White Lunar showcases both what can and can't be accomplished by separating musical scores from the visuals that inspired them. Cave and Ellis seem more at home in smaller films. Music that is part of the historic and epic film needs that film in order to makes sense.

The record’s overwhelming scale cuts both ways. There are so many artists, voices and instruments begging to be heard that trimming is as much an injustice to the collective nature of the group as leaving in the excess is to the final product.

Build a Rocket Boys! sounds very much like an Elbow record, but it doesn't sound like any Elbow record we've heard before.

For all the talk that's been made recently of Bazan's own struggles with alcoholism and faith, it's telling that on Branches the strongest, most evocative tracks are those that, in the singer's beautifully worn and warm delivery, choose, in essence, melody over meaning.

As you listen to it more and more, the music begins to make sense, the hooks come into focus and everything appears in sharp resolution, manifesting itself in a giant pop animal created for your indulgence.

We Are Beautiful might not be the pinnacle for Los Campesinos!, but it does prove they’re rapidly on their way up.

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.

Favourite Worst Nightmare is tempered by a few duds -- "Balaclava" and "If You Were There, Beware," please stand up -- but more than that, it's kind of joyless.

The fundamental difference between The Monitor and the group's debut, The Airing of Grievances, and the reason why the former shines less bright than the latter, is in the attitude.

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix showcases a band that has only gotten better with each album.

This may not have any of the hard-hitting jabs his best Smog records had, but I Wish We Were An Eagle is a subtler, more bittersweet heartbreak.

ike Animal Collective, Copeland's work is musician's music, geared toward the adventurous listener with a trained ear and a tendency to enjoy music as, well, an expansive, ever-shifting experiment.

An ambient record that doesn't bore or get bogged down in its insistence on fading into the background.

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.

While lack of tunefulness has rarely been an issue for noise-rock fans, A Small Turn of Human Kindness's abstractness makes it a little less satisfying than its predecessor. But it's still a fascinating product of one of the more fascinating bands working in the bowels of rock 'n' roll today.

Let it wash over you, let it slowly but surely catch your attention, and steadily let the music build its case for how engrossing it can be.

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

Words And Music expertly explores the intoxicated love of music and the sheer joy of being a music fan: feelings so universal that they will never be confined to particular eras.

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

Though the narratives are harder to follow, and the refrains more verbose (or simply absent), this music is still full of youthful anger. The nature of it is simply more suitable for a recent-high-school-graduate-aged kid grappling with more knotty insecurities. It’s also probable that much of Earl’s younger audience has grown up with him, and will relate to this impressive record even more deeply than his first.

Vampire Weekend’s debut comes across as a confident, precise, and, for better and worse, mature collection.

Part of the album's appeal is its lo-fi production values. These songs are clearly built on analog four-track recordings and then embellished with overdubs.

Parallax is easily Atlas Sound's best-sounding album to date.

With such a hooky, immediate, and yet complex record, let’s hope it’s not the final fade out.

The result is 10 songs of lyrical brilliance that will have music listeners giving Porterfield the credit that's long overdue.

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.

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

That restlessness and aggression make King of Jeans a visceral, honest mess of a record. This is all ragged glory.

Aloe Blacc's Good Things is a mature, well-crafted, and distinctive take on the basic blueprint of the neo-soul sound, the quasi-revival movement that embraced classic soul and funk tropes that had been abandoned by much of the R&B establishment.

Unstoppable.

Slave Ambient continues themes of wanderlust and searching that were all over the other records, but as Granduciel sings of friends gone, of calling loved ones home, of trying to find his place in the world changing around him, the music behind him seems to be searching too.

Instead of tossing off interstitial, between-album scraps, Ellison has done what most artists should do with the extended-play format: create a mini-album. Every song has its place and works together to form a tangible flow.

They sometimes drift back to that comfortable space, and those moments make the record feel a bit longer than it is, but overall this is another interesting twist in the band’s sound.

On one hand, the enormity of said soundtrack can be appreciated by those with a palate for the peculiar, while others might yearn for a more streamlined recording.

With his band's fourth studio album, frontman Will Sheff stakes a claim here for the right to be called the best songwriter working right now.

