The whole album is bolder and brasher than previous L’Rain records, every harmony, loop, and skit engorged with verve. Cheek has figured out how to maintain her slippery, impressionistic style while also letting it be known she’s got that dog in her.

GOLLIWOG masterfully uses that spooky proximity for self-reflection and thrills. Like the late MF DOOM, who he interpolates twice here, woods is perfectly intelligible despite his layered lyrics and elusive public profile.

The least bullshitting, most accomplished and first consistently great release from Aidan Moffat and Malcolm Middleton.

If Brighten the Corners signaled a turn to the serious, the 32 outtakes and radio-session cuts compiled here give Pavement plenty of room to, as one B-side aptly puts it, "fuck around."

It is more songful than anything Lopatin has done.

The album has the particular aliveness of music being created and torn from a group at this very moment--tempered, but with the wild-paced abandon that comes with being caged and then free.

Love Remains, because of its construction, feels like music that comes from inside, as if the act of listening completes it.

Weather Alive is a testament to her conviction, an eerily physical experience with the power to make believers of the rest of us.

It helps that Labor Days is as terrific a record as anyone could ask for, really, and you should buy it.

Never before has his music possessed this much majesty, this much command, this much power.

While it might not be as substantial a record as we're used to hearing from him, it is his greatest leap forward, and further proof that few are as skilled at tracing out the complicated contours of pride, success and ambition as he is.

An astonishingly good late-period record from Of Montreal that's as uncomfortably savage in its depiction of breakup psychology as it is relentlessly catchy.

If Broken Dreams Club is indeed an honest glimpse of what's ahead, it sounds as though Girls have much more to give.

The production on the album is sumptuous and varying. A record daring enough to produce the buzzing “Bartier Cardi,” the R&B-infused “Ring,” and the quiet prowler “Thru Your Phone,” Invasion of Privacy never shrinks away from a potential risk, delivering hugely satisfying payoffs.

Cupid's Head is a dark, exquisitely detailed album that rewards patience and further cements the Field's reputation as one of modern electronic music's most satisfying auteurs.

Nothing to Fear might be the surprise highlight of this collection, even accounting for all the classic stuff on the first disc.

Despite the wide scope of her project, Herndon’s ambitious efforts are appealingly multifaceted and personal, and Platform may turn out to be the most thought-provoking experimental electronic music release of the year.

Saint Cloud is something far bigger. It isn’t just talking to Lucinda Williams’ 1998 album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, it pulls up right beside it, a vivid modern classic of folk and Americana.

With Body Talk, Robyn ups the ante for pop stars across the radio dial and raises her own chances of appearing on yours. And for all her three-album talk, she never forgets that cardinal rule of showmanship: Always leave them wanting more.

Throughout the record, each line is given its own story. Every vocal feels deeply considered and felt, yet nothing is over-rehearsed. She knows precisely when to dial in and when to dial back, when to fully commit to her longing and when to step back and shake her head at it.

On this pristinely preserved live document, the entire underdog-comeback narrative of a Rocky movie plays out and repeats itself in recurring five-minute intervals.

Lenderman has honed his songwriting such that I’d nominate a couplet for short story of the year: “Kahlúa shooter/DUI scooter.” He’s got lines that’ll paint a stupid grin on your face.

Real Estate have such a knack for classic-sounding melody that every song quickly engages on a musical gut level.

Phrases like "rare talent" are thrown around all the time these days, but this compilation makes painfully clear just how unique and valuable this music is.

While never able to fully grasp the Japanese sounds they adore, Visible Cloaks nevertheless have created an album along the axis of Fennesz’s Endless Summer and OPN’s Replica, an abstract electronic album that’s readily accessible and an immersive listen.

High Violet is the sound of a band taking a mandate to be a meaningful rock band seriously, and they play the part so fully that, to some, it may be off-putting. But these aren't mawkish, empty gestures; they're anxious, personal songs projected onto wide screens.

Suffice to say, Menomena are a hugely creative band, and with I Am the Fun Blame Monster, they've managed to make an album that's extremely accessible yet entirely unconventional.

