Although the album is listenable and even uplifting at times, no songs readily stand out as particularly important or poignant in the way that “Keep Yourself Warm” or “Old Old Fashioned” from The Midnight Organ Fight do.

Cassadaga represents a next phase, one that will prove enduring even as the kids latch onto their next rock 'n' roll savior.

On Loose in the Air, the Double has attenuated the noise and cranked up the once-obscured songs. This may be bad news for the purists, but it’s a blessing for everyone waiting for a great record from this Brooklyn band.

Thematically and structurally, this record is Linkous comfortably being Linkous.

The stream-of-conscious raps that peppered her debut have been scaled back, replaced by relatively more traditional compositions, but the music is still deliciously unpredictable, and the words are a pack of SweeTart poetry.

There’s not much here that will elevate the band beyond their current status. Bermanites will still revel in his idiosyncratic lyrics, and they can even play along thanks to an insert that lists all the chords used on the record.

On their fourth album, Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free, they've simultaneously intensified and refined that blend, even as they've shaved off one of their original four members.

Presenting four or five great songs on any fifty-minute album is a rare gift, and on Leaders of the Free World, these bittersweet Brits prove to be worthy rainy-day companions.

This is a record not so much crying in the wilderness, but one recognizing that its characters are in that wilderness.

The Ohio-based band led by singer/songwriter Jerry DeCicca bears its share of melancholy and then some on their fifth album, but so do a million and one other indie bands, and none of them come anywere close to evoking the same sort of sad-sack super session [like one with Lee Hazlewood, Townes Van Zandt, Stuart Staples from Tindersticks, and Mickey Newbury].

There are no bad songs on Employment. There are maybe a couple not-good ones toward the end, but even those are so tightly wound and polished they could end up lodged in your head for days.

It's a much warmer album than her most recent album, 2002's Daybreaker, and it's perhaps her most complete album yet.

Death Magnetic is just about the best album Metallica could have made at this point.

Like Pigeons before it, A Different Ship is a solid album, but one that still finds Here We Go Magic on the road to perfecting and updating their sound on a full-length album.

Throughout its padded 40-minute run time (like "All Hour Cymbals," it’s got a decent amount of filler), Odd Blood makes a stronger case for what’s up next for the band’s sound than where it is now.

On a whole Salon lacks more of these emotional moments.

Ring is an ambitious and impressive statement, and one that should help Glasser avoid that one-off attention to become a lasting artist. Its highlights are unique and mesmerizing, and the few lesser (and by lesser, I mean not flat-out fantastic) moments leave room for her to grow from here.

It's exhausting.

It is uncompromising, brutally honest... and adroit at melding many genres together without losing sight of the fact it is first a hip-hop record.

In 2006, it seemed like Beach House couldn't outlive Beach House. In 2012, Bloom is the bar to clear.

Cymbals Eat Guitars don’t get drowned in homage, however; from the first explosive note to the last, Why There Are Mountains is a routinely rewarding album, with each listen revealing great new scenery.

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.

The members of Viva Voce accomplish a catchy cohesiveness that's at its best when they allow their songs to stray.

Rise Above is deliberately challenging and obtuse; its ceaseless changes and refusal to settle are its most important similarities to Damaged's abrasive and exhaustive loudness. Translating Black Flag's anti-intellectual screed into arty free-jazz concept is one thing. That it actually merits repeat listens is another altogether.

Here's to Taking It Easy is a fine debut of sorts for Phosphorescent as a band. To Willie was the preamble to this, the band's new direction. And good as Houck was as a singer-songwriter, "band leader" is a role that suits him just as well.

Thankfully, on Live a Little, he... sticks to what he does best: creating lovely, literate pop-rock.

Menomena now has to be regarded as one of today's more intriguing rock outfits.

These Swedes can write a song with hooks that travel deep through your ears and stay in your cerebral cortex.

Sincerity is one of the hardest things to pull off in music, so it’s to Bouchard’s credit that he does so effectively.

Corin Tucker went back to her roots on Kill My Blues and shows why her brand of lo-fi indie punk had such a strong following in the first place.

With In Love & War, Amerie has adopted to trying times with spunk and style, grace and flair. And, yes, swag.

Stephen Wilkinson has taken the field recordings and organic experiments of his previous albums and filtered them through a stylistic prism, resulting in a kaleidoscopic but nearly uniformly accomplished set of songs.

