Even with a couple of clunkers, “Adventures in the Underground Journey to The Stars is without question South’s best effort to date simply because it has done more to command the listener’s attention.

Catastrophe Keeps Us Together is the most Rainer Maria has sounded like themselves since the Atlantic EP and is more daring than we could have hoped.

The first must-listen record of the year.

Once through, we realize Ideal Lives does not feel unified, which is exactly what makes it so interesting but also so difficult to fully embrace.

This will most likely be the best hip-hop album of the year as well as a contender for best overall album of the year.

This is rousing pop distilled down to its molecular structure, executed with confidence.

If you continually dig out your Go-Gos and 80s-era Blondie records to bask in the lip gloss-smacking sound, Dying To Say This To You is the modern recoat for you.

When the Going Gets Dark taps into a new kind of power for Quasi, giving them the opportunity and ambition to skronk and smash.

Everything All The Time runs not only on imagination but on determination – the mix of the two is what makes it exceptional.

Archer and friends deserve praise for making an album so rooted in its locale so appealing to a wider audience due to the never-ending amount of catchy hooks and melodies on display on Stars Of CCTV.

Coxon clearly shows a mastery that comes from experience, and when he hits his groove it’s infectious.

As accomplished as Black Cherry was, Supernature completes the suspected evolution from the quasi-avant-garde stylings of old to intelligent, sophisticated pop music.

Fab Four Suture is a solid, satisfying listen front to back.

Its precision in sound and spirit can’t be denied; Under A Billion Suns is a triumphant, wild mess.

Mr. Beast is by far Mogwai’s most accessible album to date, teetering between epic hard rock and a melodic, driven vocal delivery.

This is proof that Campbell made the right decision in leaving Belle And Sebastian.

Like each of Owen Ashworth’s wondrous works before it, Etiquette is intimate, often sorrowful, bedroom glitch-pop, but here it is more substantial.

Like all free jazz albums, The Exchange Session, Vol. 1 should be approached with caution. It’s a great night-driving companion and opens up to the patient listener willing to give it more than one chance.

In my experience, there have been few albums such as In A Space Outta Sound that I have heard within the realm of electronica, where a musical palette was spread so broadly while still managing to sound like part of the same project.

Although an amateur sound bleeds through all the songs on Skeleton it is obvious that this group of Danes take themselves seriously. It is that seriousness that makes this album so enjoyable, as it affords the band a certain degree of confidence in their quirkiness.

The Believer is a strong and enormous album about sex.

A mostly brilliant, though occasionally lackluster, album.

The prevailing lack of substance declares itself by the time "Still Take You Home" kicks in, and it becomes evident that Alex Turner’s somewhat chirpy vocals are the album’s lone cohesive influence.

Triumphant, bitter, despondent, but never false or insincere, The Last Romance is one of the early great listens of 2006.

Other People’s Lives is a record to get lost in, especially for those who can close their eyes and trust a sly old cuss to bring them back.

Destroyer’s Rubies is every bit as marvelous as his landmark Streethawk: A Seduction.

Song by song, all of it melts into your head, relentless, narcotic and detached, yet ultimately positive.

Not an album for a sunny day, What the Toll Tells can seem gloomy and filled with shadows.

Timeless is a step up for will.i.am and a step down for Sergio Mendes, somewhere between decency and exceptionality.

Their songs aren’t radio friendly nor are they mind-blowing in scope or execution, but give them time and they’ll creep into the rotating playlist in your head.

Be forewarned: Donuts can be a frustrating tease when the average instrumental clocks in around the one-minute mark. But for those who hold a true appreciation for Dilla and his avoidance of predictable sounds and mainstream beats, Donuts will sound right on track.

A wonderful pop record.

Her ability to draw out more and more truth with each album is indisputable, and on The Greatest, she reaches a golden landmark of self-assurance.

Blake Sennett’s second album with The Elected is more magical and limitless than his first and reminds us why we love his projects in the first place.

For what it is, namely a strong, if somewhat benign, collection of songs from a weather beaten soul who plays a mean guitar, Makers is a therapeutic listen with a gentle, if somewhat morose, melodic sensibility.

There’ll be some splainin’ to do at the pearly gates.

