Silver Self" bring to mind Paul Simon's Graceland, each song incorporating that same infectious shuffle and giddy exuberance that made Simon's world rhythms so compelling. And yet, that makes Beware and Be Grateful all the more confounding, given that some of their melodies seem on the verge of a disconnect.

With Feel The Sound, it's only the music that matters and the urge to enjoy it couldn't be more compelling.

Some of his best work, however, comes under the guise of his own name, as is the case with Crow's new album, He Thinks He's People.