It showcases an artistic range that had been up to this point unexplored.

It's a brief, delightful little thing, with a handful of knockout singles.

[A] great debut.

Its dreamy interludes, leading into those electroclash tangents provide a welcome bit of inventiveness that help to remind that, while relatable at their best, Little Dragon are hardly conventional.

These songs are so direct that they lack the depth and texture that more sonic detail would deliver.

The album is another solid (if somewhat too long) set by a band firmly in control of where it is at and what it’s doing.

Under Great White Northern Lights is a perfect explanation of the band's significance to doubters, now and in the future.

Constant Future is another fine rock record from a band that gets harder to ignore with each release, even when the album's titular problem is exactly what keeps them flying under the radar.

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

He uses his angelic croon to beckon us to listen to him, sounding so damn desperate. Combine that with the rest of the band's driving, yet ambient build-ups and we have one of our most lovely and earnest records of 2011.

The songwriting is simply the biggest flaw of We Are Him, and in an album so reliant upon the vocal performance, it's a flaw that's too hard to ignore.

If More Fish isn't as good as Fishscale -- and there's just as good a chance that it is as good -- it's the tapestry method that doesn't make for a cohesive listen.

Although the reinvention teased before release never materializes, Lust for Life is still a return to form which should cement Del Rey’s status as the queen of femme fatale pop.

Modern Guilt doesn’t quite make it to that flashpoint, but it certainly points the way to a musical future brighter than the endless, mirrored hall of 'Devils Haircut' rewrites that songs like 'E-Pro' suggested was coming. And that is a sea change worth waiting for.

What could have easily ended up as a boring, stale record -- the sound of a band getting ready for 401(k) land -- is instead the peaceful sound of a goofy band being a little less silly.

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.

A powerfully uncomplicated rock album.

He never panders to them; instead, Plastic Beach's guest vocals are anchored by Albarn's own melodic flair. His falsettoed ennui shines through, and the songs are loaded with Albarn's pet sounds.

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

Mark Kozelek is surely a distinct voice, and a dynamic guitar player, but there's a difference between playing solo and playing to yourself. And he stumbles over that line just enough to hold this album back from greatness.

The tensions on the second record take on new, fascinating layers as you go back to the perspective laid out on Born on a Gangster Star. The two also clash musically, sometimes echoing one another, sometimes conflicting. But both albums reward repeated listens.

In between the dead-horse beatings, the Mael brothers pull off some brilliant one-liners and explore uncharted thematic territory, which suggests that Hello Young Lovers could have been truly great if the Maels wanted it to be.

Although Steeple is not entirely groundbreaking, it's not entirely safe either, as its fidgety temperament is remarkable enough to make anyone feel at home.

Chunks of Temporal will be inessential at best for casual fans, meant to appease only the diehards.

Ultimately, Trees Outside the Academy will most likely be remembered as Moore's most personal solo album, not because he sang with anymore emotion than anything he did with Sonic Youth, but because within its twelve songs he tackled many facets of music that interest him.

Simplicity works here, and even though the album may not have a clear direction, the array of song topics is catchy enough to make this alt-rock/indie/country/folk experience work.

King lacks an overall cohesiveness or direction.

Root for Ruin doesn't have the ecstatic heights of Let's Stay Friends, but it's more level-headed in a way.

While the songs may seem borderline psychotic at moments, the bright zeal of their delivery and the band's careful crafting imply some moving on.

This Is for the White in Your Eyes is a come-out-of-the-gate winner.

With an ear pointed to the type of gritty urban centers depicted on the album cover, Dirty Bomb references dubstep, baile funk, breakcore, North African drum patterns, Arabic folk music and Bollywood strings. And it will devastate your subwoofer.

The album's second half is still woefully lacking, one big mess of boredom and monotony.

While there's no shortage of stylistic/historical touchstones for the wildly varied batch of tracks that makes up Rites, there's some indefinable thread connecting it all, ultimately giving the band members their own sound whether they really want one or not.

The rookie blunders are kept to a minimum, and Wale’s mesmeric talent--the left-field punchlines, the charmingly laid-back flows, the nakedly emotional storytelling--is enhanced by lively beats that juggle eclectic synth-pop with throwback soul.

The band's shortcomings only become apparent when looking at the album as a whole; its repetition of the same sunshine formula loses it flare right around the third track, when the record's pace begins to slow.

