Whatever a given listener’s quibbles or preferences around the two versions of the album, there’s another thing that points to a core truth about Terror Twilight: both versions still ultimately sound pretty damn good.

England’s most defiantly rococo pop group can make a richly detailed record without really trying.

Imperial Teen crafts a super-clean, super-sharp, inordinately complex collection of songs that, nonetheless, go down like cherry cola.

North is an album intended to be accessible, and it embodies its time and place more honestly than most records released this year--which is a risky thing to say while also acknowledging that the title refers to a time as well as a place: the Northern England of Joy Division and The Human League.

The most disarming thing El-P's got going for him is his ability to sound like he's broadcasting from an impossible future even while he's standing right next to you in the present.

The sound is open and uncluttered, rare for a genre that relishes tangles. There’s lots of liquid synths, and were they gracing a 4/4 thump, they’d have an Ibiza glow to them.

Lotta Sea Lice avoids the potential flippancy of a side-project, using well considered song selection and quality lyricism to drive a singular but, we hope, not a single collaboration.

Ordinary moments are distilled into liquid bits of musical clarity, surrounded by a rich but muted palette of sounds and let fly into the world. It is rare for songs so soft and confiding to sound this sophisticated.

The Stage Names is raucous, rambunctious and occasionally quite funny.

The most heartening thing to be said about Music for Shut-Ins is that it reflects the opposite ethos, a go-for-broke glut of great songs in or around house music’s orbit.

The Eternal is a rock group playing at the peak of their powers: assured but not ‘comfortable,’ and free with each other.

C Joynes and the Furlong Bray have dreamed up a wholly convincing invisible city and utopian alternative musical history of the world. While the beleaguered Havians “do not excel at the musical art”, the Bray boys do, and have created something warm and joyful out of the long ages.

It meanders stylistically all over the map, but unites all those styles in a pounding, obliterating “Bristol Road Leads to Dachau”-style drum beat that punches you right in the soft tissues.

The Books have always been both playful and serious, but their latest album moves between the two easily and without making the listener take note. It is so subtle that even when paying attention, it still feels natural.

The band strikes a balance between symmetry and expansiveness, which gets at the core of why the krautrockers have endured—disciplined beats allow the free-form wanderings to reach places that more shaggy jamming misses.

Brown addresses alienation, identity, the lure of the spectacle, religion but she does so with an oblique approach to words that mirrors Drahla’s approach to their music. If this all sounds very serious be assured that Useless Connections is an album that, above all, rocks.

The Imperial [is] a pleasure to hear. Sonically, the dark, rich timbres of The Imperial are as wallow-worthy and voluptuous as bar-light or certain kinds of sadness. Like the assuredly crappy hotel from which it takes its name, The Imperial is too run through with exhaustion to want to spend a lot of time with, but it’s perfect for retreating into when you can’t feel right about anything.

The album is full of superlative performances, and exudes an uncommon level of energy and joy, even at its more melancholic moments, and is a far cry from Roberts' often cold and hermetic (but excellent) solo performances. Despite Morrison and Roberts's being the featured performance, this is clearly a group effort, a fact further underlined by the band-credited arrangements.

Original Detroit, Northwestern, and New York garage bands figure equally in the blueprint, resulting in a robust hook-fest that plays like a mixtape of the greatest rock 'n roll songs '65-'78.

Future Islands clearly wanted to tug some heartstrings this time around, and in the respect, On the Water is an unqualified success.

It all just flows, never exploding but never falling into a stupor, either.

Sartain has always sounded wild and dangerous, but Century Plaza is, if anything, more hair-raising than usual.

Ishibashi arrives at points of repose on “Nothing As” and the closing title track, leaving behind the more challenging arrangements to focus on piano and a yearning vocal melody. It’s these moments of immediacy and unassuming beauty that leave the strongest impression.

Intense and moving throughout, Six builds a fair amount of variation into its downbeat aesthetic.

It’s loose and enthusiastic and full of joy. The radiant jangle, the bloopy bassline, the dreaming, coasting vocal line of the title track all speak to substantial talent and skill — but at play.

Ultimately, it's not likely that those who've yet to be Quasi fans will be converted by this album, but it would nonetheless be worth their while to give it a listen.

Virginia Wing pack a lot into their pop songs. Glowing hooks and nagging phrases continually draw you in.

She hasn’t lost anything, just slipped her message into an unusually sleek, attractive covering where we might not have been looking for it.