Singles offers a wide-ranging but accessible route to his unearthly sounds.

Arriving at a particularly abundant time for lyric-driven indie rock drawing on folk and country, New Threats From the Soul stands proudly on its own.

It's one thing to be heavy, and it's another thing to be hooky, but Slaughterhouse is the rare garage-rock album to do both so well simultaneously.

Power and Hung have made either the year's most introverted party album or the most expansive loner's album; either way, there are few albums this year that offer this much space to get lost in.

Her themes of desire and fuckery are vivid and emotionally complex.

It's the humblest and most powerful wish I've heard on a record all year.

Beyond production, Grizzly Bear have stepped up their songwriting in every way, assembling melodies that proceed in a logical fashion but never sound overused or overly familiar. Yellow House is a much better record than we could rightfully have expected from these guys, better, even, than we could have imagined them making.

The album cuts through a world of chatter and distraction because it practices what it preaches, transmitting its message directly through the primal, bone-rattling force of its songs.

Prince and the Revolution: Live is the culmination of months of tireless practice, a refined gem so filtered of imperfections you could hardly believe it came together in one take.

Ghost have emerged as one of the most formidable (and important) rock bands I know. And Hypnotic Underworld is their rollicking masterwork.

Big Fish Theory is a compact rap gem for dancing to or simply sitting with, an album that is as innovative as it is accessible; if not a glimpse into the future, then it’s at least an incisive look at the present.

It’s post-protest music, made stronger for refusing to endorse personal solutions to systemic problems.

For as much ground as he covers on It's Album Time, the music feels effortless, gliding from Henry Mancini-esque detective jazz to bouncy, Stevie Wonder funk like breeze blowing through the waffle weave of a leisure suit. Conventional wisdom bears out: The looser the grip, the tighter the hold.

On Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960, Monk is a heavyweight engaging with a middleweight, and middlebrow, in Vadim, whose career was more defined by his romantic conquests than his artistic content. But that’s not on Monk. And his work here, in the middle of 1959, is as thought-provoking as anything he recorded in that prodigious year.

To what some chortle is a limited palette, the Clientele adds some new instrumentation-- steel and Spanish guitar, field recordings, violin, chimes-- to create a dense yet rich tapestry of hazy pop, like Felt at their most impressionistic.

This reissue of Peace Sells, celebrating a quarter century of Megadeth's second but first truly great album, is probably more a sop to those diehards than anything else, but if it turns one curious party into a convert then it's worth it, even in this time of bald cash-grab reissue ugliness.

This stuff would sound great behind just about any garage-rock hack, but it turns Finn's dirtbag chronicles into something epic and huge and molten and beautiful.

Instead of hiding his bootleg-bred quirks in anticipation of the big-budget spotlight, he distills the myriad metaphors, convulsing flows, and vein-splitting emotions into a commercially gratifying package that's as weird as it wants to be; he eventually finds his guitar but keeps the strumming in check.

No matter your feelings on the mic work, though, you can't help but notice the musical talent at play here, be it in the unusual song structures or the unobtrusive, color-adding use of the organ behind Dante DeCaro's unpredictable chords.

This ungainly sprawl suits the Rolling Thunder Revue, which was meant not as a mere evening of entertainment but rather an immersive theatrical experience. ... The heart of the box sets lies in those five full concerts, all sharing the same basic momentum, all distinguished by passion. The vigor doesn’t belong to Dylan alone. The Guam band is unwieldy and enthusiastic, taking the time to let all their disparate voices mesh.

The album’s production veers from trip-hop to new wave, trance to flamenco, demonstrating an innate understanding of the pop archive in pursuit of a new personal style. Each creation seems marvelously its own.

It is so fully formed and thoughtful that it feels like three or four lesser, noisier records should have preceded it. The xx didn't need a gestation period, though xx is nuanced, quiet, and surprising enough that you might.

