Widowspeak seem to have found a home in the swamps, and now they're inviting us in to set awhile.

Eminem’s too talented a rapper with too good a Rolodex for this to flop, but damned if Marshall Mathers LP 2 doesn’t give it a go.

Matangi is a disappointing record because of how listlessly over and "beyond" everything it is--to the point that it often feels uncharacteristically weary and out of touch.

The Regal Years does a thorough job of not just compiling the Beta Band's recorded legacy, but underscoring the real reason why they're missed--it’s not just for the music they left behind, but for the infinite possibilities within it that had yet to be explored.

Surfing takes the disenchanted bits of Swearin' and blows them out into 34 minutes of honed unrest—it's a self-aware, deliberate, and ultimately truthful sophomore slump.

Antiphon is still a likeable, pleasant listen that will always wait for you by the hearth after a long day. But for a “forget everything you know about Midlake!” album, it's almost exactly how you remember them.

Free Your Mind manages to be Cut Copy's most homogenous and it's most "message-based" record yet, and in doing little other than turning on, tuning in and dropping out, there’s precious little separating it from the vapid electro-pop to which Cut Copy used to be an alternative.

Brain Holiday sounds like that kind of safe space, but it’s also a testament to what can be accomplished when you’re a little distracted.

L-event isn’t a world away from the Exai material. It's not passive listening.

She's Gone is delightfully restless teenaged guitar-pop made by grown, well-traveled women, the contrast of which necessarily adds a sheen of introspection over the whole affair.

Rapor should be a display of Grossi’s adaptability, but it just ends up leaving you to wonder what he actually stands for as an artist.

The collection has the potential to appeal a number of different audiences--Converge die-hards, Motörhead speedfreaks, Southern Lord hardcore kids--but partially on account of its stuffiness, falls short of those marks.

While it's no Manifest Decimation, Retrash is still one of the year's most notable mutations of thrash, and Oozing Wound show a lot of promise to get even weirder.

Craggy and hard as hell, you'll wish Chance of Rain forged a few more such moments [like the title track], but its consistent, nagging ability to knock you off balance is worth wrestling with.

Fever Hunting is a record of intense, personal reckoning, but one that doesn’t waste your time with concerns that are anything less than universal.

It is hard to parse all that's disparate here, and in searching for its most personal form, Son Lux unwittingly dipped into the uncanny valley of digital music trying to become human--something a little too perfect to believe.

LC! have never sounded so muscular or crafted melodies as instantly memorable.

Night Time, My Time isn’t the reactionarily somber anti-pop drag it could have been--instead, it’s a smart Kelly Kapowski hair-whip and loud bubblegum-crack of a record that lends itself to compulsive listening.

They've given us something in the present tense that, these days, feels depressingly unfashionable: An Event--an album that dares to be great, and remarkably succeeds.

He doesn't really offer sharp, pointed lyricism, but he does give the album a haze of depression capped by a few moments of catharsis.

Dabke lives or dies by its ability to make people move, and although Souleyman is no-frills, and borderline gruff compared to other dabke performers, there’s something in his stentorian singing that’s irresistible.

As a single-disc shot, Soul Music is a truly unique and enriching experience: a collection of old sounds from one of dance music's enduring mainstays, re-assembled in a way that sounds fresher than ever.

Kwes’s gentle songwriting sensibilities are unable to keep up with his exploratory beat making and the result is too often a mismatch that ends up leaving the listner at a loss.

The tracks here suggest that along with trap rap, Chicago house, electropop, and the dozen or so styles that get vigorously nodded at over the span of 10 songs, he’s also starting to get a grip on the rules of composing the kind of stuff the Hot 100’s made from.

Much of this album, like most of her recorded work, resembles a well-organized room decked out in tasteful furniture, with every part slotted neatly in place.

Red Fang certainly sounds good on Whales and Leeches, with the production of the Decemberists multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk again giving their instruments ample breadth and weight. But they do not match that surface with substance.

You might find it too retro, or just not hip enough, but there is zero second-guessing on Avery's part: never does he glance over his shoulder with a nod to UK bass culture or a capitulate to a straight house track.

Even at six tracks, it’s stunning how much life (and death) Wareham spreads over these tracks, and makes these tiny whispers of songs feel like the biggest secret anyone’s ever told you.

Cut 4 Me is an ambitiously catchy record as well as being an aesthetically ambitious one.

Wish Hotel might be ephemeral but it's ultimately pleasing, a cloud of scented smoke floating from your speakers to score an overcast day.

No Poison No Paradise, his latest, features some of the ugliest-sounding, and therefore best and most fully-realized, music of his career.

When Weiss manages to get outside himself, Intersections uses emo as a step towards something more resonant.

The majority of the record is a classic ride-or-die Motörhead proposition, punctuated with just the right amount of breathing room.

The shadows its shape casts may not always create flattering silhouettes, but there's both comfort and anticipation to be found in knowing that Silver's constantly tweaking the lighting.