Each song here, when attention is paid, is gut wrenching, honest and unabashedly sad while maintaining a sense of resigned acceptance... The arrangements and production, however, tend to drown out Perfume Genius's ability to juggle his subject matter, leaving songs that just don't quite break your heart.

With electronic and live sounds, emotional production and excellent vocals from some of the underground scene’s best, Leave It All Behind is an open and experimental take on hip-hop and soul, highly successful, at that.

The Magic Position feel[s] more like a missed opportunity than a legitimate breakthrough album.

Where You Go I Go Too takes the meaning of the term "full-length" quite literally, stretching his already epic electronic disco into works of effortless symphonic grandeur.

Cut the World, on musical merit alone, is a solid live recording, one that reminds us of the highlights of Antony Hegarty's career up to now, and hints at future success.

The album relies less on hooks and more on a sparse energy, but the listening is engaging enough to keep the listener around to the end, focusing more on cohesion rather than theatrics.

Damian Abraham's vocals are still the star of the show, but the cleanness of Couple Tracks shows how, with the right kind of engineering, Abraham's behemoth-unleashed singing, rather than alienate non-hardcore kids, ices the cake on an already great band.

At times Melted falls into the familiar lo-fi production trap: lack of variety in sound and tempo. However, at its best moments, Melted's songs employ playful riffs and weighty guitars to create textures as varied as the ones in Segall's sweet treat analogy.

It's easy to see Smoke Ring being remembered as the stepping stone to a transcendent piece of work in Vile's discography.

To call the album the band's most accessible to date is no slur. There's nothing wrong with accessible indie rock when it's this pristine and polished.

This is a great record, full with a daring, hard-earned hope, and a deep emotion. And that's something a lot of records could really use these days.

It’s Blitz is representative of Yeah Yeah Yeahs tightening as an unit and delivering their best album to date.

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.

It's been a captivating listen thus far, and will likely remain that way wherever he takes it next.

Brothers, meanwhile, proves that the Keys can still put a few more miles on their well-driven blues machine, regardless of what direction their non-Keys work takes them.

Filled with bounce, bite and surprising cohesion, Post-Nothing is a deceptive little piece that is as much fun as it is subversive.

Bleak, distant, polarizing, and beautiful, Wolfe’s fourth album makes a gargantuan impact.

It’s more direct in many places, but finds a power in that directness that has led some of the band’s best music.

Like the rest of Primary Colours, this is the sound of a band finding themselves out of favor and having to really strive for greatness. The Horrors will still have a hard time winning over new converts, but they’ve done a magnificent job of confounding expectations with this release.

Their voices and sound may be immeasurably more ragged and weathered, but if Neurosis' idea of "consistency" continues to include this kind of additional exploration at this point in their career, may their journey never end.

Love Remains shows that Krell is definitely adept at delivering feelings, but there's more than a couple of tracks that could use a little more personality.

Patti Smith's voice is clear and powerful, an embodiment of her singularity as a poet and musician.

For Van Etten, it's a logical next step in her upward trajectory.

It is a cinematic work, a work of focus and intensity, and a work that demands attention.

Tears of the Valedictorian is an incredibly dense record and may take several passes before you can even begin to peel away its layers. That sense of rigor, though, is what makes it so arresting.

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.

Even without the quirky, theatrical pop she offered in the 1980s, she has held up beautifully after her long hiatus from recording, creating a record that is very much her own.

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.

Love Travels at Illegal Speeds is by far Coxon's best solo album, and if his sensibilities remain where they're at now, it's conceivable that he'll never be able to top it.

Even amidst amazing production by her friends Christoffer Berg and Van Rivers & the Subliminal Kid, the minimally arranged Fever Ray is best swallowed when Andersson distorts her vocal effects.

As the watery floating of "I Think Ur A Contra" draws the album to a close, it becomes clear that not only did the members of Vampire Weekend succeed in creating an excellent sophomore album; they've managed to survive long enough to outlive their hype and its attendant backlash.

Instead of copying the aesthetic of 1970s rock ‘n’ roll, they’ve copied some of last year’s more popular indie records. The result, though at times satisfying, mostly feels contrived.

The Mouse and the Mask’s levity is the antithesis of the dense Madvilliany, and it continues Doom’s steady march toward achieving legendary status.

Perhaps the most successful aspect of Cross is its appeal on both the dance floor and the headphones, the pounding rhythms complemented by the nuanced detail of the arrangements and unified flow of mood.