I'm Wide Awake weaves the personal and the political more fluidly than most singers even care to try, and the consummate tunefulness just strengthens those moments where he pinches a nerve.

Nothing Was the Same is Drake and 40's most audacious experiment yet in how far inward they can push their sound; a lot of the album sounds like a black hole of all 40's previous productions being sucked into the center. Song-to-song transitions, which have always been melty and blurry, are more notional than ever.

He has his handful of obsessions, his rules, his limitations, and once in a while he returns and gives us a record like this, something that will be sounding good five or 10 or 15 years from now, or whenever the next solo record comes along.

Our Love is a very assured record, from its unconventional, austere arrangements to its unrelenting focus and thematic consistency.

While some critics take issue with Rubin's underproduction, none of the songs on American III require ornate instrumentation. Whether they've been fluffed up or stripped raw, at the core of each is a compelling statement from one of our greatest humanists.

A revelation. .... If six years is what Roxanne needs to produce a leap in scale as bracing as Poem 1, then so be it: This will cast shadows deep and long enough to sit underneath for a long time.

Overall, Psychic Chasms is something like a dream collaboration between the Tough Alliance and Atlas Sound, the latter of whose Internet-only Weekend EP shares a delinquent theme with one of Psychic Chasms' best songs.

Even with the subtle narrative running through the record, McMahon’s songs gain resonance less from their lyrics than from the forward pulse of his music.

Music that's both haunting and life-affirming, something to make you dream and think.

It's like they've spent the past two years building a bionic version of the band--not only brighter and tighter, but weirder. The group nurtures its eccentricities and the result is a record full of them.

Change, while unquestionably more mature than anything the Dismemberment Plan have released in the past, is also, at times, an incredibly powerful record that can make mundane ruminations seem like Socratic philosophy.

Just a few years into her adult life, and only one album into her recording career, Melina Duterte has swept past a milestone many musicians never even get in their sights.

The Best of Blur serves as a document for an astonishingly consistent career full of hits over in Britain.... As with any retrospective, the track listing isn't going to please anyone.... Still, it's hard to argue with the material that made it to this record. The disc, though not sequenced in chronological order, covers all facets of Blur's career.

Simultaneously sparse and rich, The Crying Light mines maximum intensity from a relatively minimal mix of basic melodies, pithy lyrics, and understated arrangements.

The ultimate draw is Antony's voice, and within the first two seconds of the album, it should be very clear to even the most unaware newbies that Antony has an amazing Nina Simone/Brian Ferry/Jimmy Scott vibrato, a multi-octave siren that would sound painfully lovely no matter what he was saying. Lucky for us, he fills that promise with worthy syllables.

Throughout, the songs on Obsidian are physical in a literal sense, mimicking the human motion of the characters described therein.

In a field of brilliant ambient techno producers, he’s delivered his most dazzling and definitive statement to date.

It doesn’t feel corny or hyperbolic to call this record life-affirming, so perfectly does it capture the flashes of gratitude, self-knowledge, and inexplicable joy that often follow an experience of great pain.

It's a true global-pop album, and a hopeful template for things to come.

The ability to live with such contradictions and give them life with his words is part of what made Scott-Heron’s work special, and McCraven’s music inhabits that complicated space and keeps its sharp edges intact.

The loose, scatterbrain album operates much like the early solo endeavors of Paul McCartney, with 80% developed gems flowing effortlessly from the damp, rustic English countryside.... Piano, strings, harps, and wurlitzer attach insect wings to the lovely songs. They'll swarm and pester your head for days.

Celestial Lineage feels like the contemporary American scene's defining statement after San Francisco group Weakling's seminal 2000 offering Dead As Dreams.

In the past, he’d mix his voice to fit within the instrumental; on Process, he makes it the focal point. Co-produced with Rodaidh McDonald, Process brings to mind James Blake while nodding to mainstream hip-hop.

Our Endless Numbered Days is cleaner, more diverse, and generally sparser than its predecessor, and, given the apparent limits of Beam's former setup, it's also an astoundingly progressive record: Beam has successfully transgressed his cultural pigeonhole without sacrificing any of his dusty allure.

