Her best and most cohesive work to date.

The problem with Radlands is that, armed with the potential to go wild with a new bag of tricks, Mystery Jets often become as conservatively minded as parts of the state whose outline graces the album's cover.

Isn't Anything crystallizes MBV's unique dynamic.

Though neither a high point nor a low point in her freewheeling, four-decade career, Banga has the same charm of Smith's best albums: It flits with the impressionistic fascinations of a single mind.

Endless Flowers is Crocodiles' best album and also their most frustrating. They're simply trying to do good enough and no more.

Curren$y's lyrics drip with nice things, and the joy that comes from fondly describing them. But the language he brings to them exists in its own universe.

This cerebral/visceral friction is one of the most satisfying elements of Black Hippy, and Ab-Soul arguably carries it the furthest of the group.

At times, it sounds far less like his beloved Boys of Summer 2009 so much as a simplified homage to Kompakt's more populist acts, electronic's version of a neophyte performing solo acoustic versions of Zeppelin or Radiohead at a college bar.

Another very good album from a band that consistently turns out good work while charting its own path.

Yet past all the stylistic flourishes, Generals is openhearted, politically engaged, feminist pop that, miraculously, never veers into schmaltz (or worse, didacticism).

[Song "Casualties of War" is] the sole promising moment on an album that ranges from average to disappointing. In the end, Joyful Noise feels like a stopgap.

[Guitarist Dave] Chandler's prowess as an axeman cannot be given enough emphasis: his writhing, twisted, screaming solos, and devilishly heavy riffs funnel blood and mercury into Saint Vitus' heart, as Wino's pipes lay down the soul.

It doesn't advance much on their debut and, like that record, it only intermittently allows their latent promise to creep to the fore.

Americana doesn't so much amount to a caustic commentary on the modern-day American condition as capture a bunch of old pals trying to rediscover their chemistry by sloppily jamming on some standards.

You get the impression he isn't really trying that hard, that bettering his bests isn't a notion that interests him, 20 years after the release of Red House Painters' debut album. He's the kind of talented songwriter that can mostly pull that off; though for a record so spare and simple, Among the Leaves comes off as strangely confrontational.

The Sister ultimately comes across as, at best, a retread done well and, at worst, a retreat into previously approved territory by an artist who has noticeably improved as a tactician.

Historical importance aside, they're a band built on unreliability and inconsistency, and This Is PiL maintains that reputation.

The problem isn't that Valtari aspires to beauty, even if it's a commonplace, celestial understanding of it. Sigur Ros have proven they can make indelible music that's pretty and unpredictable, pretty and melodic, pretty and unnerving, pretty and inspiring. Valtari wants to be pretty and that's it.

A good deal of this album sounds like it could've been recorded by a lone foot-stomping folksinger, carrying over the intimate, around-the-kitchen-table ambience of Ebert's 2011 solo release, Alexander.

He manages to satiate his obsession for thousand-detail soundscaping while creating pieces that walk the line of sensory overload, never overwhelming but always blurring the edges.

True to its titular subject, Diver constitutes a daring leap for Lemonade, one that, at times, appears destined to result in a belly-flop, but recovers nicely in the end.

Dense and darkly lovely music.

Though it rarely makes good on the promise of her earlier songs, Cheap Seats is polarizing, and by now most listeners will have already decided whether or not they can stomach Spektor's peculiar kind of verite, glass-half-full optimism.

What at first seems rather silly actually proves to be quite purposeful.

Most rewardingly and remarkably, Nudes, Singles & Backsides manages to present a fairly detailed portrait of an artist who found himself suddenly back on the pop music margins.

While it is certainly admirable that the Scissor Sisters' creative vision is strong enough that they sound very much like themselves no matter who they work with, they really could have used a strong push from their collaborators this time around.

The duo taps into a power greater than itself to address impossibly vast and elemental topics-- friendship, lust, revenge, art, self-actualization-- with songs every bit as big.

King Tuff feels like the couch surfer friend you invite to your house party, the one who's often charming and fun but will not leave until every last drop of beer is gone.