You get the feel of two of the world's greatest musicians in a room together, having a conversation and creating a document that will carry their legacy into the future. It is not challenging music. Anyone can approach it easily, and it is the perfect initiation to Touré's talents for listeners who haven't yet heard him.

High Land is not only his first statement of intent as a songwriter, it’s his most innovative, his most influential, and his most timelessly vivid. Peaking early can be bittersweet, but the album is all the better for it.

The astonishing amount of care and detail that went into All Hell might just be the result of seven and a half years of creation, or maybe it’s Los Campesinos! giving us an album big enough to live in case it needs to last a lifetime.

Musically, it feels like the first St. Vincent album since Marry Me presented without a unifying aesthetic: at various points, Clark incorporates Bond theme melodrama, Steely Dan-style prog, bouncy art pop and lechy industrial rock, making for what is arguably her loosest record, an exhale after years of fitting her songs into increasingly tight restraints. It’s a freedom that carries through to the album’s emotional content.

An album that's sonically deep, dark, and one of 2006's finest.

It's a perfect way into the world of Belle and Sebastian, even if the band spends the second half of the disc trying to redecorate that space.

Every Replacements record is extraordinary in its way, but none exemplifies their garbage-to-grandeur alchemy like Pleased To Meet Me, which rocks like early Kinks, swaggers like T. Rex, and pays tribute to their spiritual godfather Alex Chilton.

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 is one of the most exciting and passionately composed albums to appear not only in the global bass tradition but in the pop and experimental spheres this year.

The brilliance of Romance lies in its unsettling blend of antic energy with refined craft—in the depths of detachment, Fontaines D.C. strike an engaging pose.

For all its anguish, it’s underpinned by the joyful realization that she’s finally free to record on her own terms.

It’s Haim as we haven’t quite heard them before: not just eminently proficient musicians, entertainers, and “women in music,” but full of flaws and contradictions, becoming something much greater.

Amid a musical landscape now splintered into infinite subgenres, Superunknown remains the very definition of no-qualifiers-required rock--a tombstone for a once-dominant aesthetic, perhaps, but also a solid, immovable mass that endures no matter how dramatically its surroundings have changed.

Despite the omission of obvious classics like “Warm Leatherette” or Fad Gadget’s “Ricky’s Hand” (presumably because the Mute label archive was off-limits to the compiler) Close To the Noise Floor provides a fascinating overview of the formative years of British home-studio electronica: groups who were precursors in spirit, if not direct lineage, to the techno and IDM artists of the ’90s. Still, with the cult for “minimal wave” now a decade old, it almost feels like another task has become urgent: the rediscovery of the groups that did the groundwork for the outfits on Disc 3 of Noise Floor.

Each of these tracks is indeed summery in its own way, as is most of There’s a Dream. But there’s one thing that neither this collection nor Hazlewood ever forgets: The brightest sun always casts the darkest shade.

A fresh sense of discovery also suffuses I Am Not There Anymore’s more straightforward songs.

Live at the Fillmore sounds and feels vibrant and inviting, and it is curated with obvious attention and care.

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 first disc is fine, containing most of the band's singles and a few key album tracks. The second is messier.

At its best, folklore asserts something that has been true from the start of Swift’s career: Her biggest strength is her storytelling, her well-honed songwriting craft meeting the vivid whimsy of her imagination; the music these stories are set to is subject to change, so long as it can be rooted in these traditions.

Chrome Dreams carries a dream logic that's bewitching in a way the individual moments simply aren’t, a testament to how a good album sequence can almost be a magic trick.

An expanded version of the Truckers’ The Dirty South that finally reveals the true breadth of their 2004 masterpiece.

The Drexciya reissue rightly returns the spotlight to the original electro's signature rhythms and analog palette.

Each track is fully realized, thoughtfully written, and prudently performed, rolled out with a steadiness that can become a little maddening after a handful of listens.

Not simply an excellent album, Chutes Too Narrow is also a powerful testament to pop music's capacity for depth, beauty and expressiveness.

He’s responded in the best way possible: by producing a record that, in structure and scale, is every bit The Seer’s equal, yet possessed by a peculiar energy and spirit that proves all the more alluring in its dark majesty.

Where parts of Lush revealed themselves slowly, saving their secrets for intent listening, Valentine is more immediate, grabbing your gaze and refusing to let go for 32 straight minutes.

Although his voice doesn’t quiver with emotion and texture like those of serpentwithfeet, Sampha, and FKA twigs, it makes plaintive lines land as dreamy.