It’s Interpol drinking with the Stratford 4 while doing their best Catherine Wheel impression.

Present are the hints of early Guided by Voices, spotty Who outtakes and country-tinged acoustics that make East River Pipe so beloved, but here these influences tread, weighted, underwater.

Spellbinding and eclectic with the ability to be both eerie and gentle, Detrola is the best of the best of what His Name Is Alive has to offer.

Omnibus offers a lot of quality songs from a quality songwriter.

For 80s nostalgia freaks, you might find that We Are Scientists have a few things in common with The Cure, and you might find that charming. But that’ll tide you over only so long before you realize this is nothing more than a major label trying to play catch-up by signing somebody who sounds like the flavor-of-the-month.

The third time is not the charm, at least in the case of this album, which is polished to the point of being ultimately less appealing and without any angles from which to approach.

Despite the variety of acts on the disc, the songs are surprisingly uniform in structure: stripped down to Beck's vocals (which are left intact) and rebuilt with a drum machine set to either "monotonous" or "uninspired."

As a primer on The Greenhornes, Sewed Soles works best.

A Colores’s most glaring failure is its reluctance to shift from the narcotic tone it so quickly assumes.

As well as being their most accessible, The Campfire Headphase emerges as the most solid Boards of Canada album to date.

Where Cale flaps up is in not allowing himself enough space for nuance atop his overdriven guitars, forcing the deployment of gaudy keyboard settings to match the guitars’ "intensity" and even fumbling into a bona fide mall-punk chorus in "Perfect."

Like The Replacements in the early days, The Beautiful New Born Children are a glorious mess, gleefully bashing out songs in 4/4 time without much regard for melody or variety.

Strange Geometry is something special to listen to; it feels like an album to treat yourself to as a reward for lovely deeds.

Anyone intrigued by Doom should adore this album.

Interesting, unique, weird and inviting.

The problem is simply that Gang of Four got Entertainment! right the first time, whether they like it or not.

At times perplexingly distant.

For devote metal heads, Early Man may represent a renaissance of the original, pure metal sound that started it all. For everyone else, Closing In will be received as a retro novelty rather than a serious musical accomplishment.

Celebration is pure ecstasy, a sexual, spellbinding listen that acts on you physically.

Thunder, Lightning, Strike is simply amazing. It is filled with boundless, glorious noise, sewing together flamboyance, quirkiness, sturdy sampling, and a well-traveled feel that can take you anywhere you want to go.

Feels like being caught up in a creative whirlwind; every song at some point grants you the position of the fly on the wall - being privy to a group of people just chilling out, making music and living the good life.

You Could Have It So Much Better might as well be titled You Could Have It Just As Good A Year Later, since Franz Ferdinand seem to belong to the school of "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it."

MMJ’s musical palate has radically expanded: the reverb and alt-country trappings remain, but they no longer dominate the band’s aesthetic. In nodding to U2, John McLaughlin, Sunny Day Real Estate, Mercury Rev, The Clash and countless other icons through a holistic approach to the pop canon, James and his band mates refuse to let sonics define them.

A captivating release from start to finish.

A mixed bag of bouncy, speed-fueled pop songs and spacey neo-psychedelia flooded with waves of synthesizer.

The Past Presents the Future strongly matches the high bar he has set with his past few albums.

Constantly winning and resurging, not a moment of Apologies to the Queen Mary is lost to the chaos.

It is the closest you’ll get to The Bends in 2005.

With a Cape and a Cane feels more like it was made by a band of salty old musicians hoping to revive a past success instead of a sophomore album.

Set Free gives 2001’s Know by Heart - critically acclaimed and widely regarded as Amanset’s masterpiece - a serious run for its money.

Decent and decadent, Good Apollo is still ultimately the least of the band’s 3 full lengths. It continues the band’s tradition for experimentation, with melodies breaking through the chaos but it is less successful and equally disappointing with no new tricks.

It is certainly fun discovering each new twist and turn on One Way, It’s Every Way, and Clue to Kalo have created a great album to get lost in.

This style of mock-rock doesn’t have a long shelf life, as the songs cease to be funny and hipsters will inevitably find a new way to offhandedly make fun of/glorify themselves.

