Five Roses is far from mere homage. This is the work of a precocious and incredibly ambitious songwriter who is playfully navigating the history of pop music.

West's writing and delivery has improved since "The College Dropout," though they're still marked by both a cleverness and a clumsiness.

Watch the Throne is as much of a celebration of the A-list prominence of its two marquee stars as it is an exegesis of all of that fame's attendant complications.

The Fragile Army is the Polyphonic Spree's most consistent album, and it thunders with an assurance that was missing from "Together We're Heavy."

The songs on Armchair Apocrypha are broader, more sweeping in content and delivery than their immediate predecessors.

As of right now, the main emotional component of this music is the whiplash thrill of hearing rock music played on the edge of sanity, but if we can be nudged into feeling something in our hearts more affecting or cerebral, something more powerful than an echoing warstomp, then we've got a landmark album on our hands.

That flash of a golden moment in between something sparking in the air and fading quickly away is all The Clientele are living for in this batch of heart-breakingly beautiful tunes, and its what Bonfires on the Heath seems to hold in the center of its heart.

Rock music's era of overarching influence on culture has no doubt passed into the historical twilight, but artistry and ambition in the form is alive and well on records like Hp-1.

Ghostface's beat selection is impeccable.

At times, the band outdoes itself even by its own standards.

The true brilliance of Cancer For Cure is its refusal to find common ground, to come to the middle and meet anyone.

This is a grownup album, made for grownups.

Make no mistake, there is still plenty of rock--it's just doled out selectively instead of consistently.

The group's bleak, sinister quality has always been one of its best assets, and in humanizing themselves, even in the record's shinier latter half, the musicians take on a slightly stronger shadow.

Darnielle's usual knack for detail and word play is surgical here, as usual, but All Eternals Deck is notable for its wide sonic palate.

Sampson's penmanship here is the most minute and observant among a recent batch of great songwriting

If anyone questioned whether or not Jayceon Taylor had what it took to stand on his own post-G-Unit, Game answers all of his critics with a resounding yes on Doctor's Advocate.

The type of searing instrumental rock Explosions in the Sky has helped put on the map is the modern-day heir of the aural expressionism of Debussy and Wagner.

Kind of like the whole idea of a disco album, a collaboration with a visual artist about African-Americans' tragic history is something you would never expect from Destroyer, and yet once you listen, it seems perfectly authentic, inspired, and essential.

Come for the shrill dopamine triggers like you knew you would, but stick around for the miles and miles of quiet rolling country rendered in this multitalented artist's flooring instrumental sweeps.

Each track stands on its own; there is no filler, and it highlights each musician's strengths.

There Is Love in You is expertly sequenced, played, and produced from start to finish. It's the work of a restlessly creative auteur circling back and turning out his most confident, definitive work to date.

They act as a constant reminder of the power of music that isn't afraid to be ugly, blunt, and confrontational.

On its own merits, Phantom Punch is an assured, absurdly tuneful record, and one of the best of the year thus far.

Metal Moon could be the soundtrack to an hour from now.

The elements that make the band's performances distinct are all there: Finn’s rapid-fire, sometimes nearly incoherent delivery; the chemistry between the band members; the between-song banter that is equal parts inviting and human and kind of crazy.

I think The Shepherd's Dog is probably Iron & Wine's best record to date (Beam has never once even made a mediocre album, so this says a lot).

This is the kind of music we should be hearing all the time, instead of the deathly boring muzak we (and our ears) generally expect.

No matter what music critics might say about the album, Karen O scores a direct hit in her most important demographic. That she was able to do it without pandering or obvious compromise is a tribute to her artistry.

Love and Curses is filled with great melodies that burrow deep into the skull without being cloying, and offers lyrical sentiments that tug at universal truths without pandering.

On Devotion, Ware demonstrates a knack for weaving everything together. And just like in the best-tailored clothes, it's difficult to see the seams.

Arm’s Way represents a step forward from "Return to the Sea" creatively if not as an artistic whole.

