The greatest-hits disc is a misnomer: It's mostly a grab-bag of Shady throwaways and deep cuts.

Its curious track listing is split between a disc of Wyatt-as-frontman and a disc of Wyatt-as-guest.

Stewart's increased output and dearth of exploration gives Archives an unflattering offhandedness, and it also dilutes the potency of Vapor City, like putting together an album is just another item to mark off his to-do list.

In addition to rounding up odds and ends, it's an important LP in its own right.

It’s got the feel of a bootleg--the recording is at times horribly thin, and the occasional snatches of audience chatter make it sound like the work of someone staggering drunkenly through the crowd with a barely concealed mic.

As is the case with most overstuffed hardcore albums, The Tyranny of Will lends itself well to a cherry-picking approach; keep some riffs and ideas, and toss the ones that don’t stick.

When the ways Bodan tries to eliminate distance come together--the voice, the lyrics, the rawness of the emotion on display--the final product can induce claustrophobia. The effect is undeniably powerful, but there's a fine line between powerful and overwhelming, and his work should grow more potent as he manages to find a balance between the two.

[The minor differences between the early and official takes] are rare, illuminating displays of imperfection from a band that, for the subsequent 15 years, made no false moves.

Instead of growing soft and slick while retaining their songwriting prowess, they’ve stayed fast and raw--but left much of their popcraft somewhere behind.

The intended arc from invitation toward aggression occssionally scans more as zigs and zags between a few distinct suites. Still, the separate moments are astounding, evidence of a musician who has managed to remain inquisitive even as he’s established his signature.

The ritual drama of falling and picking one’s self back up again (taking "responsibility," as Dawson prefers in interviews) plays out in every element of this music, and is key to its elusive power.

The weakest of the three versions of Nothing Has Changed is the chronologically sequenced 2xCD version. It's basically just a slight revision of Best of Bowie, compressed to throw in five later songs....The 3xCD Nothing Has Changed, though, is the jewel among the three variations on the same core material. Its masterstroke is that its 59 tracks appear in reverse chronological order.

It's more of a disappointment than a failure--at the very least, it might serve as someone's introduction to These New Puritans.

Her foibles and off-kilter perspective on heartbreak offer shape and personality to a record that might otherwise be written off as too slick or inert, or indistinguishable from a host of peers making competent, spacious, and downcast pop music.

What’s Your 20? is for the neophytes--it’s a very reasonable place to start for future generations facing down Wilco’s full catalog on Spotify.

Ultimately, Avonmore is a fine addition to Bryan Ferry’s oeuvre, if not necessarily a terribly challenging one.

Alpha plays like a clearinghouse more than a finely-edited set but, largely thanks to its bevy of well-chosen live tracks, its sidelong view of Wilco is worth a peek.

It might seem like faint praise to call Flesh & Machine Lanois’ best and most realized solo album, but it’s also one of the best ambient records of 2014--an endlessly inventive collection of songs built on odd, often lurid sounds and textures, somehow rough and gentle at the same time.

One key difference, though, is in Tindersticks’ fondness for taking small moments and blowing them up big. Here, they turn that method inside out, starting with a huge, globe changing event and working something humble around it, making it feel like they’re respectfully cowering in its shadow.

Though not everything works on its own (the flat electropop of XO's "Animal" is one dud) Mockingjay adds up to a fun pastiche of modern sounds. In conclusion, three fingers out of five.

The campy flair, smirking irony, and deliberately "retrolicious" alliteration matches the scarecrow-genius of his new album, Pom Pom.

Tomorrow Was the Golden Age, one of the finest left-field releases of the year, transcends geography, inviting you to close your eyes and build your own richly detailed world.

Black Metal offers few definitive answers, but this time around the hazy images he's projecting have come into sharper focus.

It's a rare moment of intrigue on an album that's generous in its beauty while leaving little to wonder about, a sky that never rains.

Final Days’ exhilarating, cathedral-toppling spectacle could prove to be the career game-changer that ensures his band remains a cult no more.

So while they've long segued from fin-de-siecle Brooklyn to edge-of-the-continent Silver Lake, losing more than they’ve gained along the way, TV on the Radio are still capable of conquering big stages and broad sonic territory with the kind of precision and power for which their increasingly desperate older contemporaries need to rely on expensive stunts.

Still Life is steeped in Dylan's back-to-basics period at the turn of the '70s, carefully adorned but never skeletal; from the beating-heart bassline that sits underneath "Drowning" to the drunken horns that close out the eight-minute "Amen", Still Life is sumptuous, slightly rickety, offhandedly gorgeous.

Every song on this singles/rarities set, for better or worse (and I’d argue it’s much more for the better), even the cover of Joy Division’s "Disorder", is instantly identifiable as Bedhead. They staked out the boundaries of an aesthetic, and they were not particularly wide boundaries; differences between their albums are subtle. But they explored every inch of terrain inside of them.