I Abused Animal is a real shocker and definitely an album you won’t easily forget.

As incisive a crime story as ever committed to a groove, Juarez is striking and surreal, a torrid and twisted pastiche stirred from decadence and desire.

It’s a tour de force performance that never revolves around technique--instead Chesley channels her rage, sorrow and acceptance into sometimes soothing, sometimes serrated devotions of pure, unadulterated feeling.

On Big Bad Luv, his fourth solo effort, Moreland continues his knack for writing impeccably perfect lyrics (“They got silver spoons for American gods/I wanna be stoned, thrown American rods”) on some of the best heartbreak songs since John Prine.

It’s a good sign that Jones is open to anything on Super Natural, and that he can easily enhance his usual firebreathing rock & roll passion without diluting it.

There are plenty more excellent guitar janglers like The Pooh Sticks doing my favorite tune “On Tape” plus Pale Saints doing the dreamier “Colours and Shapes” and Choo Choo Train (Ric and Paul from Velvet Crush) doing the righteous “High,” all of which is one disc one. Moving right over to disc two The House of Love start things off with “The Hill.”

Four albums in and Turnpike Troubadours show no signs of writer’s block.

With One Drop of Truth, The Wood brothers have put out a career-defining album. But they’ve been just as brilliant from the beginning; now it’s time for the rest of the world to finally realize that.

Hoop’s experimental tack often requires repeated listens, but it’s creativity and not mere quirkiness that ultimately leaves alingering afterglow.

Segall pushes things towards 11.

Japandroids sophomore effort is loaded end to end with great songwriting and the joy they've found in their influences.

Her writing, which here often expresses personal sorrow and fear about separated or lost love (“1923,” “Nothing in My Heart”), is alive to the senses and nature but doesn’t get lost in abstractions about feelings.

Given the complex menagerie of moods and movements interpolated amongst the din of this septet of songs, it seems like the man has indeed accomplished his mission.

The Odds show that Fugazi doesn't need to reunite in order to make music that still very much matters.

They direct their efforts with a determined forward thrust that spills over the melodic parameters with a celebratory display of rock ‘n’ roll revelry.

Intended as the follow-up to Griffin’s sophomore set Flaming Red, Silver Bell finds a young artist still determining her direction. Griffin’s furtive vocals dominate the album overall, but the settings shift dramatically throughout.

This current incarnation of Swans swim across the salty sea of the group's three-decade strong catalog, executing a balance of grind and grace that casts a new light on old classics.

That’s maybe what’s so remarkable about Faith in Strangers, its uneasy balance between beauty and menace, calm and roiling intensity.

With its live wet vocal production, bleaker-than-black lyrical mien and varied musical layers, the album could be one of the Minnesotan folk singer's finest ever, a richly diverse and dire epic revolving around the burning suns of love, death, truths and lies with only two weak songs in the bunch.

Blunderbuss is good, damn good, and its' few missteps unthinking.

No one could have predicted that they'd get to Attack on Memory's savage impact so quickly, or indeed, at all. No telling where they'll go from here.

The Prodigal Son lives up to its title, a return to his earliest archival sounds.

Skying proves a maturing for the band and unveils a new realm of sonic possibilities.

It’s hardly an easy listen, but it’s a compelling one just the same. And if it’s not exactly a conclusive journey, it’s still one worth traveling all the same.

Ultimately, Wine Dark Sea is all about the mystique, making it nothing less than a fascinating ethereal excursion.

Twenty-five years in, how well these two sides of a sung coin fit together and complement each other remains remarkable.

Big Star was more than the sum of its parts, and as evidenced here, Chilton was only just beginning to mine his.

He’s cut a broad range of material to date, everything from Delta blues to free jazz to blazing psychedelia. All that and more surfaces at various points on Eyes On the Lines, ultimately making the album a culmination and a celebration.