At its weary, lovely close, it becomes clear that Live belongs not to the listener but to the artist who created it. And that makes this album one of the most vital and electric he's made in years.

Some of these songs do, of course, belong on the radio: They’re saturated with production effects catered to a generation that calls its designer drug “ecstasy,” all wrapped around indulgent hooks, sentimental lyrics, and a sweet voice airbrushed into flawlessness. But Annie flaunts too much.

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

A noticeable departure on Kiss Each Other Clean is that Beam seems to be having a genuinely good time on the album.

It's an album that sounds like it was difficult to make, as these two move from being the couple to being the players, and that difficulty yields some of their most beautiful moments on record yet, even if it also (and perhaps necessarily) gets in the way of the songs sometimes.

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.

To say that Oh Holy Molar has a bite is a vast understatement -- the record grabs ahold of your skin and refuses to let go.

Suckers fire off Wild Smile, an album that exceeds all possible expectations and lays down a challenge for all debuting bands this year.

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.

The album complements each situation differently, and new elements become apparent with each listen.

Big Business boys Coady Willis and Jared Warren, the drum/bass duo, returned for their third album as members of the Melvins in 2010, keeping the hot streak going with The Bride Screamed Murder.

She's ditched the medieval allusions to dragons and fairies and most of the courtly, classical sound that marked so much of the later Helium material and her early solo material. But what results in many ways sounds like a rehash of her previous work.

Overall, though, Days is a great sophomore album and solid evidence that Real Estate is growing and ready to settle in for the long haul.

The music is cutesy and fun, but the lyrics are subversive.

The album features Leo's most meaty and confidant singing to date.

Despite Delta Spirit’s anarchic (i.e., creatively opportunistic) sampling of everything from cold war folk to the Cold War Kids, when the band members hit their stride--as on the rumbling, locomotive grooves of piano-stung epic Americana on 'Trashcan'--Sunshine becomes nothing less than an ode to musical joy.

Not only does it stand as a summation of their greatest (previous) strengths, its rhythmic and propulsive sway points to a new, more fervently alive direction for the group, making both the band and album’s name all the more appropriate.

[Pfeffer] pruned this album to an essential thirty-two minutes, in which every note (and there are a lot of them) has its purpose and every bizarre genre switch leads somewhere important and ends before wearing out its welcome.

It's OK to play with enthusiasm. Oh, and also, it helps to have an album with 12 fantastic songs, the way the do on Nothing Hurts.

The thickset blues-rock of Havilah, the fifth studio album from the Drones, makes for opaque and impenetrable listening.

Bromst annihilates all the expectations that have come to be expected of Deacon, without abandoning what made him everyone’s favorite dance-party czar.

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.

Molina has created a genre all her own, and Un Dia is its pièce de résistance.

This is a bit more than a simple holiday cash-in, but it falls short of anything all that necessary or memorable.

On an album where even the guest stars feel like samples worn out from repeated play--the back cover announces the song 'Flashlight Fight (Featuring Chuck D)'--the few innovative tracks offer hope that the Go! Team won't stagnate by its third outing.

There may be a language barrier to be dealt with here, but the feelings of the songs here transcend all walls, real or perceived.

Essentially, Forgiveness Rock Record finds Broken Social Scene trading "big and loud" for "wide and warm" and as a result sounding like they've really just settled further into their identity as a band.

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.

Castlemania indicates that like the most accomplished psychedelia, Thee Oh Sees are thoroughly capable of adding dimensionality to "odd"--and oddness to "pop."

A solid set of tunes with some interesting musical elements not typically present in Beam's dynamic.

At this point in his career, Slug seems fully aware of his own routine, and he’s either embracing it with a cheeky self-confidence (read: he’s getting boring) or he’s run out of interesting things to say but still feels like he’s somehow controversial in his honesty.

Bestival offers the opportunity to take a tour of the band's long, fruitful career, stopping at each stylistic turn in their journey to take in the sonic scenery, but it also adds the freshness that only a live performance can bring.

It's as good an introduction to the band as those 2008 singles were; sometimes thrilling, sometimes disappointing, but always formidable.

If Family Perfume Vol. 1 can be seen as a progression where Presley is settling into his skin, Family Perfume Vol. 2 is a cathartic catalogue of letters never sent, the consequences of past decisions poignant enough to keep Presley musing, wide-eyed, remorseful--but nonetheless hopeful.

A curiously good time from beginning to end.

