It's one of her most captivating and immediate front-to-back statements of purpose as a singer.

Even so, it comes as a relief that the song doesn't end with a big, fiery finale. Instead, the band lets The Rise fray apart on its own, a quiet conclusion to a lyrically and musically feisty album.

Memories are themselves temporal hangovers; as one accesses them, one also accesses what could’ve been, drawing reality through the distortions of regret and nostalgia. The best Johnny Foreigner songs, several of which are included on Mono No Aware, depict this process holistically; you hear someone sifting through their failures and their fantasies, their past and present mistakes swarming into each other.

James Blake continues to move as an artist, and the thrill of witnessing those movements hasn't dulled.

On The Dusted Sessions they both deconstruct and reinforce the tenets of Americana and make something transcendent in the process.

It’s not all doom and gloom, however, and Guy expertly balances the record’s more somber offerings with a handful of four-on-the-floor, heat-seeking anthems.

Defined as much by its lyrical prism and Angelakos' falsetto (more on that later) as its gooey textures, Chunk of Change walks the line between beat-driven, Hot Chip floor geeking and twee atmospherics.

With Formerly Extinct, Rangda not only prove themselves to be a going concern as a band, but that they might just be starting to really hit their stride.

Lekman's new An Argument with Myself EP is a compact gem.

Dying’s sinewy strangeness may come at the expense of the immediacy that was once Harvey’s strong suit, but this is how PJ Harvey albums work now: You feel them without being able to explain them. Where her early records pummeled the gut, now she toys with the mind.

The dense weight of verbiage on No Kings actually welcomes uninitiated listeners, rather than siphoning them out for not being advanced enough on some impenetrable ultra-battler s***.

This meandering quality might put off some listeners, but to my ears, Azeda Booth have figured out how to reconcile pop music's infectiousness with ambient music's nebulous aura, and have produced one of 2008's most unique and immediately pleasurable albums.

Like all Pastels albums, Slow Summits feels like the work of a tightly knit gang of outcasts.

Into the Light is the kind of record that requires rapt attention, best enjoyed in still solitude. But even as Anderson’s instrument simmers, it still reaches for the great beyond, and she makes you ache to reach along with it.

Massed vocals and backing harmonies are two of the few things the National have added to their sound since their last album, and though Alligator is satisfying and engaging, it's not quite as bracing as their stellar sophomore outing, 2003's Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers.

While it might be oversimplifying matters to suggest that it splits the difference between the cute, poppy Royksopp and the darker, techno-friendly Royksopp, the most satisfying thing about Junior is how convincingly they've bridged that divide.

For longtime followers of the band, Anxiety's Kiss has the feel of a logical endpoint, the latest natural development in an impressive career of progressions.

On Asking for Flowers, she sounds better than her peers for being so much braver.

The results resemble dance music as glimpsed through a funhouse mirror: strangely distorted, sometimes goofy, and deeply pleasing on a simple, almost childlike level.

But instead of pushing the electronics and making a funkier, nastier successor to his hit [Nu-Bop], this new disc feels like nothing so much as the Modern Jazz Quartet.

It’s hard to tell where the universe of listeners fixated on filling spiritual voids through sex, drugs, and romance ends and the universe of the Weeknd’s tortured, empty melancholy and drunken, devastating love begins. That’s the beautiful blur of After Hours.

Recording and performing for nearly 20 years with Oneida and spin-offs like People of the North, Colpitts’ drums have sometimes provided an almost melodic key to understanding the full-bore noise-blasts surrounding them. On Play What They Want, those melodies can be heard more directly than ever.

Trees Outside the Academy is, in fact, a song-based album--and they're good songs, too.

Effortlessly fun.

In a world that is newly full of "content" at every turn, it can be refreshing to find an uncompromising record that exists so honestly on its own.

Pondering life and death, happiness and despair, movement and stagnation, Thompson writes as someone who knows he has more years behind him than ahead, though he sings with an arched eyebrow and an appreciation for the irony in trading youth for wisdom.

A deliriously ambitious record packed with neo-psych lullabies and swooning choruses.

What it lacks in a unified style it makes up for in a referential (and reverential) enthusiasm that anyone with a subscription to Wax Poetics should recognize as an individualized, well-crafted love letter to funk gone by--and funk yet to come.