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.