Noah’s Ark is a distant album - one that outgrows a few fast friends made on Le Maison de Mon Reve and depends on those truly willing to listen. It is a record designed to make believers out of its fans, and is certainly not for the faint-spirited or fickle.

Gone from Odditorium Or Warlords Of Mars are the long periods of monotony that turned Welcome To The Monkey House and The Dandy Warhols Come Down into sonic quicksand. Instead, when the Dandies come to forks in the road, their arrangements wander off into uncharted territory that’s worth exploring.

Most of these tracks can be found on the Internet in their original Iron & Wine incarnations, and all but one sounds 100% better that way.

It will, absolutely and deservedly, reside among the best of the year, but, when given space, can ruminate indefinitely in one’s consciousness and soul.

Numbers tout themselves as a dance-punk outfit, but they won’t get you on the dance floor anytime soon.

Their trademark wit is still present but less forced; instead it is more intelligent and reflective, and as the band produced this album themselves, the reward is apparent: they sound more self-assured and strong than they ever have.

With Twin Cinema, The New Pornographers have elevated themselves from a band I really like to a band that I can't live without.

More than the sound, the words of Bright Ideas are especially important; they are not particularly eloquent, but they are representative something larger: each clumsy, unsure expression desperately needs to be said.

While the best tracks are the most uneasy and strung-out - like when bearing the deranged, astral colors of the Of Montreal kin, “Marry Me” or relishing the fabulous debauchery of the Pixieish devil’s waltz, “My Wicked Wicked Ways” - it can never be denied how honestly happy Lopez sounds on Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells.

It’s apparent that this album was made with particular care, as most of John Vanderslice’s works are, but there are many cases where a more mature display of music appreciation is taken; previously, when met with such dogged emotional complexity, Vandersilce would rely on experimentation. Here, he stares straight on.

Rife with contrast and irony, Infiniheart plays like a series of short stories or films, somehow interwoven to a common conclusion.

A dark carnival for pale shoegazers who burn up when the sun hits their papery skin, Surgery is acid rock cloaked in leather jackets and chains.

It is clear Holopaw know how to unearth beauty when grounded in the harshness of reality; they also have the wisdom to leave the indisputably beautiful moments just as they found them: ready and able to elevate the soul.

Like any good instrumental album, Maritime does its job in providing a getaway.

Sons and Daughters stand apart from their poppier counterparts with their less-produced sound and their sturdy foundation of nothing more than a chugging rhythm section, intense vocals and that awesome mandolin.

A handful of these recordings show promise, and should prove enjoyable for diehards and newcomers alike.... These standouts sadly don’t compensate for the rest of the album’s general blandness.

With its elegant simplicity, Spelled in Bones may not be concerned with being an epic, but it unwittingly becomes one; it is an album capable of stirring something greater within its audience.

Body of Song truly falters in its inability to successfully blend two sensibilities.

His best tracks are truly phenomenal, worthy of the talent he’s enlisted and speaking well of his own abilities.

Alpine Static, while inherently visceral, is also emotionally gripping.

When not so buried in dank sonics, Farrar's familiar songwriting drawl feels more crisp and lively; being able to hear the record's engaging pop hooks is a revelation. On the other hand, this newfound production clarity reveals that Farrar might be running out of ideas.

It sounds a whole lot like you’d expect the new Xiu Xiu album to sound.

The next album from the Most Serene Republic will be the real deal breaker, though; they'll have to define their role within Arts & Crafts either by diverging from the Broken Social Scene sound, or by mimicking it even more.

So much of Illinois feels magical, however, in much the same way as a large State Fair: there is commotion and wonder as the population is continually enchanted by progress, but to unknown purpose.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah gets my pick for summertime album of the year.

We know in their perfect pop moments, Fountains of Wayne can be inspiring, but Out-of-State Plates proves that in imperfection, they can wear even the most admiring fans out.

At once introspective and indisputably catchy, their complex dynamic and easy likeability should certainly satiate the radio gods.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a music snob who can’t be won over by Cantrell’s lovely compositions.

Yes, the album sounds beautiful - there's little doubt about that - but living solely on a good sound isn't enough.