Big Boi's Speakerboxxx coolly upstages its counterpart: though it, too, provides the world with one earthshaking single, it differs from The Love Below in that it also manages to maintain consistent brilliance and emotional complexity throughout.

Cohen is a genially commanding stage presence, falling on his knees at crucial moments and doffing his cap for his accompanists' solo turns. The Old Ideas songs, sprinkled throughout the set at just the right intervals, are naturally at home, capped with the wry God-speaking-to-a-man-named-Leonard "Going Home". Otherwise, the songs you know and plenty of songs you should know better are probably here.

In a way, Mastodon operates something like prime-era Metallica, unleashing these huge, blistering tracks that journey over peaks and valleys and ditches and oceans before leaving you spinning.

All eleven tracks on Bad Timing are gems that balance a knack for brain-lodging choruses with the grime and stylistic drift of Exile on Main Street, begging a record collection's worth of comparisons with nary an instance of outright thievery.

While the execution has at times wavered over the years, Allas Sak finds the band fully re-engaged in the sound that it has staked out over the past decade--performing music that’s still as beautiful, optimistic, strange, and singular as ever.

Whether it’s tapping our feet on the wet curb to gritty, unstable British realism, or gazing from a height over the glossy cross-pollination of world music, making sense of this outrageously talented pioneer is a challenging but deeply rewarding task.

Keeping listeners on their toes while also mimicking the way this music was often heard by fans-- it's an odd but effective approach, especially considering the usual keep-the-party-going Fabriclive style.

We all know a little something about chasing that ideal version of ourselves, and Antony's persistence in the face of futility makes it a joy to run by his side.

Simply put, the playing is more ambitious and varied on Goodness than on Home, Like NoPlace Is There, an album where the narrative drama manifests into some of the rawest anthems of unhinged youth and crippling self-loathing recorded this decade.

Many slower outfits-- Low, American Music Club, Codeine, et al.-- are sometimes pinned with the theory that if you've heard one of their albums, you've heard them all. Such is no longer the case with the Red House Painters.

These songs store well more than a half-hour of reward and intrigue-- appropriate enough for a record that had to be made three times.

For all the complexity of Stadium, its true genius lies in understatement and how a thousand small sounds build into a larger vision.

Get Yr Blood Sucked Out is confident, psychedelic, hard-hitting, and the best noise they've made yet.

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.

There are plenty of bands that mapped inspired paths to greatness, but Big Star's story, as seen on film and heard on these songs, is a potent reminder of just how beautiful failure can be.

So even if the songwriting guides the band toward the most impressive, experimental reaches of their sound, it also becomes their record most tethered to the lyric sheet and Kinsella’s role as a frontman. It’s a dizzying effect, as the polish of his surroundings never distracts from the rawness at its core.

Ringleader of the Tormentors is, rather than the now-anticipated letdown, another fitting heir to [his] legacy.

The new compilation Assembly adroitly selects high-water marks from Strummer’s solo career while never quite ameliorating the ”what if” questions that haunt the Clash’s legacy.

Ring is electic, beat-heavy, and easy to like. A sneakily confident debut that should please listeners at almost every turn.

On Blu Wav, Grandaddy’s first album in seven years, Lytle leans into bittersweet Americana twang, a natural fit for his fatally flawed, cautiously optimistic cast of characters.

His debut album, Knockin' Boots, could actually be the best LP-length statement to come out of house's reawakening.

In many ways, Adore Life feels more alive than Silence Yourself--in part because it feels more human, in part because it's telling you to be as loud as possible.

Tyler, the Creator’s sixth album is impressionistic and emotionally charged, the result of an auteur refining his style and bearing more of his soul than ever before.

Occulting Disk is somehow mesmerizing and terrifying—motivational for those who need it, a nuisance to those who don’t want it.

Broke With Expensive Taste glides through all of these, just like the faithful 1 train sampled on "Desperado". Both album and the artist revel in the freedom of a New York City where divisions between these sounds and scenes have ever so slowly ceased to exist.

The whole album works something like an expansion on the last three fuzzed-out tracks from Dig Your Own Hole. The Chems aren't in the same do-no-wrong zone they were when they recorded that stuff, but Further brings them closer than anyone could've reasonably expected.

His first solo release in nearly 13 years, his most adventurous and surprising, and his best.

Regifted Light doesn't seem built to shock or cajole, but to connect with all sorts of people, and to last.