An album full of majestic pop tunes in their absolute truest form.

The Roots are about to get flooded with production offers, since if they can lend John Legend serious street cred and make him more thrilling than he has ever been, they ought to be able to do this for everyone.

Ghostface's beat selection is impeccable.

Of all the bands in the rock canon, Wire may be the best embodiment of the term “forward-thinking” that is so vogue nowadays, and Object 47 keeps with the mantra with stunning results.

Sia's voice can be affected, and when the songwriting sags and the production becomes more generic toward the middle of the album, she struggles to keep the listener's attention.

Undercard is a solid listen all the way through, and proof that Darnielle and Bruno have a chemistry that can last through 10 years of dormancy, and that Darnielle can still surprise with a song, even when we think we know what to expect from him.

On Weekend At Burnie's, Curren$y has crafted a record he's probably chilling out to right now.

Rock tropes work well for them. They shouldn't be afraid to embrace that in perpetuity.

While White Crosses has a few stellar songs, it lets down as a complete record. Anarchy will have to wait a little longer.

A front-to-back play of Guns may not work for a dorm-room style throwdown, but it is a successful album of dancehall tracks that shows good teamwork within this collaboration.

But for all the sonic changes and glimmers of hope, the best stuff here still sounds like boilerplate Jurado. Swift's production is at its best when it adds subtle atmospherics to the fragile melody of "Kansas City," or the dusty flourishes to the chorus of "Harborview."

Tomboy's best quality is its consistency with Lennox's vision, in spite of the critical hullabaloo surrounding it.

Here they've proved that their success isn't all charm or happenstance. Woods have gotten to this point by following every creative impulse, and they seemingly have a million more possibilities stretching out ahead.

What makes it breathe, what allows it to flourish above its glitchy techno, its processed wizardry... what untangles it from a mess of circuitry and power strips and anti-virus pop-up warnings, is Yorke's incredible, distinctive voice.

It's encouraging to watch a band shift and grow and manage to stay essentially true to form-such is the case here, as is for the album in entirety.

This mature Ryan Adams gives us 11 songs on Ashes and Fire that are perfectly fine, a few bumps but most of it is solid with a few that really stand out.

Miller has the voice to support the songs and the talent to write a whole sturdy catalog of them. But with the bravado and confidence he’s shown in the past, the problem is one of volume. With so much to say, much of Rhett Miller feels muted.

Sure, he can hide his identity, but there's no denying his sudden emergence as one of dance music's notable producers, very well steeped in his own layered aesthetic, yet open enough to welcome other musical influences into the fold.

Robyn could've put together a single album filled with all-knockout jams, but it's better than she got to exercise her brain trying to fit in everything she wanted.

The album is filled with well-conceived, well-executed pop pieces, but it would be silly to pretend that the musical landscape, including Top 40, isn't occupied by songwriters who make reasonably innocent songs about boys at least as well as Best Coast does.

Without question, part of Shocking Pinks' charm is the intimacy of its unpolished production values, but, with a little more patience and rigorous revision, it's easy to see Harte's best songs being even better.

Balf Quarry, their first album for Drag City, isn’t going to put a halt to those Sonic Youth comparisons. They’ve steadfastly stuck with the sound created on the Boss album for most of this venture.

Jacobs works in a peerless vacuum located in a hazy plot point on the pop timeline, located somewhere in-between outright sugary pop and nerdy bedroom electronica.

Keeping the music simultaneously lush and light is a good choice for songs that prominently feature people moving too fast and making weighty decisions that would seem reckless if they weren't so endearingly passionate.

Despite these head-scratching derailments, 200 Tons of Bad Luck brings the gloom in Biblical doses.

The result is a confident, tight batch of tracks that beautifully encompass a prosaic kind of ache.

The Indigo Girls prove themselves, again, to be artists whose metaphoric turns of phrases evoke a hard-up world and invoke a more meaningful existence.

Like their creator, the 10 songs that make up We Live in Rented Rooms won't demand you listen to them. But the more these songs play, the more layers they reveal.

Errors have built a subdued and often gorgeous album with very little that needs deciphering.

He's here to entertain, and to interpret the memories of his childhood. As such, the music is a gentle stroll, like an idyll walk through the Rothaargebirge, the deep green mountain range adjacent to his hometown for which the Ferndorf is named.

The Future Crayon... succeeds in being just as captivating as the band's proper albums -- or perhaps even more so.

