It has some of the year’s best country songs, plus a groove-heavy take on the Bee Gees’ classic To Love Somebody.

Q might appear masked on the album cover, but his explicit tales of hardship, prosperity and loss hide nothing.

[The songs] are confessional and vulnerable, yet so strong. Of the quiet songs, only the grungy dirge slows things to a crawl.

Tears Of The Valedictorian is the band in top form, with Spencer Krug binding meandering tales of post-postmodernist artistic anxiety with wiry keyboards that echo Mercer's morphing vocals.

In beast mode, they conjure that rare mix of accessibility and contrarian, uncompromising power, helping More Faithful transcend its flatter fare.

Although Lay It Down is initially appealing because it has the super­ficial sound of Green’s classic Hi material, you soon discover that Green has nothing terribly deep to offer lyrically, and his vocals are locked on cruise control throughout.

All in all, a unique and satisfying effort.

The lyrics can get melodramatic (Verlaine Shot Rimbaud) and vulgar (Head), but there are gems here, too.

Shad's delivery and enunciation are impeccable. The only rewinds necessary are to catch lines like "hustle on the level of Barney Rubble on Red Bull." TSOL will no doubt give Shad the recognition he deserves.

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.

Ezra Koenig's songwriting is effortless and breezy, and the Afropop rhythms are as strong as ever.

The whole album is solid, save for Uffie's questionable club princess rap, and even that sounds better with repeated listens.

The brief tunes are sparse yet cinematic, tentative yet boldly inventive.

Like the elder statesmen, the teenage California quartet offer skewed good-time indie pop that won't change your life but will sound fantastic blasted from a front porch on a summer day.

Builds on the quiet drama of their warm, melancholic, sometimes creepy sound.

It’s a pop record, a history lesson and--for those uninitiated in the funky UK house tradition--a gateway drug all in one.

Taken all together, it’s a rousing record fit for serious-minded death metal fans convinced of the genre’s capacity to produce art--not just pained expression.

Like many of Romano's meticulous creations, it possesses all the hallmarks of a classic: a compelling, twisting narrative that bends the music to its shape.

There’s an eerie blandness to the mood that is initially off-putting but turns into a surprisingly compelling, subtly evocative combination of sadness and contentedness.

From start to finish, Researching The Blues satisfies. It's too bad there's no ballad, but the energy that crackles from these rockers makes it easy to forget about the lack of love songs.

It's a solid album anchored by The Don, his best single since 2003's Made You Look and so raucous it belongs in raves and on runways.

Despite a couple of interstitial tracks just past the halfway mark, RR7349 is more like a suite of discrete moods than a cycle of songs.

While their eighth album doesn’t take any major left turns, it brims with life, ideas and energy.

Public Strain is front-loaded with some of the more patience-testing tunes, but stick with it to discover some astonishing beauties.

Think of it as avant-garde composer John Cage trying his hand at disco and getting it right.

Instead of knocking out another wall-shaking psych rock blast... Avatar comes off like a series of sedate recital pieces performed from sheet music while seated in the round.

In a tight but varied 39 minutes, Tyler is exploring the sonic terrain in Flower Boy with a narrative concept that, like a non-relationship, feels endless and all-encompassing, then hard not to put on repeat.

Goon is an indisputable triumph and a staggering opening statement from pop music's newest Piano Man.