Friko’s songs are real, true and felt. Songs like “Where We Been” and “Crashing Through” build from small beginnings, voice, guitar, piano into huge anthemic refrains and breakdowns.

They cram in so many styles it could easily come across too clever, like a band that claims to be equally inspired by Wu Tang, Cheap Trick and Cher. It doesn't happen. The tracks have a life apart from the name-that-tune layering that drives their sound.

There are no failures, but the back half of Kidjo’s Remain in Light feels too safe. Kidjo’s Remain in Light doesn’t surpass its predecessor, but at its best, it’s an equally thrilling examination of the still relevant questions that drove Byrne and company almost 40 years ago.

As an accidental, definitive document of time and place, Vee Vee is up there with Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, No Pocky For Kitty and the Polvo records, strong enough even to offset the hideous cover art.

There’s the sparklingly Beatles-esque “Daddy’s Gone,” the bright, Mellotron-laced “Evening Star Supercharger,” and “The Scull of Lucia” is reminiscent of Radiohead’s “No Surprises,” with a naïve, music-box feel to its melodies. It’s in Bird Machine’s heavier moments, though, where the album really hits home — and the loss of a unique artist is most keenly felt.

Deerhunter has come into its own, and the halcyon result is not to be missed.

It’s a fascinating, detailed and absorbing album, and one of the best electronic/dance albums I’ve heard in many months.

As much as the songs with the band click, “Earthsong,” which features just voice and acoustic guitar, is moving. While I hope that she continues to make vibrant music with others, Jennifer Castle can reveal vulnerability, eloquence and imagination all by herself.

For post-apocalyptic strains of electronic music, there's no one better at the moment than Andy Stott. Luxury Problems makes for one hell of a calling card.

The shorter songs that compose the remainder of American Standard are just as uncompromising, and they also foreground the band’s gift for coupling a caustic, aggro sensibility with compelling melodic structures. Rarely has noise rock been so tuneful, and then also so awfully punishing.

Jaar attempted something ambitious with this album--it stands apart, even if it never risks a whole lot. Space Is Only Noise is unique, but also a work of modesty and, for an album that samples French poetry and is rarely danceable, it's unpretentious.

Here the whole sum is less than its individual parts: individual tracks display real quality, but the album fails to cohere.

Bakesale's consistency allows it to work tremendously well as a beginning-to-end album.

Higher-end production values and a handful of famous rock guests have little impact upon their fundamental sound, which is a swirl of unfurling guitar lines, massed voices, and clip-clopping percussion. Elwan is not a soundtrack for defeat, but perseverance.

The result is that rarest of prizes for a band that’s hit 25 years old: a record that stands not only as a genuine step forward in their body of work but also as one of their very best, an album as harrowing and transportive as anything else they’ve done.

The second-hand Buzzcocks reference hints at this bomb-throwing ensemble’s secret strength: the tunes. Even at its most abrasive and agitated, Delivery punches with hooks.

Sheff’s delivery, however, is the Black Sheep Boy’s biggest flaw.

Deeper than Sky is just as much a thrill ride [as Disfear’s Live the Storm], coming from the opposite angle--confident that the growling will balance the ornate structures, it hits plainly no matter how intricately it jumps from measure to measure.

At first, it sounds a bit of a mess, and takes serious patience to unpack. But its catchiness does emerge with time, and it cements Ellison's position as one of the few genuinely unpredictable artists at work.

Fussell is still a captivating figure singing by himself with a guitar; I wouldn’t want to see his front porch abandoned. However, this album’s changes in approach and material invariably work. These and the talents of his collaborators help When I’m Called to be one of Fussell’s strongest recordings to date.

An intriguing and often lovely album.

It's rare that historically important recordings are also essential listening, but this is such a case.

A pure, dream-like quality hovers around these tunes. The subject matter is, perhaps, a touch more mature than it was. Friendships gone fallow, loved ones missing, roads not taken, the bittersweet recognition that life is what it is now and will likely continue that way—the songs consider midlife with clarity and a little sadness but not much turmoil.

Ultimately, whether The Smile spells the end of Radiohead feels beside the point when the music that Yorke and Greenwood are making at this stage in their career is this damned good.

From All Purity will never have the impact of Earth’s second album, Khanate’s self-titled debut, Take As Needed For Pain by Eyehategod or Sleep’s drone doom bible Dopesmoker, but it contains all the important ingredients that made those records so essential.

The buildup remains, but the payoff is fleeting and tentative when it's made at all – the songs do get big and loud, but there's always the hint of an ultimate impending boom which, in songs like "Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean", never comes.

Jones remains emotive yet controlled, her artistry enhancing the warmth of her delivery, taking a sound from the past and making it still new and still vibrant. This one is a time machine of sorts, but it looks back to push forward, fulfilling the persistent vision of Soul of a Woman and Sharon Jones.

It takes a unique kind of ambition to produce something like I See the Sign, but the wonder isn't just that he does it, but that he does it so well.