It surpasses the previous Circulatory System effort, and stands to rival the best of Olivia Tremor Control's output.

With this album, Marnie Stern has proved once again that there are several effective ways to emotionally recontextualize her craft. Or, to put it simply, she's managed to produce one of the most fun albums of the year.

If you like rock tunes with sharp melodies and earworm choruses, Researching the Blues isn't likely to give you anything to complain about. It's an album that feels, at its best, effortless. Other moments, however, feel too effortless, and as a result there are some missed opportunities.

It shows a quick growth in confidence from the last record to this one, mostly leaving behind the moments that feel too quiet, too intimate to always connect to from the last record. Capacity is another strong record, and a brave step forward for Big Thief.

At times, Life is Good is Nas' most satisfying album since God's Son, and at times it is just as flawed as its predecessors.

Sure, he takes his cues from old sources, but the result -- dreamwave, or chillwave, or whatever--is so unique and lush that Palomo should be content to ride off of the high you imagine he might get from making something so effective.

Public Strain improves on Women in every way, which is no small feat. It's 13 minutes long than its predecessor, but Women doesn't use the extra time to spread out. The band keeps the tension up by building the various lean sounds of that record into new, more muscular variations.

The good thing is that for any misstep here, there's a success that overshadows it. But for those of us waiting for him to really knock another out of the park the way he did on The Animal Years, it might be a let down to realize So Runs the World Away isn't that.

It strikes a perfect balance between musical invention that will leave you cupping your ears, semiotically puzzling lyrics that will leave you scratching your head, and catchy pop style that will leave you tapping your feet.

Unfortunately, the dichotomy between the chaotic glee of Akron/Family’s set and Gira’s more traditional leanings diminishes the album’s luster.

A lean, focused record, Scale is Herbert's best record to date, and a must-buy for any dance-music fan.

Thanks to his varied songwriting, there's nary a weak link in Burst Apart. It might not benefit from the easy hooks of a concept album, but if you stick around till the end, it is every bit as rewarding as Hospice.

Comets on Fire is the band Wolfmother wishes it had the balls to be.

Any other attempt at describing Khan's sound of Renaissance antiquity cross-pollinating with postmodernity--the trip-hop bass of 'Trophy' that riptides into the autoharp lilt of the spectral 'Tahiti,' for instance--falls woefully short of music so cleverly askew and oddly beautiful.

What makes Marling engaging is that her music presents scenarios without deliberately sounding like poetry or art. Her songs do not emphasize the beauty of sounds or musicality of words so much as clip insightful observations from conversations.

Tindersticks fans will find very familiar, likable material on Leaving Songs.

Taken as a whole, Moms outreaches and outpaces any of Menomena's previous works.

Strange Keys to Untune God’s Firmament is classic Skullflower, a set of tunes that pays homage to the band’s history while still finding new inspiration in feedback, drone and monochord assault. This record puts them back in the game, and at the top of the class.

Compilations of this sort can rarely stand as both, and The BBC Sessions, through innovative and intelligent sequencing as well as a dedication to the band’s history, stands well above its peers.

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

It's part of the final duality that makes The Way Out a success: learning how it was constructed is fascinating, but it's equally enthralling to go into it completely ignorant.

Going Places is one of the heaviest, haziest, and densest records you're likely to hear in any genre. It also fulfills one of the promises of Yellow Swans career that was most apparent in their live shows -- namely, a marriage between the liberation of pure noise and the intellectual appeal of headier, more sophisticated experimental electronic practices.

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.

The album lives up to its name in every way on this powerful, bruising, yet generous record.

The more these songs scratch at that dried surface, the more fertile soil they reveal underneath.

Built to Spill has managed to elevate rock's pre-eminent instrument to a pedestal while creating something that's both approachable and timeless.

Although none of the new material is even remotely bad, a handful of diverse tracks on the album's second half exceed the high standards set by the hand-picked singles.

Aceyalone can't do it by himself, and by finding a kindred musical spirit in RJD2, he manages to make an album as expansive as his talent continually hints at.

For dedicated adherents, A Friend Of A Friend is an essential part of the Rawlings-Welch story, but casual listeners should stick with 2001’s high water-mark "Time (The Revelator)."