The end result is that, as far as we know (for now), Album of the Year is Black Milk continuing along at his very best.

These songs are direct, sometimes stripped down, but the components are robust, clear and smartly mixed. They sound like Osees.

While Teenage Hate sits squarely in the flamey-shirt scene of the '90s, even the greaser version of Jay knew how to bust up cliches.

DIIV have synthesized a bunch of fresh influences, including guitarist Andrew Bailey’s penchant for hip-hop, plus the band’s new-found fascination with sampling and tape loops, to craft their most diverse and perhaps finest album to date.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor still has a place in this flattened landscape despite its familiarity, its flaws, its limitations. Luciferian Towers is testament to the group’s staying power, an unexpected but welcome declaration of defiance.

What makes the band so great isn’t just their utterly compelling sound; it’s that on this, their finest record, they’re not so much going for “fucking epic” as for emotional heaviness.

Perhaps most impressive is that in what is arguably the band's most traditional record to date, Tinariwen manages to loop in highly recognizable people and sounds without any effort.

The results are truly thrilling, mechanized dance for a post-industrial age.

The songs are simultaneously more richly detailed and more succinct than those on Segundo and Tres Cosas.

The results may not be as jarring as its predecessor - the excitement of their original experimentation is gone - but ultimately they’re more satisfying, indicative of a duo much more comfortable with their vision.

The album, produced by Chris Funk of the Decemberists, manages to be both weird and relevant, experimental and comfortable. Malkmus’s grounded surrealism makes for a series of songs that offer connection within a skewed take on life. The music, in any track’s given mode, encourages persistent resistance of the way things are without being heavy-handed. It bridges worlds wonderfully and shows Malkmus to be as vital as ever.

Kids Aflame is the good stuff, as loosely played as it is meticulously plotted.

Callahan’s honeyed, slightly gravelly bass-baritone, which comes across as dispassionate to the point of being noncommittal on Blind Date Party at times, and Bonnie Prince’s tenor, consistently vulnerable, raw, wide open, complement each other in a compelling way, establishing dramatic tension and unearthing emotionally resonant inner dialogues within the album’s songs.

Oceans Apart is the album that fans have been waiting for, the one that brings back the flawless production of their early releases and the cynical/idealistic tradeoff in Forster and McLennan’s songwriting.

It is full of unusual clarity and purpose and seems to have benefited from a certain amount of restraint.

The Mancy of Sound and its predecessor are straight-up essential listening, and gloriously exciting music. The pulse quickens each time I put this one on.

The emotions channeled here are wrenching, but they’re also honest, and this album’s victories feel earned.

You could spend a lot of time thinking about why these songs and what Terry and McGhee meant in their own time and what they mean now, but the songs are pure visceral experiences that you feel in your gut and your heart.

In the end, though, it is all but impossible not to come away from this album with a grin like Marshall Allen’s. The positive vibrations in the studio are evident, and the musicianship is, naturally, of the highest order (including Allen’s wailing alto).

Where on earlier releases Black Moth Super Rainbow seemed to be the gleeful expression of a twisted, sun-baked parallel world, the last two albums sound increasingly burned out on it. Panic Blooms, rather than reaching for the sticky pop highs of its predecessor, sounds like a purer expression of this emotional drift.

Back in the mid-1970s Faust asserted both ownership and ironic distance with the song “Krautrock;” here, they show that they can still wax motorik if the situation requires it.

Inches functions in the best way a retrospective of its kind can: the more primitive songs don't seem like missteps so much as enlightening diagrams of how the band arrived at such convincing current ones.

They’re almost what you expect, but not exactly, and that disconnect takes you into a strange and lovely little world.

Odds Against Tomorrow simply sounds a lot like [the album] Bill Orcutt. The new album’s original tunes evoke the same sense of Americana wrung dry of phony sentiment as its predecessor’s covers. ... The stuttering is gone because Orcutt is ready to show us straight up what he thinks matters.

You don’t so much listen to this album as dive into it, immerse yourself, let it flow past you.

Eighty minutes after Bajas Fresh started, it eases back into silence: a long album to be sure, but only exactly as long as it needs to be--no more, no less.

As a whole Book Burner may be as focused and relentless as anything they've yet released.

While the overall sound here isn't exactly unrecognizable from the band on Leave Home, there's definitely way more going on in terms of range and risk-taking.