With Wheeltappers and Shunters Clinic are back, sounding like Clinic, and it’s a very welcome return. ... Clinic don’t so much sound reinvigorated from their break as they have issued a bracing reminder of just how distinctively compelling they’ve always been.

Once the album’s 50 minutes have elapsed, one feels a sense of satisfied exhaustion in having traversed a musical landscape both desolate and majestic.

Yorkston’s collaboration with the Second Hand Orchestra seems especially fruitful, giving him a jolt, shake them out of his usual tricks and proclivities and opening up new possibilities. If the stories don’t quite scan, the musical more than makes up for it, carrying you past the sense of this music into a restless, moving, non-verbal understanding of what the artists are going for.

If this is fusion cooking, they've balanced the spices well enough to come up with a dish that tastes mighty good.

He easily sidesteps the drama that dogged he and his band throughout 2007 (and ultimately led to their declaration of hiatus towards the end of the year), turning Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel into a beautifully melancholic slice of shimmering, ambient pop.

Walking With the Beggar Boys has so few bells and whistles that it might not make it through your earwax on the first listen, but these songs are the most rewarding the band has created.

While it wouldn't be fair to hold Obscurities up to Merritt's 1990s albums with The Magnetic Fields and others, the material here certainly makes a strong claim for achieving next-best-thing status, providing a welcome nostalgic reminder of the many pleasures offered by what has already more or less become a nostalgia act.

Her performance reinforces the thrust towards freedom that shows up in the other songs. She isn’t just playing with the women and men in the band; she’s rising above them, flying high and alone in the blue.

The Hard Quartet is one of my favorite recordings of the year, a strong collection of songs made by established artists who refuse to be hemmed in by anyone’s expectations.

With Crush, these kids found a way forward, and strangely enough, they found it by looking back.

The recording shows little evidence of how acoustically challenging the glass-walled structure can be; every element registers clearly so that the music yields where it needs to and slams where it must. And slam it does, with big beats and massed choruses that bring the messages down hard and certain.

These are not songs that wander aimlessly, that get lost in mandala-like intricacies that make sense only in large, sunny green spaces, late in the afternoon, preferably in Vermont. There’s a tight cohesive tunefulness to this second album from the New Jersey-based band that transcends the genre.

This is what jamming econo means to kids whose horizon isn't classic rock and hardcore, but grunge and post-hardcore. It sounds really good.

Whatever ensemble he employs, and in whatever style he plays, unpredictability is a major component of his M.O. Silent Movies is no exception, and his formidable technique services music that continually thwarts expectation.

She makes her latest album with a full rock band and a headlong sense of joy.

It’s all very nice and a bit surprisingly, like your grandma’s favorite stew with some unexpected new spices in it. For an impromptu gathering of talents, Bonny Light Horseman feels very lived in. Here’s hoping it’s not a one-off.

Cryptograms is a tonal wash of brisk speed kicks and seasick comedowns, the kind of thing you could lose an afternoon to.

Nothing about the complexity of OOIOO’s music stops the groove from, well, grooving. These cuts move and pulse and howl. .... If you like Lightning Bolt, it’s probably because it makes you happy. It runs as hard and fast as any music on the market, but in a fun way, not an exhausting one.

The final rush commingles anguish and ecstasy quite powerfully, glorying in the significance Mapplethorpe held for Smith and resonating for anyone who has lost someone and is willing to be taken to the water.

There are times when Lenker approaches Marissa Nadler’s eerie otherworldliness, though not for long. ... Couple that with a really good, dense, aggressive musical attack, led by Meek, but supported by bassist Max Oleartchik and drummer James Krivchenia, and you’ve got something special, especially in the more rock-oriented tunes like “Masterpiece,” “Humans” and, especially “Paul.”

As deeply rooted in American tradition as that sound is, it is never straightjacketed by nostalgia.

Much has been made of Gelb’s ability at cobbling together musical forms, but overlooked is his skill at entwining contradictory moods.

Clearly, John Darnielle has a life story that’s inspiring as more than just the tale of an unconventional indie rock hero. Now that he’s making his best music, I think we can all be glad that he’s finally telling it.

Modest reservations aside, this is more top-drawer stuff from Shauf, as we’ve come to expect. Drink deep.

Their exploration of the genre's boundaries is so lithe and confident, and their studied aloofness here so convincing, that the familiarity comes across as authenticity and the restless impulse for expansion feels, at times, transcendent.

Songs for Pierre Chuvin, whatever its origin story, would stand on its own as a regular album, melding retro sounds and recent writing, with its spontaneity driving its melodies and structures. It’s a treasure for fans, full of references and idiosyncratic meaning. Even if probably won’t serve as the best starting point for newcomers to the band, it’s not strictly an insider’s work.

This is a record that makes me hope for even better things to come.

Akinmusire easily trumps Truffaz in the area of technical skill. His agile delivery and rounded, even-tempered tone recall facets of Kenny Dorham and Dennis Gonzalez in terms of burnished beauty and melodic alacrity.