Hexadic is a dramatic shift for Six Organs of Admittance, lurching into noise and abstraction with hardly a nod to guitar folk or psychedelic rock.

What he has done here is more than a lark. He really loves what he’s singing, and it shows. And he has a lot still to teach us about the joys of music.

Giddens emulates her forebears with reverence and assurance.

Modern Streets brings the eerie emotional heft of psychedelic soul into the age of the personal electronic device, working on a small scale towards mind-expanding ends. Nicely done.

It’s hypnotic in and of itself, and all impressions are purely in the ears/mind of the listener.

Being almost (there’s that qualifier again) conventional, Take It Like a Man may not hit the same highs for fans as White’s more seminal work, but it’s a solid set of songs given engaging performances.

Downcast, tasteful and frequently quite beautiful, Depersonalization borrows from sonics generated three decades ago, but with a lack of self-consciousness that makes it all sound fresh and new.

Berkeley To Bakersfield is the perfect shotgun rider for any road trip. With the breadth of its variety no other music passengers need be invited along for the ride.

This record isn’t just Worthy--it’s essential.

The songwriting doesn’t quite match the ambitions here, and that gives the LP a transitory feel--that, too, may be fitting, given Huebert’s long season.

Gone are the raucous “Whiskey River”-style jams, but in its place are an albums worth of lazy afternoon porch songs that you can’t help but love.

Family functions more like a sampler than as an in-depth insight into their collective prowess.

An exceptionally strong debut record, Soul Power will make you believe in the title concept.

While there is nothing particular off about this quiet, solid collection--consisting of little more than Hitchcock’s voice over quite acoustic guitars and the occasional piano and cello--it’s still a pretty muted, low-energy affair that is not immediately memorable.

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.

There’s a Bluebird in My Heart is the sound of a great artist coming back home.

At 29, Winslow-King clearly has a bright future ahead of him, but Everlasting Arms shows he’s come a long way already.

The album is a holiday classic in waiting, even if you don’t own a single pair of skinny jeans and couldn’t grow a beard to save your life.

Mark Kozelek Sings Christmas Carols is a remarkably faithful, utterly transcendent take on what I will humbly submit is the beatific, unadorned side of Christmas music.... This is the holiday release of the year.

With IX, Trail of Dead consolidates its stance as one of the ‘aughties’ most consistently interesting prog bands.

Taken as a whole, Kykeon seems more cohesive, less add-x-to-y, than the self-titled debut.

It’s quite a gift to fans, too. Live in Memphis—which has a corresponding DVD available separately--finds Chilton, particularly, in good voice, his obvious playfulness all the more engaging given that he’s performing before a hometown crowd.

In sum, The Best Day is the Sonic Youth album that Sonic Youth fans feared would never happen in the wake of the band’s split in 2011.

This third full-length, after a slew of singles, fills out his sound, soothing abrasive beats with a floating fog of sustained notes.

Too much space and too little aggro makes for a dull Faust, alas, and by the end of the album attention spans may well drift toward grocery lists or navel lint.

Museum of Love is a nonformulaic, hard to pin down, quirky and danceable album.

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

The Fact Facer is a nuanced, multi-leveled listen that stands with the best things Amos--and anyone covering similarly adventurous terrain--has done.