That the music of Beyond rocks so righteously in a way that sounds like a conscious progression from where they left off with Bug, rather than a misguided attempt to recreate the past, makes this unlikely recording comeback all the more incredible.

A densely tangled masterpiece that floods and floors by straddling swaggering grooves and boggling cacophony.

One of the more interesting – and fun – cover albums out there.

At times, Cash nails the knife-edge of hurt and love so adeptly, you feel like you're intruding on too-personal confessions.

The writing here is sharp and stunning, but the real difference between this and other Cat Power discs is that The Greatest has room to breathe.

These are explosive epics that don't get tired, tied together in an album that's both instantly accessible and grows on you over time.

The record is rife with brow-raising darts and the mindblowing beats to match, outstripping the last two Dilated records and threatening the alignment of your neck vertebrae in the process.

Amazingly, though Elan Vital easily could've become their resounding Sandinista flop, Zollo's clean vocals, knife-sharp melodies and subtle politically charged songwriting help secure its nomination as Pretty Girls' London Calling.

A huge improvement over Alligator, and likely to launch the band into a new phase.

Miguel's second album delivers on the L.A.-based musician's early promise, taking the best ideas from the debut--slow, lilting grooves, layered electric guitars, darkly squelching bass lines, meandering falsetto--into a more expansive, emotionally varied and personal sound.

It's Toussaint's soulful songs and naturally funky grooves that make this unlikely pairing work almost in spite of Costello's overbearing presence.

Rare Chandeliers is both soft-lensed yacht rap and roughneck hip-hop that's as New York as pastrami and Waldorf salads.

It's a slow, über-democratic process that, on the band's fourth album, results in sputtering post-rock à la early Flaming Lips that varies wildly from song to song.

Yes, the angsty lyrics are occasionally comprehensible and the songs, which sometimes push past the three-minute mark, have slightly more breathing room, but the chilly, irritated scrape is just as potent.

In a voice so fragile a strong breeze might overpower it, he offers sober ruminations on loneliness, life, love, longing, and artfully infuses each song with just the right amount of banjo, light drumming, acoustic guitar and vocal harmonies (often courtesy of the stellar Julie Fader).

Regrets take on new meaning knowing the background, but they're also just plain fun, and no amount of misfortune can change that.

They might be unreliable performers, but their studio work is forward-thinking and beautiful in an oddly satisfying, downtrodden way.

Bondy's third record isn't drastically different from its two predecessors, 2007's American Hearts and 2009's grossly overlooked When The Devil's Loose.

Finally, a top 40 album that attempts to capture the restless energy of recent times and spit it out in a way that doesn't just feel good, but honest, too.

The album’s creeping ambience and modest pace make it great background music at work, but its many sub-themes and intricacies also make it a rewarding sit-down listen if you can spare an hour and 40 minutes.

There's a more visceral quality that will help win over those that have been on the fence in the past.

The Stage Names is much more of a balls-out rock album than most of Okkervil River's oeuvre, and also more orchestral and layered, with arrangements that include everything from non-sissy glockenspiel to metronome percussion. The complexity is the perfect counterpart to Sheff's dense writing.

Unlike the many psychedelic loop-crazy Panda Bears popping up these days, Twin Shadow skilfully crafts structured songs that stand out and are full of soul and mournfulness.

The band’s put together one of their more accessible albums, full of immediate thrills instead of drawn-out weirdness.

The production’s grittier qualities suggest heavy emotions lie beneath his sardonic facade, but the sense that Grant feels liberated in middle age is what comes across most strongly.

A shockingly good batch of rock, pop and punk tunes.

Even if his singing never touches Damon Albarn's, he seems confident in his voice, using his shortcomings to his advantage to burn through 13 tracks inspired by a passion for late-70s Brit punk.

He delivers a tour de force on each track, solidifying his rep as one of the most dynamic performers in pop.

Without a doubt, this is his poppiest album--but he still holds on to his penchant for a good vocal-less groove.

While there's definitely some anger here, Pujol seems to make equal use of pure adolescent joy, and you soon realize that his nerdier tendencies are what holds all of this together.

Like her prior work, the songs are thematically dark and diffuse, but the dancey impulses on Vessel and Seekir signal headier paths ahead.

In reconnecting with her former Eric's Trip bandmates, Doiron rediscovers her edge, wrapping her warm, frayed vocals around awkward and occasionally dissonant melodies, layering multi-track self-harmonized phrases over heavyish rock-focused arrangements and crafting dynamic songs that leave you with a satisfying sense of being shaken up.

