The music that survived war, immigration and poverty flourishes even among the hipsters, a happy ending for a tale of struggle.

She long ago proved herself worthy of the family legacy, but Carter Girl would be a highlight of her substantial discography regardless of familial stamp.

Dire and descriptive, You Can’t Go Back If There’s Nothing To Go Back To numbing melancholia is uncommonly compelling.

Consolidation more than innovation, The Glowing Man still presents the current incarnation of Swans in its best light, as if this is the record the band has been working toward these past seven years.

Almost by accident, it seems, you can hear memory, skill and poetry converging in a lonely kitchen with a baby sleeping nearby.

Williamson’s voice is arresting, a haunted amalgam of Karen Dalton and Tanya Donnelly, but don’t it distract you from her very fine guitar work.

A sense of quiet triumph pervades: this may be the prettiest Mountain Goats album yet.

That's the modesty and humility typically missing in all those acclaimed geniuses. But it's precisely what allows Henry access to the truths that make his songs unforgettable.

Scholarly stuff this, but also an intriguing reinvention that makes this an ideal marriage of folk and finesse.

It’s obvious that a trip up to Memphis was just what the doctor ordered, as it most certainly has injected a new, creative energy into the band. Of course, the chemistry imbued by the helping hands and producer were significant to the end product.

Sweet Heart's melancholy tunes are still grand, their orchestras soaring and their choruses rousing, even Phil Spector-orian in the epic kink, but they're more tightly wound than on previous efforts.

Bradley and his band are such great interpreters and expanders of the soul tradition that you don’t mind the nagging feeling that you’ve heard these cuts before.

More studio sympathy and less technical trickery might've made The Bravest Man in the Universe a minor classic.

The album opens, confusingly, with an electro-funk groove that becomes a trippy, multi-vocal chorale. Most of what follows is sprightly power-pop with psychedelic touches, dreamy asides and occasional dance-club thumps.

An unassuming venture, but capable and well executed one regardless.

Votolato’s new album, inexplicably titled Hospital Handshakes, offers yet another example of his considerable skills, a collection of songs that fires up an urgency that extends from first song to last.

Whenever they appear close to becoming unhinged, that rowdy, reckless approach is even further affirmed.

There’s no need then to furrow well below the surface; with Waffles Triangles & Jesus, White’s reconciled mischief with melody with exceptional results.

The 14 tracks here rank among some of the best Bird's ever done.

There's a dose of the otherworldly in these evocative tracks, but laced, in all but a few cases, with recognizable bits of ordinary life.

Singer Brittany Howard’s vocals are as pliable as ever, a high pitched squeal one moment, an irascible growl the next. Yet, in this case, it’s the band--bassist Zac Cockrell, guitarist Heath Fogg and drummer Steve Johnson--that have evolved most this time around, providing a shifting set of circumstance varied in both tone and texture.

This is one of the best albums of the year.

Both revealing and resilient, Spring and Fall could be deservedly called an album for all seasons.

They’ve been in the long-form, drone-and-drift mode for a while now. It’s nice to hear them rock out a little, too.

The overall mood, however, is thoughtful and somber: unlike You Are Not Alone, this is a contemplative late-night album rather than a celebratory Sunday morning one. It’s wonderful.

The sounds that seem most real and certain disintegrate as you listen to them, while the ones that might be an illusion drift into proximity, obscuring all else.

Though he avoids dissonance for its own sake, Bleckmann amazingly never descends into treacle, nor does he indulge in the usual nonsense syllables of typical scat singing. Instead he forges his own distinctive path on Elegy, taking the concept of the human voice as instrument to new and shimmering places.

These 12 songs run a mere 33 minutes, but cover a lot of musical and thematic territory.