Sleeper is a large, though not radical, departure from the bulk of Segall’s catalog. But in dialing down the fuzz and eschewing girls-and-partying songs to dig deep into his own personal demons, Segall shows marked maturity as a songwriter.

There is beauty on Nepenthe, but it’s altogether too clean and self-regarding to pack much of a punch.

All of what you might have liked about White Hills is here--the Hawkwind-ish guitar excesses, the free-form Kraut drones that go on and on, a la Wooden Shjips or Bardo Pond. It’s just that this time, all the cotton batting has been stripped off, the fuzz removed to reveal structure and complexity underneath.

Glynnaestra is not quite of this world, but that has a good bit of its appeal.

It carries the manic, youthful energy of Parks’s very best works, plants itself deep inside the listener’s brain as though tapping into some deep American (meaning in this case both North American and West Indian) musical unconscious, and magically holds together as a single, unified and exhilarating listening experience despite its meandering through a dauntingly wide range of material and approaches.

This is a significant step up for an already promising band. Speedy Ortiz may not be major yet, but they won’t be arcana for long.

OK, it’s not pretty, but it’s pure Fall. And that’s what makes them a difficult band to feel disappointed with, even if the release is, like Re-Mit, something of a second-rate offering.

It’s not sanctimony that drags the album down so much as lack of focus, both lyrical and aesthetic. Coursing between the ham-fisted message-moments is a nimble and reliably engaging display of verbal dexterity.

On It’s Up to Emma, her sixth album, songs like “My Man” and “What Can I Do” are a bit of a shock--lusher, denser, subtler, their gut-punching intensity smoothed with sustained sounds.

If you have a weakness for fat synth sounds and sputtering early drum machines committed to reel-to-reel tape, this stuff could set you swooning.

Desperation may prove to be the best rock record of the year.

English Little League starts with a memorable and high-quality opener in “Xeno Pariah,” a compact showcase of everything the band does right.... They don’t maintain that high quality--the off-key “Sir Garlic Breath” is just painful--and more often than not, the songs fall into good-not-great territory.

False Idols could have been impressive and believable at fewer than a dozen tracks, but nine of the 15 seem insufferably lazy.

12 Reasons doesn’t find Coles in poor form, but he’s nowhere near his Fishscale peak, in terms of lyrical depth or the intensity of his delivery.

The music is a lot more accomplished here than on, say, Up for a Bit, but still loose, unpremeditated and a little bit straggly.

While there’s not that much darkness in this album, there’s plenty of scratch and friction to balance out the pop.

It’s as classy and unassumingly smart as you’d expect.

The version of Low that helped define a subgenre remains recognizable throughout, but their sound has expanded.

While the album stands well on its own, Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors provided an essential scaffolding.

You’ll Be Safe Forever is a wormhole backward in time. It’s also a timeless reminder of how valuable both Mark Van Hoen and WFMU are to the contemporary music landscape.

It’s a magnificent mix, of course, and a great summation of everything we came to accept about this group and "encapsulating an era and putting it to rest.” That’s what makes it feel like such a hollow gesture, a pat on the back they deliberately rejected for years.

Wolf People is working out the difficulties of splicing hard rock guitars and post-rock rhythms with diffident folk melodies as if for the first time, and their full-bore concentration makes it sound fresh and unexpected and interesting.

Excavation is a dark, ominous and sinister album, but Bobby Krlic is too smart to focus solely on scaring the shit out of his listeners, instead using electronics and beats to explore the haunted past and uncertain present in ways that build on his previous output without rehashing tired “hauntology” clichés.

To See More Light is another strong effort from Colin Stetson, and a familiar one. Should there be another entry in the New History Warfare series, Stetson would benefit from a broadening of his tactical approach.

It’s atmospheric, infectious and enjoyable.

While Sky Burial is a bit overlong, and meanders a bit in some of its textural climes, it’s a fascinating statement from a young band to watch.

As it is, Cyclop Reaps has the aura of automatic writing, a stream of unfiltered imagery that is, intermittently, quite arresting, but as a whole shapeless and hard to navigate.

If you want to make good, solid, loud rock music in the new millennium, this is your blue print.