Memories Are Now is a composed but not utterly controlled place, and within that tension, Hoop’s music and message, together, find their highest vibrancy.

It's not Segall's best, but Slaughterhouse sits near the top of the heap of loud, ignorant party garage.

Seed of a Seed is a pretty record, and you can get lost in that but not for long. Heynderickx is always pulling you up short, interposing a clever line or a surprising sonic texture that upends expectations. A lot of folky, singer-songwriter records provide a bit of respite, but Seed of a Seed is too prickly and interesting for that.

The songs are reliably mid-tempo and catchy, although they certainly lack the heedless rush that made the first Superchunk albums such models of indie rock.

The track [“A Study in Vastness”] initiates a string of four pretty flawless songs at the heart of this album that do very little very well. Single ideas unfurl across five, six, seven minutes at a time, never feeling like they need to go anywhere other than patiently exploring exactly where they are.

Everything Was Beautiful isn’t some showy highlight reel, though; it’s an example of how keenly Pierce has honed his inner space rock and how much room it still has left to soar.

A schizophrenic mess of maypole folk and motorik drive.

Appealing and slyly catchy.

Sweeping, quietly incredible FLOTUS.

School of the Flower easily ranks as Ben Chasny's best work thus far.

The Bug can still shock, and with so many highlights here, it’s hard to complain.

The songs punch and swerve and sway like organic beings, structured in a way that amplifies rather than hems in emotional resonance.

There’s quite a lot of music here, some tracks abstract and open-end, others more conventionally song structured, all of it rather good.

Though Furling is a fitting title in this regard, in the sense of closing around something, of creating a feeling of being safe and loved, there’s also a sensation of unfurling, of opening out, of expansiveness, of fearless abandon. That’s a rare balance to strike, and one that proves intoxicatingly addictive.

Although lacking an ear-grabbing single or a truly hummable hook, the New Amerykah Part Two does something that current R&B seemed incapable of: it charms.

The Australian trio feedtime's 1980s recordings, which are collected on The Abberant Years box set, prove them to be traditionalists of the best sort.

Here’s an album that gets at the balance between pure, raucous, positive punk energy and the elegiac textures of lush, baroque pop.

Whether it’s the lengthier, arpeggiating climaxes of “Gene Pool” or the shorter, more reflective burbles of “Burst of Laughter,” it feels like they haven’t lost a step.

Less encumbered by the colonial detritus of Konono's overdriven drums-meet-junkyard sound, the Allstars let the rhythm section breathe and get funky with indigenous instrumentation. No distortion necessary.

Hayter’s voice admirably performs that complexity on Sinner Get Ready; it’s a beautiful instrument that will fill you with terrible woe, and then terrible wonder.

The album gains strength as it goes on, getting harder and more abrasive in its second half. And yet even as it rages, it has an elegiac tone.

His songs flash by in vivid, disconnected mental images, floating on an underlying current of mood. What we see passes by. What we feel about it lingers, evocatively, just out of reach and often filtered through digital mechanisms. ... The album’s lyrics are about all kinds of things, but its sound is about being isolated and frightened with contact only through digital interface.

This is, in other words, still serious music, yet it is not necessarily somber. Probably not coincidentally, When the Roses Come Again provides the perfect soundtrack for a drive through a land of woods, farms, and small towns dotted with Dollar General stores and cell towers.

On this album, she both reminds the listener of her strengths as a songwriter and subtly redefines the ground on which her music rests.

As the album advances, you get the sense that Clark is finally accomplishing what he claims to have been doing all along: making a techno record.

My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky distills everything Gira has ever done. It's a shockingly dense record, the Gira experience in 45 minutes or less. All killer, no filler, for real.

Looping State of Mind is a bold attempt at fusing The Field's emotive tendencies with something more aggressive, and for the most part, Willner strikes the perfect balance.

The applause will only grow louder with the release of The Bright Mississippi. It’s quite simply one of the best albums we’ll hear in 2009.