While Cosentino is anxious to figure out who she’s become, Fade Away points to how strong she’s been all along.

That's the trouble with Sunlight on the Moon; things are just fine, but 12 albums in, just fine's not quite fine enough.

The Steinhardt who made Generic Treasure comes off as a guy far too stuck in his own head to get himself into yours.

Sometimes, Pelican suffers from being too weighed down by its roots. That said, when Pelican rages--in a way they never have before--they prove they still have plenty of life left.

These songs have more muscle than the typical McCombs song, with “Wheel” chugging like V-12 pistons, and “Satan” smoldering with sticky saxophone smears. This befits their subject matter as well as the vibe of the album, on which McCombs plays with genre more explicitly than usual.

It still might not--but fetch at least harmonizes more disharmoniously with the tenor of the times.

On Threace, the group’s second full-length for Drag City, Cave’s heart still beats to the motorik pulse, but they’ve broadened out their repertoire to include some of the other groovy, stoney sounds of the 70s.

At just over 40 minutes, Beautiful Rewind is an effortless listen, but when it wanders it feels like a bauble, one from an artist from whom we are accustomed to receiving richer gifts.

It's arguably his best of the calendar year, thanks to strong songs as well as the band’s sensitive accompaniment. Rather than evoke the romanticism of the road (as Sun Kil Moon did on 2003’s Ghosts of Great Highway) or the emotional detachment of touring life (as Kozelek does on every live album), Desertshore pry open his brain and soundtrack his thoughts.

Red Hot + Fela largely presents itself as a blur of lesser, briefer imitations of Fela's Afrobeat grooves, liberally sprinkled with pro forma rapping and vocalists singing lyrics that have lost the political fire they once had.

His restless style makes each piece sound three-dimensional, as shards of songs pass each other in a storm of string activity. It makes for exhilarating, sometimes exhausting listening. But it also makes for music that, though it hints at structure, never sounds predictable and rarely settles.

Christs, Redeemers feels comfortable and somewhat safe, with song structures that are practically standard and a few techniques repeated often enough to become predictable.

In playing it this safe, Summer Camp is just another entry in an increasingly trivial catalog.

Uncanney Valley seems too bent on interrupting serious moments with corny jokes and bewildering asides to say much of anything about anyone else.

While the songs on New don’t have the historical import or epic ambition of his best-known work, they also don’t have the same kind of flaws.

This is music that benefits from being heard loud and/or on headphones in the same way couches are best experienced by actually sitting down in them instead of just brushing your fingers against the upholstery as you leave the room.

Lightning Bolt begins with a spirited sprint before sputtering out and winding up in dullsville.

Following the "haunted murk" of Amaranthine, Youngs takes a drastic turn on Summer Through My Mind, an album of slightly unhinged but almost relentlessly tuneful Americana songs.

It’s not an essential release in the Men’s rapidly growing discography, but as a rare snapshot of a band constantly in motion, Campfire Songs is sensible at least.

Cults' sophomore album sidesteps presumptions about a rising, major-label band and admirably finds contentment not in what they could be, but what they are right now.

Electricity by Candlelight shows off Chilton's instrumental virtuosity and his impressive memory for songs.

Ooey Gooey is a proof-of-concept album--yes, the Dirtbombs can Dirtbombify this ordinarily unscuzzy genre, too--rather than one that plays to the band's considerable strengths.

Barnes seems playfully aware that his lyrics are Gordian knots, impossible for even the most devoted Of Montreal fan (including, possibly, himself) to untangle completely. And yet there are moments of clarity on Lousy with Sylvianbriar that prove Barnes is both his own harshest judge and most lenient jury.

Though repetition is part of its hammering appeal, things eventually begin to grey a bit as the record moves on, losing the punch of the pure blacks and neon reds of the first half. And though those spoken word samples that pepper the album do more obstructing than enhancing, there's no hampering Youth Code's intentions.

The evolving identities of Lee Ranaldo might be a valiant pursuit, but they have made for a problematic tone on Last Night on Earth.

The homespun warmth and tribal rhythms of its predecessor have given way to chilly digital perfection--though plenty of organic elements persist, in a way that's crucial--and the album as a whole is more thematically unified.

The lyrics really don’t offer themselves up for much analysis, and they’re also sung in a way that lets you know your attention is best directed elsewhere.

That's ultimately what Stoltz brings to the table with Double Exposure--moments of pop greatness, but also overlong tracks and too-generic delivery.

Pusha’s released a fair amount of music since joining Kanye’s G.O.O.D. Music army three years ago, but My Name Is My Name is really the first release that delivers on the excitement initially engendered by the pairing.

Drown Out has plenty of sublime moments, but as each of them has little do with any other it ends up sounding less like an album and more like a grab bag of hurried ideas, the best of which will eventually be experienced somewhere far more immediate.

