Their most focused and captivating work to date.

Woman King will provide eager Iron & Wine fans a welcome holdover between proper albums, but the EP also serves a larger developmental purpose, marking one more evolutionary hop for Sam Beam, and christening a new genre-- post-basement.

He typically sounds like David Allan Grier with amyl nitrate in the air. Our man raps in an "ohmygawd this is sooo ridiculous" tone that can make you either think he is a jackass or a jester. My instincts say it's the latter.

Bottom line is that Mogwai are an insanely powerful live band, and these sharp recordings play like a unified set rather than a scraped-together compendium of disparate sessions.

Feathers may not have the heft of Dead Meadow's other albums, but it's easily its most listenable and satisfying from end to end.

As with past Rouse efforts, Nashville is always pleasant, if unexceptional.

With the quality and effort put into this release, Def Jux and Aesop Rock have done what every EP should do, provide something of unique value and create anticipation for future releases.

Most of Tree City sounds lifted from Britt Daniel's songbook. By that, I don't mean it sounds somewhat like it. I mean, it sounds like they stole the tapes from Britt's house and scribbled their name over his.

The album loses a little of its steam toward the end, when too many songs play up the rap side of the equation over the rock, but on the whole A Gun Called Tension is surprisingly balanced and beholden to no preconceptions of how these two styles should mix.

Plenty of good-not-great stuff, and a tad unfocused.

The result is a lot like Elvis Costello's periodic returns to rock territory: snappy genre exercises from a reliable songwriter, but not much more.

What's remarkable is that instead of sounding autumnal and frigid, the bulk of this album has a warmth, an emotional weight, and a sense of underlying motion that competes damn well against the occasional fireworks. Some of these pleasures may be subtle or take time to grasp, but the sinking-in is gorgeous and worth the wait.

Its best moments are stellar and exhilarating.

His style has finally caught up with his intellect, and while his beats are passable but unexceptional, his voice locks onto and scans over them so ferociously they're almost obliterated.

The high points of the album are the tracks that feature Todd by herself either on guitar or piano, filling the song with the trembling strength of her singing.

Burn the Maps often sounds like simplicity transformed into bloat in an attempt to sound interesting.

The Mysterious Production of Eggs might wrestle with unsavory topics, but it does so with a shrug of the shoulders, a wry smile, and a heart full of awe-inspiring song.

Out of Breach is less suited for a fucked-up dance party than just for being fucked up.

The ultimate draw is Antony's voice, and within the first two seconds of the album, it should be very clear to even the most unaware newbies that Antony has an amazing Nina Simone/Brian Ferry/Jimmy Scott vibrato, a multi-octave siren that would sound painfully lovely no matter what he was saying. Lucky for us, he fills that promise with worthy syllables.

Exploring the vacated ghosts of stale forms, Coxon has breathed new life into some of rock's most bankable clichés.

This may not be a perfect album, but it is affecting and haunting.

Worlds Apart is an aspiration, an apology, the sound of confusion.

While this new batch of songs is pleasant and often charming, they're not as memorable or passionate as Barlow's best.

Digital Ash has the claustrophobic feel of a singer locked up with a computer, and it's distractingly chipper, like Rilo Kiley in their own Dntel homages; not every Bright Eyes record has to be an emotional epic, but Digital Ash feels like a practice run.

I'm Wide Awake weaves the personal and the political more fluidly than most singers even care to try, and the consummate tunefulness just strengthens those moments where he pinches a nerve.

The Chemical Brothers tend to find the best results when they focus on atmospheric, buzzing instrumentals.

If this album is indeed the beginning of a long, arduous journey of rediscovery and rebirth and other fun ponderous stuff, here's hoping the rest of the trip is more enjoyable than this initial misstep.

This is a mammoth collusion of synth gasps and distorted swirls, darker and more urban than its meadow-bound predecessor.