The disc turns more experimental as it progresses.

This is one of the best albums of the year.

Moments of stark beauty do chime or trill within the trio's overall locked-in-the-engine-room sound.

The preponderance of the material here creates its own world, on its own terms, and beckons you to go inside. And you will.

Women & Work finds the Memphis band at complete ease with their mix of '70s outlaw country and plenty of punk rock attitude and swagger, making it easily the most consistently solid release in their already enviable cannon of music.

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.

Unassuming and uncluttered, Television of Saints is intimate yet expressive, as if birthed on a breeze.

[The] excellent Faithful Man is a product of the dream team of producers, arrangers, songwriters and players (the house band called the Expressions) at Brooklyn's Truth & Soul Records, whose history parallels Brooklyn's better-known Daptone.

It feels like a declaration of purpose instead, made all the stronger for having passed through the crucible of Bachmann's doubts, through the armor breaks, and straight into-and from-the heart.

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

Isidore doesn't really feel like a "side" anything. It's a main event.

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.

This band seems poised for some kind of breakthrough and Tiger Talk seems as a good a place as any for this to happen.

There's power in these grooves, but there's a message too, and it spells a better day for everyone.

A most welcome return.

While this isn't going to make you toss your copy of George Best, it shows the guy still has some gas left in his tank and is far from embarrassing himself.

Snider proves yet again that he is still one of the best musical commentators going today.

"Old Ash" and "Silver Self" bring to mind Paul Simon's Graceland, each song incorporating that same infectious shuffle and giddy exuberance that made Simon's world rhythms so compelling. And yet, that makes Beware and Be Grateful all the more confounding, given that some of their melodies seem on the verge of a disconnect.

Skyline reads as a series of tiny moments--not major life events but instead the beautiful, insignificant ephemera that falls away in the wake of life's progress.

While the band was hardly in a rut before, it nonetheless sounds revitalized here, reveling in big melodies and even bigger riffs.

Needless to say, The Wall's Immersion Edition is a visual thing of beauty, ...The undeniable black eye on this Immersion Edition, however, is the way by which they handled the inclusion of Roger Waters' solo demos... the majority of this coveted cache of rarities is whittled down to a series of poorly edited snippets that barely last a minute or even a few seconds in some instances.

All things considered, Stars and Satellites is easily this band's best effort yet.

Beaus$Eros is an interesting experiment. Busdriver is capable, obviously, in multiple genres, and has the restless, omnivorous kind of creativity that sees links between disparate styles.

Coming in at 11 songs, there is hardly a weak one on Go Fly a Kite and no real need to call out one track over the next, as all are pretty much worth the price of the album.

A Wasteland Companion belies its foreboding title, largely eschewing the hushed introspection that's cast a pall over previous efforts in favor of, well, a sound that's at least marginally more hopeful.

[Raitt] mostly returns to the quality soft-rock she perfected in her early solo career, but juices it up with hot guitar solos on almost every song.

A soundtrack for the sun-drenched summer months.

New Wild Everywhere conveys a new maturity for the GLS, showcasing the assembled talents of the members, and highlights promises of even better things to come in their future.