The Fiery Margin shames so many songs being written today, not with reproach, but with example after elegant example of how it’s done right.

The Hold Steady will probably never match the thrill of their first three releases, but Thrashing Thru the Passion is the most enjoyable record they’ve made in thirteen years.

The decision to work these songs out while camped out next to a mobile recording truck shifts the instrumental balance; the bass is less mobile, handclaps and choppy rhythm guitar set the cadence and overall things move a little slower. And Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, who sings over half the songs, has never sounded more world-weary. ... But deep blue sentiments touch deeply, and Tinariwen’s music still has that reach.

“Equivalents 5,” a four-note sequence shifts pitches and timbres amidst constantly changing atmospheres. The tune itself never changes, but it doesn’t have to keep the listener engaged. It’s the qualities of the sounds, such as the swelling bass and swirling high end of its predecessor, “Equivalents 6,” that count. Just as Stieglitz’s images of clouds became things in themselves, the tones cease to be means and become ends in themselves.

Ethos is a different and a more complex matter. If you put out your own records and sing about leftist issues, does that make you punk? Maybe they’re trying to do something more essential, to find a version of rock that’s conscious of its History at that same time that it grounds us in the Now. Sheer Mag’s songs do that, again and again. And you’ll want to listen to them, again and again.

Thanks to Sherwood’s production, all nine songs on Rainford are engaging on the macro level; you won’t have to work hard to enjoy them, and you’ll remember how they go later, and the micro; they are, in the classic dub tradition, rich with bizarre surprises.

Some of the songs work atmospherically; other take shape as more conventional songs. Yet it all proceeds like a pastel colored daydream, faint sounds swirling into mirage-ish structures then melting away into mist. The words are so buried in the mix that you’ll need a lyric sheet to parse them; like the music, they teeter on the boundary between pastoral calm and 21st century angst. They cling to subtle melodies like a fresh coat of dew.

Tucker brings on an overload of tone, overtone and sonic sensation that swirls and eddies like a rough tide, at times nearly picking you up off your feet and tossing you over.

Full Upon Her Burning Lips isn’t Earth’s best record. ... However, it might be the definitive Earth record, the one that, in its mystery and directness, comes nearest to whatever it is Carlson has been seeking in the drone and riff for almost 30 years.

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.

The Body and Uniform seem to have found kindred spirits in one another’s daring and ferocious dispositions. The result is an excellent record, innovative and exciting, antically entertaining and deadly serious. Play it often and very, very loud.

I is the result, four long, loosely-related tracks that bump and groove and thrum and throb, often hypnotically, sometimes with a lively intensity. As an idea of musical process reimagined, I is always interesting. But as music, it’s uneven.

The album in hand makes a taut, succinct statement, bristling with angst and melting into melancholy. It is rather good in the mysterious way of rock records; hard to say what it does better than the other records, but it does it all the same.

Remarkably, the substitution of instruments seems not to have affected Segall’s overall aesthetic much. If you didn’t know, you might not recognize exactly what’s different about First Taste, except that it feels a bit more overstuffed and baroque. Yet whether it’s due to the change in instrumentation or not, there are some diversions from the usual.

Cross imbues largely electronic textures with vulnerability and emotion in a very effective way, reminding me of Mia Doi Todd’s work with Dntel. In eerie settings that seem not quite real, she conveys something grounded and human, viewed indistinctly through thick banks of fog.

Across The Field’s lyrics are dead serious, yes, but their tones are ethereal and arrangements spacious, sounding as if they’ve blown in on the keening breeze, to the point where “Carolina Lady” almost melts into air. ... Due to pairing of Louise and Morgan’s voices, Across the Field is never less than lovely.

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.

The songs often seem made up of sharp, conflicting parts, that come together at angles, fitting into the spaces left by one another.

The mix of autobiographical honesty and imaginative construction elevates Purple Mountains to something more than just Berman’s breakup album or musical therapy session. It relieves the emotions it develops, making the album a stunning achievement even more than a welcome return for Berman.

At 69 minutes, I Was Real is a lot to take in. Newcomers are advised to start with W/M/P/P/R/R, the concise, big band counterpart to I Was Real’s occasionally meandering chamber music. Still, I Was Real is sure to puzzle and please whether your devotion to rock and roll and its antecedents is intellectual or physical.

From Here to Eternity offers listeners plenty to experience. And “experiential” might well be the best way to describe this album. Like the best ambient and drone works, this massive record is one that can certainly be used for blissed-out late-night listening.

There’s a playful tilt to even the most serious songs, an arms-thrown-up celebration embedded in lacerating criticism. The revolution will not only be televised, but tracked in every conceivable and intrusive way…but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it.

Johnson only reveals so much. Fruit Bats excel in that sort of space. Johnson sounds less becoming when he lets too much irony in.

Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest is a quiet album that will tell you about the succession of small, resonant moments that make up a day, a month, a life. Sit still for that, soak it in and let it breathe, and you start to see the glow behind the ordinary, not just in Callahan’s album, but in the world itself.

Even given all those evocations and tonal shifts, Old Star feels cohesive. That’s down to the assured musicianship and the precisely engineered sound the band has mastered.

Each artist, individually, brings something impressive to the collaboration. The intersection of these gifts reveals something bigger, an art that embraces experience and vulnerability, but that also relies on studied craft. Whatever confessional comes through does so in an artful but not showy manner that makes this latest album more than just a likeable reunion.

The result is a collection that transports you to place and time you’d probably never get to otherwise, rocks your body, feeds your curiosity and makes you feel at home. Well done, I’d say.

Polymer is a summation of everything that puts Plaid rightfully on the same level of their innovative peers like Autechre, Boards of Canada and Two Lone Swordsmen. Creating worlds at once hermetic and immersive, Plaid’s music ticks along at a human level and envelops you in a protective, provocative cocoon.