In this current moment, when the us vs them of identity politics is at a sharp pitch, it's an enlightened view for an artist to put forth.

Anyone who's spent time digging through crates of dusty vinyl would be thrilled to find 12 previously unheard boogie songs that stand up this well.

Cosmic Troubles lives up to the promise shown on Lack Of A Lake. It's mellow, super-chill dream pop.

The title track, Show Me, Drive The Night and Face 2 Face are ostensibly about a failing romantic relationship but crafted to read as if the daggers are also aimed inward, which adds an interesting duality to the album's titular theme.

No matter which of their sonic dimensions the band happens to be bolstering, the resulting blast is always creative, energetic and memorable. In short, they make you want to fight and dance at the same time.

Despite the more professional scenario, they resisted the temptation to pile on unnecessary ornamentation, and instead pared back to the essentials. As a result, they've finally captured their live energy on disc, coming up with the album that might be their big breakthrough.

The melodies are a bit more major key, but if you listen closely, the lyrics are as gloomy as ever (in a good way).

Devoid of filler and pop vocalist appearances, Red Gone Wild's a solid surprise for fans who thought the Funk Doc's career had gone up in smoke.

The weakest tracks--the hackneyed anthem Love Is Blind, the dreary Hurt Me--are the most radio-friendly and interrupt the album's flow. But that's not a major drawback. In fact, for many new artists, either track would be a high-water mark.

The sum is a subtly powerful lo-fi indie rock record produced by John Congleton, who’s proved capable with other bands (Okkervil River, Modest Mouse) of making the production as emotionally intense as the soul-baring songwriting.

On first listen, it seems like they picked some pretty obvious anthems, but the standards are bookended by enough discoveries to make the overall package strong.

The songs are still simple, but they're delivered with a sophistication only hinted at on her debut.

The tunes are lively, soulful and diverse, each with Earle’s Texas drawl and trademark poetic storytelling in the foreground.

At times you kind of wish he’d settle down and just write a proper pop song, but the intoxicating mess of textures and ideas is too addictive and fascinating to complain about.

Cohen’s voice is at the centre of all the songs – present and passionate, the unmistakable deep rasp even better matching his searching weariness the older he got. And it’s all here, that never-duplicated mix of sex and death, the sacred and the profane.

There are lots of references thrown into their oddball funk, but it's starting to sound completely logical and natural.

Musically, it's considerably less abstract than his last solo album, 2014's Tomorrow's Modern Boxes. Like the other albums under his name (including last year's Suspiria soundtrack and his pseudo-solo side project Atoms for Peace) it's more electronic than rock, but there's a warmth to it you wouldn't expect.

Wainwright is definitely not an artist short on ambition, and while you occasionally wish he'd show a bit more restraint, most of the time you love him because he doesn't.

Fans of Anne Briggs and Vashti Bunyan will find a lot to love here.

The record revels in the band’s enjoyable madness.

If you still have a stomach for violent, vulgar content, this is recommended.

Their lush and vivid sounds feel like a reaction to change--and the self-reckoning required to move forward.

The Mississippi native leads a spartan group that includes the Felice brothers’ Ian Felice and Greg Farley through 10 woodsy cuts that convey warmth, loneliness and the rural South’s sinister underbelly.

The songs on Elaenia sound closer to psychedelic jazz and post-rock, and feel more like improvised jam sessions than carefully sequenced electronic music. It's a risky strategy, but the gamble pays off big.

The singalong choruses are brilliant, but some of the sillier material might be best experienced live.

Frances McKee and Eugene Kelly had randy sides to them back in the 80s, and that hasn't abated.

Cam’ron has evolved on this no-frills release, and it is disarmingly effective.

While it's clear that Last Train's combination of electro and house with hip-hop and R&B is Combs's baby, it's the group format that makes it work as an album.

The rollicking and densely layered samples send Muldrow--whose vocal style draws from jazz, soul and gospel--in an unabashedly funky direction, resulting in some of her most emotionally satisfying vocal arrangements and full-throttle rock 'n' roll dramatics to date.

A couple of songs, like How To Forget, are well written but not quite interesting enough musically. Still, this album proves that Isbell is still one of the best songwriters in his genre.

By dispensing with typical pop structure in favour of improvisation and repetition, the pair achieve and maintain an openness and momentum that Someday World lacked. It feels alive.

It's a bold, intense and confrontational album that uplifts through catharsis.

Though the tunes themselves seem unassuming, based on conventional chord progressions and strumming patterns, that simplicity draws attention to Darnielle's fine songwriting.

Written and recorded on the road during a long North American tour supporting his recent full-length, The Wild Hunt, the five tracks maintain a consistently downtrodden tone.