Smilers proves Aimee Mann still has plenty to offer doing the same thing she's already been doing for the last fifteen years.

Ugly is ultimately an album that finally finds the Screaming Females completely confident in their own identity, no longer trying to straddle the line between their headier rock aspirations and the DIY punk scene that gave birth to them.

Nobody is putting out music like Pop Levi's right now.

Throughout it all, it still feels like essential, singular Waits, like moody and manic are two sides of one very marked coin.

Well-worn, well-defined, Heaven is the work of band with nothing left to prove.

Honeys is the band's ultimate thesis statement, grounding their past triumphs in cruel reality that, if not buffered by their expert sense of humor, would hit too close to home too many times to count.

It is the most realized of their albums to date, and it showcases the group fully exploring the possibilities of the niche that they created for themselves two records ago.

Playing up his role as elder statesman, Green gets away with delivering the familiar back-in-the-day sermon because listeners expect it from an icon of the past. However, by infusing such consistent gentleness throughout the entire record, he pulls off the unthinkable in the early 21st century--a momentary respite.

What makes New Moon succeed is something similar to what Shakespeare gets at in many of his sonnets: the ability of art to beat death.

It is in this tension--the struggle to find hope and comfort quickly and the realization that you can't--that Mr. M exists and shines.

There's still an eerie distortion saturating Halo's vocals, as has become her trademark. But the prominence of her singing here is almost jarring, raw, practically emotive.

Like the return of Portishead and My Bloody Valentine, Leila’s reemergence is another welcome surprise in a year that’s been full of them.

Although it's certainly inventive in approach and execution, there's no denying that Person Pitch sees Lennox working within decidedly pop-centric parameters.

Everything Last Winter may be the most accomplished debut of 2007, and it will invariably be one of the best.

Hip-Hop Is Dead... brings out the best in the emcee, who might have produced his strongest lyrical performance since Illmatic.

It's at times fragile, at times bolstering, at times bittersweet, at times even triumphant, but it's timeless all the same.

Jones deserves special credit for treating her subject matter consistently and with an even hand throughout I Learned The Hard Way. She can express both hurt and her trademark, take-no-shit defiance.

23 is one of the more enjoyable musical experiences I have encountered this year.

The conviction in Stern's direct, bare voice is what turns the album into the kicking, clawing, emotional frenzy that we get.

It's in that strange tug and pull from which struggle springs passion and beauty that these men seemed to effortlessly thrive. And it is there with both a genuine, relatable sadness and an unwavering resolve so rooted in the broken concrete Bradley walks upon, that No Time For Dreaming also comfortably sits.

Harvey's singing delivers the material by juggling unwieldy emotions with care and empathy. And she makes the experience sound natural -- like a true no-brainer.

There are moments when the ambivalence toward everything sounds like it might, just might, be giving way to genuine concern.

For all its delicate psychological workings and spot-on embodiments of that feeling's senseless, aimless guilt, it's completely mesmerizing.

Nothing seems to rattle them, and hearing that Zen-like outlook on record is immensely refreshing and inspiring.

It's a collective of conjoined poems, meticulously attuned to shake both the earth and eardrums alike.

Swanlights may not be the best of his works, but it is a welcome excursion along the path of his career.

In the end, Writer's Block isn't a life-changing musical statement, but it is a superb collection of finely crafted pop songs.

Santogold is sure to be one of the year’s best albums, with only one near-miss (“My Superman”), an album that may become unavoidable in coming weeks and months.

The largely successful results characterize a risky proposition that in the hands of talent and artistic focus has yielded all sorts of adventurous delights.

Tha Carter III soars because of Wayne’s to-date under-appreciated ability to turn himself down.

Smokey Rolls down Thunder Canyon may be his best so far.

Majesty Shredding is one of the finest rock records of 2010.

You can hear the band rediscovering its footing as one of the strangest, funniest, and best acts of the decade.

