It succeeds, unequivocally, as usual.

Limbo could have passed as a follow-up to this year's excellent Mr. Impossible, and likely would have met with the same acclaim.

A Bomb in Gilead, assisted by several garage vets (Tim Kerr, Lynn Bridges, Jim Diamond), captures that live sound and goes it one better, uncovering unexpected depth, soul and intelligence in a set of boot-stomping songs.

More so than any record I can recall, Metal Dance cuts the widest possible swath through the zeitgeist that was British post-punk. Antichrist, meet then your children's archivist.

Their debut conveys a unique sensibility that's endearing without being cloying or calculated.

It's as though she's taken the lesson of The Trip--that you can get over the most extreme pain--and used it to come back to her musical home.

There is an introspective quality to Personal Space.

With piano, female vocals, strings and extra percussion, this is the fullest, most expansive Om album to date.

Whilst this is a lovely, well-made album, nothing separates it from countless other acoustic folk recordings.

While pleasant enough on a superficial level, the band's third full-length, Traps, falls short of the kind of coherent, compelling vision that would lift them up from intermittently-engaging mediocrity.

It's not Segall's best, but Slaughterhouse sits near the top of the heap of loud, ignorant party garage.

Throughout this often incoherent hodgepodge of tunes, Baroness has mostly abandoned the contrast that made its previous records work so well.

Mohn is a foreboding album that also has its comforts.

Broken Water's second full-length, Tempest, is at once a deeply competent and unoriginal record.

Go figure, the most enjoyable parts of the album are hard to separate from the most annoying.

Last year, the Moritz Von Oswald Trio sounded like they were headed for space. This year, I'd say the mothership has come back home.

Welcoming and unique, this is one of the best debuts in recent memory.

Brian Borcherdt has made rough, beautiful songs out of broken bits of things, haunting atmospheres from the gritty transience of dust, and that's something worth doing.

Skullways settled into a sound that's unstuck in time, and works for both the brain and behind.

Subtle differences aside, Magic Trick delivers the same kind of trippy, guitar-jangling, tambourine-shaking pop as Fresh & Onlys.

The reality is that Valley Tangents just sort of floats by as background music even whilst actively listening.

This is not a diamond in the rough as much as it is a piece of carbon that might, with extreme pressure and effort, turn into something someday.

In Longtime Companion, he puts the drawl and shuffle of country into the service of a very peculiar vision, embracing and even seeking out the contradictions.

The layers of rhythm, voice and electronics here possess the ability to tell stories, just like the novel after which they're named, and out of their conjurings emerge atmospheres and melodies that will remain in your head.

[The production] intrudes on the songwriting, distracts the listener, and interferes with what are otherwise solid and sometimes deeply moving performances.

While providing an exciting document of this stage of the band, We Rose From Your Bed… offers a tantalizing hint at what's to come.

The Lost Tapes doesn't feel like a barrel bottom being scraped; it's a scoop into a pond still teaming with life.

The best moments on Appia Kwa Bridge stand up to anything he's ever done, and while it purposely breaks no new ground, there's something to be said for sticking to what you do best.