Clearly not one to mess with, this confident, compelling outing suggests she can hold her own even within the top tier of alt-country's rowdier women.

Blue Songs has impressive diversity and variety.

[The Seer is] everything for which Swans stands, wrapped up in one intense package.

At 21 minutes, these six songs come off like a moderately successful experiment, but an entire album might have been too much of a challenge to sustain.

Honky-Tonk is a Country Music album. No Alt required.

True, The High Country doesn't allow for the giddiest of circumstance, but if it doesn't break your heart, it may just steal it instead.

With a sympathetic producer in Don Was, who worked with Ryder in the 1990s with his own Motor City band Was (Not Was), Ryder is able to make a late-career statement that stands tall alongside anything he's ever done.

The songs convey a lot of deep ideas without resorting to flowery prose. In fact the words are often fairly straightforward which ends up making the whole project hit a little deeper than initially anticipated.

Sky Full of Holes is the perfect sound of a band staying within their comfort zone while not forgetting the power of the almighty hook.

Recorded live on the floor with his band, ChesnuTT's second album cuts the fat away for a lean, no-bullshit sweet soul program that hearkens back to the heyday of the O'Jays and Al Green.

Each three-minute zinger is an aptly kilned piece so crossly pollinated, it should be studied.

Generals has some gems of its own, but take a bit more digging to find.

It captures the band's rambunctious, not-especially-reverent approach to Ethio-jazz.

Few albums dare to even come close to this stunning degree of grandeur, but with Here the Magnetic Zeros not only raise the bar, but easily scale it as well.

Born to Die has more hits than misses and more solidly strange fabulously femme fatale interludes than naff ones.

Stephens' voice is, as ever, quite compelling, as capable of guts and blues as of delicate trilling flourishes. She sounds stronger and surer than ever here.

With Major/Minor Thrice have stripped away unnecessary studio production, added instrumentation and pretention to offer simply a great rock album.

Sure this House on the Hill could be more soundly constructed, but one suspects that ricketiness is part of the appeal.

A must-have item for collectors and die-hards, this is also good for casual fans that may not have all the classic songs in their collection.

Even if it's in small phases, Moon Duo continue to evolve as they revolve.

Do Things has a few missteps, but May just keeps smiling and charging forward.

Novak may keep his arrangements raw and his vocals tunefully challenged, but his songcraft improves with every tune.

Shows him clearly confident on his own.

A welcomed, warm and quality return for Helio Sequence, Negotiations yet again unveils the superlative sonic possibilities of these talented gents and how their creativity perfectly complements each other.

A soundtrack for the sun-drenched summer months.

Wallop[s] you upside the head with an acid-induced mash-up of rollicking glam, gunky metal and ghetto-fabulous art rock.

Though not as visceral as previous outings, WIXIW has its charms.

The fuzz of "Fighting the Smoke" and blend of twang and sincerity on "Red Rubber Army" prove that he's not going to run out of great ideas any time soon.