You don’t need to be fanatical or any other synonym to realize that this is utterly spectacular music.

The Incident is an incident in music that must be acknowledged.

Ashes Grammar takes what they accomplished on SMCJ and attenuates it, stretching it into new shapes and sizes, avoiding a retread of their debut album by avoiding the traditions of the album form altogether.

This belongs a lot more to the R&B/Neo-soul side of hip-hop; it's a terrific way for the Queens rapper to showcase his impressive skill as a musical artist.

It’s great to have another album so musically rich that extols misbehavior as accurately as it soundtracks it. Let’s dance.

There’s so much to love about Popular Songs and whether you think it’s the outstanding collection of music, the superb style choices, the fantastic lyrics or all of the above, it’s clear that Yo La Tengo is winningly superb.

It’s not that the album suffers too much from being stuck in traction that it won’t still be appealing to fans of the first album. It’s just that, in terms of expectations, it isn’t the game changer that many of us were expecting.

Polvo have returned stronger and more single-minded. Regardless of whether you were around the first time, you should get in on this right now.

East of Eden is a worldly sounding album that still maintains an intimately personal feel. Affectionate, intriguing and absorbing, Bergsman’s music is of the finest variety.

Though not sure what to make of it, it is viscerally enjoyable and mentally wondrous nonetheless.

With Humbug, they have an album that can be fully enjoyed by anyone willing to give it a fair chance.

The members of Blitzen Trapper have a lot left in them and they’ve just hit their stride with their last two albums. Black River Killer EP is only further testament to their amazing talents as a band and of the kind of determined soul that prevails against all odds.

Everything is New is a gifted and resounding response to the many nay-sayers out there. It’s not the best Peñate could have done but who else could have expected this kind of departure?

Speech Therapy sounds surprisingly intellectual and crisp.

Watch Me Fall, is an exhilarating ride of roaring highs that never let up.

Welcome Joy is the perfect, earthy balance of the grittiest and the sweetest splendors that the Pacific has to offer.

This quintet of musicians are making a name for themselves and with Hospice, they have remarkably made one of 2009’s best albums.

Despite the possibility for a scatterbrained collection, the album holds strong and each track maintains a certain commonality through the writing and the emotional build within.

Post-Nothing is an album that deserves listens and that will definitely gather support with this re-issue.

These supposed table scraps left off their previous two albums, Good News… and We Were… respectively, run a gauntlet that finds the band revitalized, lively and tremendously wonderful.

The Ruminant Band opens up the Fruit Bats aesthetic and is a welcome addition to both late summer and a terrific discography.

It makes for some delightfully fetching quirk-rock when it’s all clicking, but there are also moments when the songs never quite develop this alchemy and fizzle into the mist, albeit a fine cool mist on a bright, sunshiny day.

The fluidity of the music allows for interpretive wiggle room. New Universe sounds like a great, sun-slowed summer album, but I can also see it playing into the feel of other seasons, making for a subdued autumn album or a twinkling winter album.

The way that Howling Bells constructed Radio Wars relies on strong melodies, hooks, songs, songs that aren’t really there, ideas not quite developed.

Lost in most of the noise and clutter was Jenn Wasner’s fantastic voice and Andy Stack’s ability as a “wall of sound” creator. On their new album, The Knot, these skills are not only refined but they showcase a wider, more advanced decadence and a band that sounds that much better, because of it.

BLACKsummers'night is however, an impressive return to form. This is undeniably enthralling music: masterful, captivating and marvelous.

Fortino has created an album that is easily one of the year’s most moving reflections. It’s that life is all but lost and Fortino’s take on things are spectacularly delivered.

Hometowns may not be the amazing album some had hoped for but it is an honest debut on many levels: sometimes great, most of the time decent and a good while just being there.