A case could be made that this is a newfound maturity, and without a doubt Rivers is no second-hand attempt. However, sans even a single convulsive whirlwind, Rivers is more musical wallpaper than a masterpiece.

The live tracks, especially those on the second disc, are the songs that will win you over if you are still listening and still on the fence.

There is a tension inherent in the contrast between such well-known artists that makes for interesting possibilities. Moderat do well here by playing off of this tension while creating highly listenable songs.

True to its title, it finds the pair plowing away dutifully and deftly at the furrow that's been their focus from the beginning.

The album showcases Bethel and Paterson as solid songwriters who can willingly carry you into places no god-fearing man would dare travel.

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.

In the end, The Fool's success comes in not cutting corners. No moment here settles for the cheap thrill, and in building these songs -- carefully,and each with its own distinct materials -- Warpaint comes off as an awfully confident band, one you should be listening to more often.

Spoils contains enough perverse and engaging lyrical quirks to make it worthy of investigation, and who can resist lines like: “And here’s the dowry of the leper/ A walnut shell and a peck of pepper” (from 'Hazel Forks').

A bewildering kaleidoscopic whirlwind that retains edginess and remains splendid all at once.

Take Care, Take Care, Take Care is another beautiful record from the band, and another fresh track laid on their sonic landscape, a slight tangent from their other records that never loses their overall direction.

As she sets her sights on bigger targets, namely war and terrorism, it's hard not to wish she'd remained as narrowly focused on the politics of personal freedom.

Reign is more nuanced and varied in sound than Treats was.

Even for Deerhoof, this is a tricky album to work your way through. But even if you never quite figure it out, it's unlikely you'll get tired of trying any time soon.

Cruising through a quieter set of cornfields than its predecessor, Celebration Castle never fully grasps the energy of Laced with Romance, but its songwriting and guitar work are equally as strong.

[Casablancas] builds atmosphere out of evocative lyrics and emotional scenery, and he does it without leaning on linear narrative or songs with singular interpretations.

Under The Pale Moon pays homage to the pasty romantics of '80s pop, the dramatic crooners of years further past, the intriguingly depraved icons of post-punk, and several others without sounding like a pastiche or a mere exercise in genre tourism.

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

The 22 tracks on this album range freely in length from 11 seconds to six and a half minutes and a rare few would stand on their own, as the musical shifts between them can be so slight.

You Are All I See suffers from the exact same problem that plagued another act with a helium-voiced frontman: Passion Pit on their 2009 album Manners. Instead of delivering full products that capitalize on their immediate strengths, both albums pad their triumphs with overdramatic bluster storms that fail to really go anywhere, and it's kind of a shame.

The duo successfully crosses Clark's talent of romanticizing morbidity through melody and Byrne's knack for eccentric pop by using a prominent horn section both as a bridge between the two and an unfamiliar element that distinguishes this as a partnered effort.

The Dodos have released what is at once perhaps their most interesting, strangest and even most concise work to date.

At times the results might sound strained, but they are entirely consistent both with the principles of free jazz, from which the record emerges, and with the spirit of Don Cherry, towards which it returns.

Quazarz: Born on a Gangster Star is a curious new entry for the group. It expands the space-age palate of Lese Majesty, but slips in the unique tunefulness of Black Up. And yet it doesn’t quite sound like either, and--maybe unsurprisingly, at this point--it doesn’t sound like any other record you’ll hear this year.

Instead of complaining about the soullessness of life under the major-label umbrella, naysayers ought to be examining the band's true aesthetic motivations for taking an earthier, more straightforward approach on The King Is Dead.

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.

Make no mistake, though--the music of Hymn and Her is good, and the songs are almost always uniformly excellent examples of finely-honed pop songcraft. But when each excellent song sounds just like the slow, rainy Sunday pulse of a track that just preceded it, well, a few less hymns and a few more songs for rocking are in order.

Plumb is one of the top-shelf albums of 2012 so far because of Field Music's openness to continually tinker with pop music's DNA.

Celebration is as theatrical as it is guttural, with Ford’s voice bellowing above cabaret-style organs, sharp guitars and loose, spiraling drum riffs.

The Lucky Ones shows him to be as reassuringly sarcastic and self-deprecating as ever.

A beautiful back-porch album.