While the vocal tracks are well-realized, this is the first album RJ's made in a long time that actually feels like it's satisfied to say most of what it has to say in instrumental form.

This is a bedtime record, in both the complementary and dismissive senses of the word: it invites you to relax and soothes like a warm cup of tea, but can cross the line into powerfully soporific territory.

Savage sends each line out to the back of the club every time, all underneath sugary post-punk revival guitar lines courtesy of Savage and his longtime associate Austin Brown.

Bitter Rivals too often feels like a cheap thrill ride, firing on all cylinders but without any grand design.

There's a proficiency at work on Feel Good that's undeniably impressive--it's an album full of musicians who can play and they approach this stuff with an endearing alacrity and a willingness to let Syd do more this time around that will pay dividends on future records. She's still got room to improve where lyrics are concerned.

It feels like a stopgap. Harper explores no new territory, sonically or thematically, on the disc’s seven songs; if anything, it’s a stately retreat into the 72-year-old’s well-trod sound.

The question for the producer going forward is whether any of these strong, statement instrumentals are more restricted by or benefit from collaborative effort. Because sometimes he's better off dancing on his own.

What makes Siberia so great is that it thoroughly succeeds on both counts--proving once again that, for Polvo, all those years out of the game are to be measured not in inspiration lost, but wisdom gained.

The prismatic, black-lit aura of their fascinating, endlessly explorable debut Psychic doesn’t try to stop anyone from making that connection and if you spot Jaar’s stated influences of Can and Richie Hawtin, that’s fine too: rarely has a record held such appeal for the high-minded while welcoming the simply high-minded.

Where these songs once demanded a whole lot of Northwestern indie-boom attention with their coy appraisals (both inward and outward), in today's context they tend to melt backwards, into the songs we already know.

Within these songs is the struggle in realizing that self-esteem comes more from estimable acts than outside validation. Is Survived By should receive plenty praise anyway, but Touché Amoré lead by example.

Quasi are more turbulent in spirit, especially here on Mole City, a wayward, asymmetrical double album that sees them returning to the two-piece format after a period with Jicks bassist Joanna Bolme.

R Plus Seven doesn’t have quite the disembodied weirdness of Replica, but it’s no less accomplished, another intriguing chapter from an artist whose work remains alive with possibility.

The tracks vary greatly in span, but beyond that there’s not as much of a dynamic as on prior Jesu full-lengths.

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

These tracks all feel like they were written by a very precocious teenager, and that’s a big part of their charm.

The most interesting ideas aren’t developed into anything more than ear-pricking novelty, which used to be almost all they did.

This is all-out openness and clarity, which, for better or for worse, is just a little more grown-up.

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.

Despite the overcooked jumble of your typical oft-delayed all-star concept record, it really does fall together as pure music. Just stop paying too much attention to Del's lyrics.

It's the intricate musical subtleties Stewart weaves through them that blow your hair back.

While Yuck made listeners nostalgic for the first Clinton term, Glow & Behold will just make you wish it was 2011 again.

The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2 is not only superfluous, it actually erases some of the gains made by its predecessor as it plays into the worst trappings of self-indulgence.

Fuzz consistently run the risk of noodling for a bit too long or pushing one idea a little too far. It's tricky to balance loud and quiet, and Fuzz are still finding their footing.

Without outside direction, however, Dr. Dog quickly go back to their old ways. Afrobeat specialists Antibalas provide the horns on B-Room, but their talents are wasted on songs like "Long Way Down", the beginning of which sounds like the Wayne's World dissolve tuned to a baritone sax.

Days Are Gone's is so polished that Haim could easily be seen as clinical and lifeless, but their lighthearted attitude complements their recording rigor.

Thought has clearly been put into the sequencing of Mediation of Ecstatic Energy.

Those first three albums have always been easy to put on and enjoy, and now we have a fourth to go with them.

Dramatic and driving, it never quite escapes the upper atmosphere, though thick loopy synth shapes provide an ample climax, showing how this band can go bigger without forsaking its cloistered center.

Ghost Wave get comfy in simplicity, tone, and tempo, and maintain that true course for the rest of the record. There’s a great, mid-60s Stones energy that runs underneath Ages that keeps the whole thing hearty and on its heels. But Paul’s faux-lysergic lyricism peppered throughout is never as focused as something like the Stones' “19th Nervous Breakdown”, even though he matches that jaunty cadence often.

The first seven songs play out like a 20-minute power hour, but the album loses a bit of steam after that.

Soma sits still, paralyzed by the weight of a sound that’s too big for this promising band to manage, at least for now.

The Dead C are lifers, then, who are too in control of their own sound to be detained by expectations--of their own music, of rock'n'roll, of their legacy at large. Armed Courage proves the longterm vitality of that sadly rare strategy.

As a double album, Scratch might have produced something like an elaborate mixtape with originals on one side of the Maxell and covers on the other. In execution, however, I’ll Scratch Yours plays like another artifact of the 90s, this one less fondly remembered.