Just as his thematic concerns have become richer, so has the music backing them up.

Who is William Onyeabor? doesn't provide any answers its own posited question, but the mystery and wonder of the man’s music remains intact.

With all the column inches and message board posts arguing about whether M.I.A. is an opportunist or a clever contextualist, genuine or a fraud, full of good intentions or no specific intentions at all, the closest thing to a truism about Arular is that it's a taut, invigorating distillation of the world's most thrilling music; a celebration of contradictions and aural globalization that recasts the tag "world music" as the ultimate in communicative pop rather than a symbol of condescending piety.

The slight nods to accessibility and the decreased stylization might disappoint some of the faithful at first, but Strange Geometry grows more appealing with repeated listening.

Because Up in Flames is so focused on big moments and aural candy, it's wise that Snaith decided to keep the record under 40 minutes. He blows you out and then packs it up.

The songs, interludes, pacing and sequencing are all as they should be, helping to make Quicksand/Cradlesnakes Califone's best record.

Whether it's the lush power-balladry of "Beg For the Night" and "Be Mine Tonight" or throttle-pushing rockers like "You Call Me On", Confess is defined by its melodic and emotional immediacy.

Fanon believed that romantic love was possible--that, above all else, was why love was worthy of critique and dismantling. Sumney, for his part, seems to have gone down a different path: diving into the bleak void in search of answers, giving us sumptuous music along the way.

The big news is that The Epic actually makes good on its titular promise without bothering to make even a faint-hearted stab in the direction of fulfilling its pre-release hype.

She’s an outsider claiming a piece of the mainstream for herself without sacrificing what makes her music so special.

The record's conceptual brilliance lies largely in Bejar's ability to craft deeply moving passages out of ostensibly artificial and contrived elements, subtly suggesting that all music, if not all human expression, is in effect some sort of artifice.

It isn’t quite as punchy as RTJ2, which was brutish in its tactics, with nonstop bangs and thrills, but RTJ3 is a triumph in its own right that somehow celebrates the success of a seemingly unlikely friendship and mourns the collapse of a nation all at once.

Sounds and ideas repeat constantly, yet Street Horrrsing never feels redundant.

Disc One gives us the final studio album, remixed and scrubbed fresh so we can avail ourselves once more of its glorious shadows and submerge ourselves in its delicious mood. The remaining four discs—two of unreleased outtakes, one previously available, and a live set—repositions Time Out of Mind as a rebirth rather than a farewell.

There's never a dull moment across AWLWLB's 38 minutes. It's all peaks.

This is principled music, not doctrine, and while inspired by its surroundings, it’s defined by its leader making bracing art.

Lindstrom knows all the right moves to give his own brand of spacey disco an air of transcendence, but the result feels so effortless that his facsimile and the "real thing" become indistinguishable--a fake so real it's beyond fake.

This stripping down and moving away from easily definable mood makes And Their Refinement of the Decline a bit harder to grasp initially than any previous SOTL record.

Sternberg’s deep compassion radiates across I’ve Got Me. By album’s end, they come to feel like a friend—one who’s trying their best not to repeat the same mistakes, but still texts you from their ex’s place in the middle of the night.

On Beyondless, Iceage reach for grandeur with more tenacity and suspending energy than ever.

A record that's in the same league as Homework or Discovery.

The cumulative effect of Shut Up I Am Dreaming surpasses "I'll Believe in Anything"'s ostensible perfection. That's a brilliant song, yes, but this a brilliant album, ballooning with those sorts of moments on repeat.

Room 25 is quarter-life crisis turned breakthrough, a balm through which Noname offers a taste of the simple sort of heaven that she's still searching for herself.

Philosophy of the World is the realest version of the Shaggs, flaws and force in full-view. A teenage symphony this is not.

Newbury conceived them specifically as a trilogy examining his own romantic past as well as the country's contentious history, and 40 years later, they sound just as imaginative, evocative, and emotional as ever.