Over the course of the album's 52 minutes, the eight tracks reveal a brilliance in construction.

In all seriousness, this is an utterly brilliant experiment that is carried out with excellent style.

The Sight Below has crafted a magnificent album and EP to help weather the darker nights and snowy days.

The Renaissance is arguably, the best hip-hop album of the year.

Stellar production yields rich sounds assailed with raw emotions. These tracks are fully developed. No doubt, the vocals may grate on critics, but there are a lot of reasons to like this split. Especially Envy. Enjoy.

It’s great music and it clearly showcases the fact that Grampall Jookabox should have a steady and successful career ahead of him.

With producer Thavius Beck’s fast-paced beats and the MC’s lively rapping, the two have concocted a worthy listen.

Simply put, it's a decent album. There are a handful of great tracks and handful of tankers. The rest is just kind of there.

The best kinds of albums are the ones that capture that fragile balance between great music and pairing lyrical wordplay. And Tronic is an album that fans of both the lyrical side and production side of hip-hop can love.

Barnes is literally all over the place and his cryptic storytelling makes for an eccentric album. And although each song may shift styles five or six times, as a whole, it’s a tightly constructed and smartly shaped listen.

Car Alarm is essentially Everybody II; an album that subtly stretches the group’s formulaic parameters with rawer production and looser instrumentation but without cementing any concrete boundary-changes.

Parts and Labor have expanded their sonic palette with Receivers and with it may find some new fans who wouldn't have been able to tolerate the overwhelming stimulation of previous releases.

Temper, an album that stays the course in terms of facade but for the most part lacks the great songwriting that elevated "Précis" above other singer-songwriters.

Even eleven years after their breakthrough success, their music still sounds as fresh and exciting as ever; we are truly lucky.

Combining vaudeville melodies alongside a quirky pop sensibility lifts the eleven songs here above the merely angular and takes us to a unique space, and probably not somewhere everyone would want to go, but to my ears Moonwink's only real flaw is its brevity.

Through all of the musical intricacies and variances, Rossen and Nicolaus have truly created one of the best albums of the year.

Life Like may not beg for repeated listens as much as Birds Make Good Neighbors but it’s still an honest and original piece of work that is sorely needed in these times.

Once again, the Pale Young Gentlemen has crafted a singularly noteworthy record unlike anything else.

As a release for anyone else, this would be a well received and respected release. But for Ben Folds, whose first two solo outings were both phenomenal, he simply hasn’t lived up to expectations.

Overall Snowflake Midnight isn’t quite the disaster that the disillusioned might have expected.

It is a well-written, solid debut that should at least establish the band a fanbase and give them time to work out some of the imperfections.

The sonic pastiche of certain songs can be unwieldy and perplexing, with unsubtle shifts in musical styles or tones, an erratic rhythmic pace, and flat aural space. What sounds right though is Caroline’s mutable vocals that run the gamut from the eccentric, exclamatory delivery and word-twisting of Karen O to the soft drift of a subdued Polly Jean Harvey or Chan Marshall on the more serious numbers.

It’s a tight, very good album and although it’ll have its unfair share of detractors, like the rest of the band’s albums, it will shine no matter what.

Dear Science is a stirring addition to their ever proliferating catalog; a stalwart continuation of the band’s hooking groove, and easily one of the best releases of the year.

To sustain her muse beyond short-term thrill-seeking, a little more focus, restraint and better pacing is certainly required. That said, Acid Tongue is still-peppered with acts of greatness, which will no doubt grow further in stature through successive spins.

While there isn’t anything as blisteringly heavy as 'Woof & Warp of the Quiet Giant’s Hem,' as gritty and grimy as 'Miss Spiritual Tramp,' or even as trippy and psychedelic as 'Hot Tip/Tough Cub,' there is still plenty to love on Furr.

Barrett combines his best strengths to deliver one of the album’s few shining spots; it’s just a shame there aren’t more of them on here.

This is a wonderful piece of work from a talented, intelligent artist, put across with all the passion of someone who's spent a long time thinking about and living with the project.