Gravez is a unified listen whose influences serve Hooded Fang’s greatest strength: infectious hooks.

It's a mellow album, but definitely quirky, and with enough rawness to offset her soft, pretty vocals.

The album mines go-to country clichés like driving and women (“Put your sugar down on my front seat, cuz you truly know what’s good for me,” Wilson implores in the opening track, North), but for the most part the songwriting is diverse and mature.

These three suites get under your skin in a good way, none more so than the final track, a haunting gothic tale of sororicide sung by fellow Vermonter Sam Amidon.

As overwrought as the lyrics are, the songs have an attractive, dreamy, atmospheric quality that helps the London band avoid embarrassing teen melancholy. It's also surprisingly hypnotic.

Touch doesn't live up to the wild standards of the local group's ballistic live shows, but its focus on connection elevates it to more than just riff-blasting fun (although that's in good supply, too).

It uses funk, jazz and simple loops that blend elements of rap’s spiritual origins with more recent sounds in a way that allows Rapsody’s throwback lyrics and casually complex bars to shine.

The result is a collection of upbeat indie rock songs that brings out the very best in both players.

It’s his excellently loose band (featuring M. Ward and Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley), intimate vocals and fondness for chimes that keep the disintegrating threads woven together.

The result is pragmatic but also quite creative and surprisingly catchy.

While their spacious, mostly instrumental music makes good use of dynamics (and reaches ear-bleeding volumes during live shows), they mark their label switch from Matador to Sub Pop with a lightness (as in absence of darkness, not bereft of weight) that's refreshing.

A perfect balancing act.

While their last four records loosely represented the four classical elements of water, earth, fire and air, The Hunter has no obvious thematic through line, and yet its 13 tracks make for a plenty cohesive listen.

She’s often a bundle of insecurities, vacillating between defeat and empowerment on fraught songs like Nobody Asked Me (If I Was Okay) and I Blame Myself. Her hooks, however, are as appealing and direct as they come.

While some of his New Orleans ilk have strayed from the region’s classic bounce sound, the lead-off title track assures us that the same old Juve is in the mix.

As always, these include gorgeous guitar playing and pristinely arranged harmonies, and the gospel-inflected moments are especially effective.

Her fourth album comes as a pleasant surprise, arguably tough country at its finest. Her clear, pristine vocals convey longing, heartbreak and the sexiness of the working class with honesty and grace.

The most engaging film characters have likeable qualities that conflict with something that’s inherently hard to stomach. Brooklyn’s TV on the Radio masterfully employ this tension in Dear Science,--apparently their major breakthrough album.

The Toronto trio's idiosyncratic blend of psychedelic rock, techno, industrial, New Age and cosmic folk has solidified into a sound that's unmistakably their own, and that doesn't depend on the theatricality of their live show to work.

A Treasure is a snapshot of an era when Young's then-label, Geffen, went to war with him for not representing himself in a commercially viable way.

The ambitious arrangements that separate this band from their moody contemporaries can actually make the album feel too emotionally intense for everyday listening.

You find yourself wishing for even one bonus track reuniting some of J Dilla's alumni artists over an unreleased beat.

Everything is worth hearing, but frenetic waltz-meets-hora dance track Comrade Z is a definite standout. This isn’t quite as fun as Gogol’s music, but it’s more thoughtful than DeVotchKa’s Gypsy punk brethren.

The grand aesthetic that makes Arcade Fire such a force is on full display. But compared to last year's plodding AF album, Reflektor, Butler gets to the point so much quicker.

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs haven’t changed as much as they’d like us to believe. They still write great pop rock songs.

Vile’s laconic drawl and laid-back guitar heroics are so addictively blissful that eight or nine minutes don’t feel like enough.

Free Your Mind is ego-free party music that will fit comfortably onto a variety of dance floors.

It never really achieves the celestial heights of Cosmic Sky, every song after the opener feeling too much like an extended comedown, but From The Ages is an essential record for anyone who likes the sound of guitars sounding like guitars.

Thorn succeeds through low-key, simple arrangements and her empathetic, sensible voice, which has the all-seeing authority of a storybook narrator.

Some Nights could be the breakthrough album that propels Fun. to the arenas where their lack of self-restraint will finally make sense.

Flux Outside flies by effortlessly and still leaves you with choruses you'll be singing to yourself long after the disc ends.

Treading territory similar to Wilco's and working with producer Thom Monahan, they layer drum machine, vintage keyboard, organs and strings atop acoustic folk-rock textures and Cabic's soothing vocals.