Wolf Parade is a great band, and while one will automatically think of Brock when they first hear You Are a Runner I Am My Father’s Son, (or any song featuring the first of the band’s two vocalists, Jason Krug,) many of the album’s strongest moments actually come when they more closely resemble other bands.

Her wordplay ducks and weaves among the braided guitar melodies and idiosyncratic rhythm section with a razor-sharp cutting edge, with varying levels of daintiness, allowing the dangerously catchy melodies and thicker-bodied hooks to amass into a fantastically fluid LP.

I don't think it would be a stretch to say The Men were picking up where The Replacements left off.

Most of Attack on Memory has an abrasive, shrewd backbone, but it's those moments where Baldi hones his sweet touch where the album finds a satisfying balance of surprise and comfort.

It makes for something of a experimental jam session where its members are trying to perfect a unified sound alongside different lyrical approaches, which strike a fine balance between campy sci-fi imagery and silly, doom-laden metal tropes. And yet, once it’s fused all together it comes across as one big slab of raucous, careening psychedelia. King Gizzard are still grounded to their garage roots.

The mixtape-like sequencing of Saturn occasionally minimizes her ability to write hit after hit--there's hardly a dud here--even if she just misses the mark at producing a more involving mood piece.

His irrepressible, grizzled vocal is the master key to the soul that is often kept hidden behind the pewter façade, and it’s the desire for more glimpses into it is what makes Gargoyle as affecting as it is.

Wildflower is simply a joy, an euphonious hour-long journey that exists in some wonderfully naive and blissful alternate universe. It’s an aural paradise you’ll never want to leave.

Faking the Books... is to Tridecoder and Scary World Theory as OK Computer was to The Bends – a quantum evolutionary leap that, taken consecutively, quite takes your breath away.

It’s not cynical and calculated enough to be a shameless cash-grab yet it’s not self-indulgent enough to be a vanity project. Perhaps it’s just a stopgap in the catalogues of two big-selling artists; an intended homage to the music that made Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak. They’re making this music because they like it, because they want to, and because they can.

With Skying, The Horrors continue to explore familiar territory whilst refining their idiosyncratic slant like proficient tastemakers.

Lisbon is up to the band's usual high standards; if you've followed their career closely that's really all you need to know.

While no commercial crossover will be gained from Eye Contact, Gang Gang Dance have released one of the most captivating albums of the year, each song different yet cohesive, challenging and ultimately highly rewarding.

What makes all this work, however, is Iceage’s commitment to darkness. Their signature, dirgey melancholia broods through standouts like Catch It and the title track, reminding listeners that while Iceage are willing to embrace pop, they’ll never do it with a smile.

Both cynical and biting, Nothing Feels Natural is a timely and involving call to arms that promises great things from Priests sooner rather than later.

Heroic, monumental and wondrously sensual.

Grinderman 2 follows with more of a racket, still the full-throttle guitar-driven rock meant to separate men from boys.

It’s not always the most memorable listen, though through its free-flowing divagations we finally begin to feel more empathy for an artist who’s too perceptive to hide behind his taut guitar accents.

Devour is best experienced from front to back. Shifting from Chardiet’s possessed screams (Spit It Out), to the dial-up-modem-from-Hell (Self-Regulating System), to grotesque static (Deprivation), Devour is shockingly sublime, like some warped, morally corrupt gradient. What’s equally mystifying is how textured and thematic these songs are, subtleties and surprises that are only revealed through brave, dedicated consumption.

What she's gained in the process is more focus and confidence, and as PAINLESS proves, an intriguing foreshadow of things to come.

Lykke Li holds to her regal aesthetic and simple drum and bass lines doggedly; whether stripped down or ramped up she has a well crafted, appealingly consistent sound, and it's what she puts over this that completes it.

With this latest effort, Superchunk have proven just that, and done so in their own insightful, rocking way and without compromise. All hail the kings (and queen).

The rousing, yet equally understated the book on how to change part II brings closure with a welcome luster, though it's not enough to salvage the album's soporific middle half.

Their free form approach is certainly amusing, perhaps too cerebral at times, but that’s just another way of reinforcing they want us to figure out what they’re aiming for.

Although Marika Hackman’s covers album lacks for originality in the title department, she more than makes up for it over the course of the ten tracks.

Centralia finds Mountains in their finest form yet, indicating a new level of comfort in the space they've been carefully carving out over the past decade.

She’s emerged from the thickets of Laurel Hell more assured than ever before.

Even if this type of thing isn’t your bag, it’s really pretty irresistible and is worth a shot.

From start to finish, The Hunter is a collection of songs that inadvertently expands their repertoire and capabilities while they turn off their heads and let their fingers tell the story.

In the case of Blackjazz, Shining spreads lyrical passages across songs, repeats song titles with different music attached: they basically create an environment that can only be understood as a whole.

It feels like they've been doing this for years, and while they quite literally all have, the way they have formed and moulded that sum of past experience into one new entity is nothing but impressive.

Snaith is able to hold onto his Caribou identity despite the new techno influences. His new album Swim reaffirms the supreme artistic capability that is Caribou.

