The urgency and vigor he packs into the unplugged punk of Workbook--the frequent knuckle-scraping attack of his strumming, his refusal to whisper or withhold--are what make the album a testament to tension rather than hesitance.

With their documentarian dispatches from the meanest streets, Crack Cloud could never be accused of faking it. But the strange beauty of Pain Olympics is that it fills your heart even as it’s kicking you in the kidneys.

These songs feel less like songs and more like treasures, ones that fill you with power and wisdom, and as a result, Too Bright seems capable of resonating with, comforting, and moving anyone who's ever felt alienated, discriminated against, or "other-ized," regardless of sexual orientation.

These hooks are delivery mechanisms for often acerbic, often exhausted lyrics about the endless crap conveyor belt that is life and love as a girl.

Written by a motley crew of college professors and white bohemians, these songs undeniably lift from Iraq’s maqam tradition and India’s ragas, from the barebones blues and brassy bebop. But they feel like composites of enthusiasms, made not with a mind for exploitation so much as exploration.

The guests bring a welcome sense of contrast to Armand Hammer’s own styles. Moor Mother’s breathy enunciation floats through woods and Elucid’s more pronounced flows, while Pink Siifu’s monotone straddles the line between lethargic and loquacious.

On paper this may sound like a man making a mockery of his feelings. But once you’re used to our delirious narrator and his disarming hairpin turns, the gentleness of Fendrix’s heart overpowers everything, even the teeth-grinding thrash that concludes “Princess.”

This is her most ambitious record yet.

Where career-spanning setlists from most veteran bands will inevitably succumb to wild variances in tone if not quality, Live in Brooklyn 2011 dissolves three decades into a holistic 17-track noise opera that enshrines Sonic Youth’s greatest attributes and contradictions.

Cold House takes a fantastic batch of songs and intelligently mixes in cutting edge electronic elements a la Autechre and Nobukazu Takemura, a couple of west coast underground hip-hop artists, and some delicate backing arrangements, and creates one of the most innovative releases of the past year.

Things We Lost in the Fire's high points are, without question, the best they've done.

Many of the songs on The Quanta Series were released in previous years as singles. Sequenced into an LP, they carry more dramatic weight.

Full of slippage and lacunae, whipping itself from moment to moment and then fading, ORCORARA 2010 is so absorbing as to make the world outside it seem bizarre, and in this it has political power.

The new deluxe edition of New York contains live versions of every track, glizted-up arrangements of the Reed standards “Sweet Jane” and “Walk on the Wild Side,” one non-album instrumental, a long-out-of-print concert film, and a number of demos and rough mixes. These works in progress largely serve to show that Reed got it right with the album’s final version.

The rhythms are stately and unsyncopated. The arrangements are lushly orchestral. The songs are mostly around six minutes long, proceeding at the unhurried pace of guided meditations. And, perhaps owing to the sense of communion-via-solitude espoused in the first track, the lyrics are concerned with “we” nearly as often as they are with “I”.

For 30 years Swans have challenged the boundaries between beauty and ugliness, music and noise, catharsis and abuse.... The Seer is the album that transcends them.

There’s a lightness to Simz’ tender explorations of Black fatherhood, the failure of her community to help those struggling with mental crises, and the slippery loss of solidarity across economic divides on “Broken.” Sometimes the production’s soft edges can belie the bite of the words, but overall it’s a pairing that brims with possibility.

The subject matter of Purple Mountains is grim, but he’s still David Berman, and he can still dazzle with the sheer beauty of his writing or wink at the camera to lighten the mood when necessary.

Revisiting All Hail West Texas over two decades into the Mountain Goats’ existence makes a central irony in their story all too clear: it’s not a lonely record anymore. A handful of these songs remain the most iconic in the Mountain Goats catalog.

On Puberty 2, every note she's played comes together. It’s a resounding personal statement and the clearest sign that while she might be an “indie rock” artist, she currently stands apart from--and above--much of the genre.

The discoveries Ghersi makes on Arca allow him to write his most relaxed and intimate songs. His work is still mysterious, but not as opaque--it doesn’t keep you at an arm’s length, instead he offers up his pleasures more readily.

You Will Never Be One of Us will live up to the expectations of anyone who’s experienced a Nails album before.

Summertime '06 is breathtakingly focused, a marathon that feels like a sprint.

Now, More Than Ever is both hushed and sprawling, serene and agitated, jumpy and constant.

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.

It's not Les Savy Fav's most immediate record, nor is it their best.

It’s simultaneously her most mature feat of arranging and almost psychosomatically affecting.

Though thoroughly enjoyable, the album isn't always riveting, either, and occasionally the attention does stray.