Bitte Orca is the kind of album that is best taken from start to finish, where the songs and musical themes are allowed to grow, endear and impress.

For all the foot-stomping vitriol that seeps out here and there, The Idler Wheel... is the sound of a brilliant songwriter putting away childish things, and waiting tensely for what comes next.

Offend Maggie’s mellowness is not a lessening of Deerhoof’s strangeness. In fact, the emotional intensity of these songs may be even more pronounced than in songs from the past.

It is whole, undiluted Crystal Castles--and it's as haunting and raw as might be imagined.

Yet, even though the steady presence of featured performances helps beautify Cosmogramma, this is essentially Ellison's crowning achievement. The album is sequenced with a sense of purpose, evidential from the promo being presented as a long continuous track.

When the proper songs throughout are so uniformly good in spite of their fractured approaches, complaining about scarcity seems despicably greedy.

Marked with woe from beginning to end, BerberianSoundStudio is closer to antichrist than Hallelujah, but Broadcast reminds you that divinity is intrinsic with death.

Simply put, this album is more than pretty good.

Moody Motorcycle is a deft reappropriation and re-imagining of the harmonic pop of the Everly Brothers, Simon and Garfunkel, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

The Dreamer, The Believer reestablishes Common's place in the upper echelon of hip hop.

The disc is packed with tightly crafted modern pop, and seamlessly melds the artist’s myriad influences.

Strange Mercy is her best yet, a deft mixture of self-confession, master class musicality, and downright unshakable songs.

Earlier efforts may suffer from a bit of kindergarten syndrome, in both the styles of singing and instrumentation, but Ships seems to see Danielson maturing at a faster rate.

Another stellar song collection.

By description, Earthology may seem like an exercise in music dabbling. But at the heart of the Whitefield Brothers' sound is deadly solid funk.

Cloud Nothings have produced a transfixing head rush of a release and one of the well-wrought examples of '90s revivalism.

Carrion Crawler/The Dream captures the band in psychedelic bulldozer mode instead, delivering ten blistering cuts at a furious pace.

As a group of former heartthrobs with something to prove, Duran Duran are both a product of its time and a band with its eye on the future -- and they've finally managed to capture the titular sense of Now.

In short; it's new, interesting, and the inevitable remixes are going to be great.

Serena-Maneesh sounds like the kind of record many bands spend their entire careers trying to create.

A Love Extreme giddily steals from and collides with a kaleidoscope of genres, all without a trace of modern guilt.

While no single song on the album comes close to the weight and volume that Lift to Experience was capable of slinging, Last of the Country Gentlemen delivers its own subtle intensity.

Sure, 2004's God Bless Your Black Heart may be the Paper Chase's best album in terms of accessibility, but the band has taken its usual dark angle and bent it another hundred or so degrees toward further obtuseness.

With Family of Love, Dom hasn't fizzled out--it's flowered in five different directions.

It lacks the mind-blowing qualities that made Rounds the essential album in his catalogue, but Everything Ecstatic is another must-own from Four Tet, the most reliable of producers.

Sure, Barton Hollow's love-swept core and well-worn conventions might make it a tad limited, but for what it sets outs to accomplish, it succeeds with pitch-perfect elegance.

One of the most likeable albums of the year.

Although such swaths of varied, nebulous beauty obscure Snaith's musical core--if there is one--the music is so joyful in its rag and bone cherry-picking of the best of Britpop's history that such concerns are rendered pointless.

Eric Emm and Jess Cohen have produced an album is both substantially intelligent and undeniably fun in equal measure.

There is little doubt Edan is an innovator on the production tip, but he’s not nearly as talented an emcee.

Under a Billion Suns is a great record, and Mudhoney is one of the best bands in rock 'n' roll, period.

The album rewards those who listen with songs that are confessional but also insightful.

Despite the absence of Timbo, Elliott continues to do what she does best: cross-fertilizing genres, geographies and temporalities and continuing to transform her musical identity without sacrificing any authenticity.