There is a monumental feeling of strength and courage in their music that is impossible to deny.

Aside from dubstep-resembling "I Don’t Love You Anymore”, a breakup song that doesn’t really mesh within the political context of Hopelessness, there’s hardly any fault to find in Hegarty’s incredibly imaginative portrait of a world that’s in dire need of some reformation.

Ultimately, The Balladeer is a solidly enjoyable record, one that captures McKenna’s voice and style nearly perfectly.

One can't help but admire Booker's big swings, and when they are this compelling, everything else becomes a moot point.

Lime Garden isn’t shy about their influences, sure, but what many of those artists lacked at the time, soaring choruses that linger for days, they deliver in spades.

Where ["The Bliss"] bubbled and spat like hot fat, its meticulous construction overflowing with polyrhythms, Black Noise seems disjointed and overlong even though it runs for roughly the same duration.

The excellent-to-annoying song ratio on this album is definitely high. Still, their first record was solid from start to finish, and this one smacks so much more of Lennon/McCartney than Kapranos/McCarthy.

Under Color of Official Right is built with a steely fortitude, treating its subjects with respect and bluntness even if there’s nary a hopeful or comforting prospect to look forward to.

It Still Moves is the kind of album that can inspire both wonder and respect in equal measures.

While every song here makes note of the relationship at the center of School of Seven Bells, this is not a downbeat album. Instead, it's a record that showcases everything the band is about.

This is one of the few releases of 2008 that shook me out of my complacency and forced me to accept it on its own terms.

The tracks evoke comparisons to artists like David Gray (“Pretty Flowers”) and Josh Ritter (“Heart In The Mirror”), which may provide a side glance or two but perfectly complement his high-pitched twang. Regardless, Meek brings his own flair to whatever he makes.

For the first time is usually nonsensical, frequently transcendent, and compulsively listenable. Everything that sprung to mind is on the wax here, but BC, NR don’t forget to make it catchy and groovy. In nailing that balance, they’ve given us the year’s first capital-G Great record.

While it may not attain the dizzy heights of I'm New Here, Smith's deftness ensures that We're New Here is far more than just a vanity project

There’s so much here to enjoy, we can tolerate the occasional lyrical overreach.

If Anything was good, but this is the work of a band who are well on their way to establishing themselves as key cogs in their category.

Sure, there aren’t quite the visceral heights that the best tracks on w h o k i l l provided, but you will not be thinking that during Nikki Nack’s best moments. Listen to the words she says, let them sink into your head.

While Wall of Eyes captures the trio at their most musically freewheeling, it also loses the ordered potency of A Light for Attracting Attention. Yorke himself has also reverted to themes of self-identity more cryptically, making less of an impact compared to his sardonic candor identifying with the everyday anxieties of living in the outside world's structured chaos. Still, it's clear that The Smile operates on their own accord.

Soused, with its impenetrable construct and heavy ambition, delivers on many fronts, most notable of which is in its thoughtfully composed immensity.

Age Of is an excellent and frequently rewarding album; where one might expect a musical cul-de-sac, there is a 180-degree turn that somehow always feels appropriate, a testament to two years of songcraft that have clearly paid dividends.

It's far-reaching in scope but it's also conceptually uniform, a beautiful mess of an album from a band who is inching their way towards the imperial phase of their career.

Strange provides the blueprint for his many talents on the album—proving his taste knows no bounds—pursuing a scrappy, meandering course that can sometimes lead to rocky, albeit thrilling, dead ends.

What's most impressive is how Lenker stands apart from both modern singer-songwriter tropes and the cult psych-folk canon, creating a haunting mood that touches upon both sides with her own unique touch.

Rocket shows far more sophisticated rhythmic interplay than some of their shoegaze-leaning contemporaries on this debut.

The only real issue that Shura faces on forevher is that the record can be too much of a good thing. The psychedelic grooves that back the project can almost be suffocating, not allowing melodies or choruses to flourish on tracks that feel like a huge hook could bring them to perfection.

Loom seems to touch upon many periods within the extensive annals of indie pop, but Fear of Men put their own stamp with smart, modish pop tunes that intend to make sorrow, in the face of uncertainty, sound invigorating.

Superchunk do come back full circle with a timeless, uniform body of work, though it also takes them back a few years after their late-career breakthroughs Majesty Shredding and I Hate Music.

Overall, this album contains some of the most original and hypnotically brilliant rock music ever recorded.

It’s an evocative listen, though they can’t quite break the compulsion to play around with passing fads.

Despite Live Forever not being perfect, Bartees Strange swings for the fences on every song here. It’s exciting just to watch it unfold in front of your eyes.

Delicate and lovely new project, one that chronicles a relationship blooming and decaying in equal time.

Circumambulation practically evades any trace of sheen that was found on their two previous efforts. The differences are minimal but not predictable, lying somewhere between sludgy stoner metal and expansive, yet acute rhythmic precision; it’s their ability to never stand on solid ground that elevates their caliginous mid-tempo tunes.

Of This Earth, like most Shabaka Hutchings albums, dating back to Sons of Kemet, requires full immersion. On his third LP, the jazz polymath takes you on a musical journey that requires both stillness and stimulation.