A barnstorming, kiwi-pop-delicate album that is Reatard’s best album-length statement to date.

Why?’s ability to write so prolifically, that holds Eskimo Snow together. It keeps us looking forward to what the collective will present us with next, even if the quality of Yoni Wolf's vocals are up for debate.

Where Love and Life limped from song to song, The Breakthrough zips confidently through its sixteen tracks.

Ultimately Dalek's fragmented drone makes [rapper] dalek's tired wordplay obsolete, thereby redeeming Abandoned Languages.

It's a bit more playful and pop than its predecessor, but it retains Tiga’s signature finely tuned electrohouse sensibilities.

Clor has a number of entertaining and inviting songs in the final tracks, but nothing that quite lives up to first four tracks.

It has sunshine in its music that isn't clichéd, a range of songs that never let the progression slow down or stagnate, and an array of emotional explorations that are refreshing and accomplished.

Cape Dory is not the kind of album that heralds the emergence of some great new talent, necessarily. It just does what it set out to do, and it does so perfectly.

Class Clown Spots a UFO is a fine record, but now two records into their return, it feels like this "classic" version of Guided By Voices is following too closely to a script.

Guster manage to let out a bit of their inner Oasis without sacrificing any of their "I-knew-them-first" credibility.

The skills Barthel and Carter possess at creating this kind of sound with just a keyboard and guitar, as well as the two bandmate's longtime personal chemistry, points to a promising future. Professionally, however, Eyelid Moves is something of a stumble out of the gate.

Meadow features Buckner's most focused work in years.

For the Whole World to See is not the true revelation the label wants you to think it is but it has some catchy melodies and delivers them at breakneck speeds.

Even if you've got Smoke Ring for My Halo, go get this one (it will be available as its own vinyl pressing), because this thing is way more than just some tacked-on companion piece.

While not the definitive Tindersticks album, Falling Down A Mountain is a compassionate, delicately rendered collection of songs that warrants repeated listening.

The standout tracks are the featureless "Flame Throwers," "Odds Cracked" and "Auralac Bags," the latter of which boasts a noir-ish, alleyway-chase-scene type of beat.

The growth on display here outweighs the band’s now reliable--and easily addressable--shortcomings.

The sing-alongs abound and the keyboard definitely calls for some attention from the dance floor, but the redundancy of these twelve songs is bound to induce a few headaches.

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

All the elements of Espers' sound come together more seamlessly than ever before here.

It’s the ultimate inner battle of good and evil, one that even the best of us wrestle with when making ourselves vulnerable to the entanglements and snares of love, and one that Khan has found her most confident and enthralling voice in yet.

With less of the anxiety that marked his earlier albums, that world is a joy to get lost in over and over.

As previous albums did, Myth Takes sees !!! aiming high in terms of grandiosity and intensity but falling short of its ambitions.

McCombs still has an ear for language and roll-off-the-tongue singing. His voice coats the lyrics like thick warm caramel on this one. Though often obtuse and twisted, McCombs includes some straightforward lyrics, as well, with some political commentary to boot.

What stands out on Etiquette, what makes it so powerful, isn't the full instrumentation -- it's still not exactly a wall of sound -- it's the moving and earnest lyrics Ashworth deadpans over his dark, minimalist beats and minor chords.

More so than the debut's, these songs fare like standup comedy on repeated listens: Once the punch lines are spoiled, who wants to listen to a joke again?

Ghetto Bells finds Chesnutt running the gauntlet -- string-laden balladry, desert folk-rock, thumb-piano noodling.

Levi's gift lays in kitschy nuance that is inherently pleasurable. And by diving into more conventional songs on Never, she loses a bit of this endearing personality.

There's a difference between a damn fine song and the brilliance that made up Stevens's previous two releases, Illinois and Seven Swans. Unfortunately, The Avalanche clunks through track after track of damn fine songs while only rarely hitting these moments that make your body tingle in euphoria.

Crafting a decidedly more difficult record was likely something Krug intended, considering these songs seamlessly segue in and out of each other. That means some parts sound almost superfluous, as if they were written expressly to maintain this continuity. Still, the effect succeeds far more often than it fails.

In highlighting the more tasteful, nuances of their sounds, they’ve emerged with a more cohesive whole, a representation that better captures their classic-rock heart while simultaneously stripping the fat away and revealing the core behind the chaos.

Yes, I'm a Witch may be less than the sum of its parts, but [some] notable tracks... make it worthwhile.