All told, For Clouds and Tornadoes is a quality release from a musician that's not afraid to explore outside the usual methods to create extraordinary music.

If you listen to it twenty times, you still find something new.

With Buds, Ovlov prove once again, and perhaps more effectively than ever, that the alchemy of passion and songcraft is undeniable no matter where your devotion resides.

Barwick’s angelic voice channels whale song, her textless mantras capture a serene ambience, and her ear for arrangement are far beyond her years. Most impressive, though, is Barwick's relentless inventiveness: Florine is unlike anything you will hear this year.

Perri needs to lean into the experimental nature of his work—take more risks, and avoid being so laid back that his ghostly melodies have all the impact of a polite, good-natured apparition.

It’s mostly a collection of decent tunes, polished to a blinding sheen.

The hazy production in Sunbeams does, to an extent, water down some of Parks' poetic musings and reduce them to pleasant background music. Even if there are hardly any low points here, the forceful sentiments of past songs like Angel's Song and Romantic Garbage are sorely absent—both of which are just mellow as this project but more musically rewarding.

This is hip-hop that doesn't attack; it drifts. Black Up is full of ghostly howls and weird barely-there percussion, devoid of anything like a single.

Through no fault of their own, some their more twangy performances don't sound too distinguishable from like-minded acts Wednesday and Big Thief. Bad timing, perhaps. But these quibbles don't detract from Ratboys' refined ebullience, glistening with an authenticity that sounds even better when you add the Chris Walla effect of making music sound irresistibly bittersweet.

B’lieve i’m goin down is further evidence of Vile’s conclusive authenticity, and his position as one of songwriting’s most understated commodities.

Once Wilco blazon forth their centerpiece, the remainder of The Whole Love takes a more familiar form that embraces self-assurance, even if those lopsided moments sum the overall experience.

This is the band’s second album after their somewhat missed "Kamehamena," and their pounce only proves to reinstill the style of the album’s predecessor.

It's one of those rare, almost perfect follow-up, albums from a promising artist unafraid of taking her music to even more thrilling places without sacrificing what made it so compelling to begin with.

In refining their approach, Horsegirl stumbles onto a new set of influences that takes away from their true identity. Nevertheless, there are flashes of brilliance -- Frontrunner, accented with a lovely twang, details a story of romantic yearning that hits deeper as it progresses.

Instead of modest waltzes and looped drum machines, there’s an evident maturity in the way the production unveils itself as richer and far more multifaceted. When you can’t break the familiar, expanding on those opportunities only makes you more in control.

Whether you will enjoy this ultimately depends on whether you're more of a rocker or a dancer - indeed, some people much preferred the mellower sound of their last record - but there's little denying that this album misses a lot of the urgency and sheer emotional energy of the band's first two LPs.

One good single does not a great album make, and unfortunately, the rest of the record becomes pretty tedious, pretty quickly.

Best listened to sad and lonely in your bedroom, Pang is the perfect dance album for smart and sensitive boys and girls after their day’s journaling are done.

You can imagine, and probably relate, to the monotony and helpless angst that attacks us when we're a certain age, going through certain ritualistic processes of life. So imagine this record as the soundtrack to those feelings, and how liberating, not only that would have felt then, but does feel now.

It's the album that makes her the comparative standpoint in her own right--suggesting subtly that she may one day be the talismanic songstress for her own generation.

Listening to their accomplished new EP, So Much Country ‘Till We Get There, I’m reminded of both Big Thief’s earlier work and Friko’s wonderful Where We've Been, Where We Go from Here.

Wuthering Heights is a competent, glossy synth-pop work, with a handful of soaring highs that are offset by a couple of duds.

Utopia does function as a companion piece to Vulnicura, if only because it doesn’t require much effort to separate them as contrary forces.

Even though it does occasionally dip into overly-saccharine territory--like in the largely plodding End of the Summer--it more often makes for a good match with the band's more heavily melodic--though still energetic--approach.

Crack the Skye follows Mastodon’s uncanny tradition of crafting a brand of heavy metal that is unabashed, mazelike, and above all, fresh.

Stormzy makes every minute of this album count. By giving a voice to both the street and religious sides of his life he is able to produce a well-rounded, exciting project.

Janelle Monáe has not simply lived up to our expectations here; she has shattered them, delivering a confident, creative, and enormously entertaining record that marginally betters her sublime debut.

Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper can be a particularly infuriating listen since it wanders between moments of greatness and utter tedium.

Weird Little Birthday is a superb debut, beautifully recorded, with everything in its right place.

A sumptuously produced record with an enviable hit-to-miss ratio, Middle of Nowhere delivers more than enough drama, humour, and sparkle to solidify Musgraves’ place on the country music throne.

It’s another intriguing entry into the Charli XCX canon, even if it does feel like more of a stopgap than anything. But hey, right now, that’s okay too.

The good does far outweigh the bad, and had this album been a bit more condensed, it would have been one of my favorites this year.

...Like Clockwork is easily the best release from the band since Songs for the Deaf.