If you’re only going to buy one Belle & Sebastian album (and shame on you if you are), make it this one.

Orphans is something akin to taking a journey through a familiar yet entirely foreign dream-place.

A mountain of shambolic, livewire B-sides and covers of heroes and influence ranging from the Fall to Echo and the Bunnymen, help add a sense of balance and ballast to Brighten the Corners. It makes for an expanded vision of the original while at the same time proving that the original’s vision wasn’t quite so narrow after all.

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.

Nearly everything on Minimum-Maximum sounds astoundingly fresh.

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

Only Built for Cuban Linx...Pt. 2 is top-to-bottom brilliant, and it's energy and emotion is too infectious not to inspire a dozen great hip-hop records to come.

They're a tight fit: Ant likes to experiment, and Ali's nimble enough to keep up and make it work.

Strikes with a magnificent urgency.

Back to Black stands in testament to the fact that talent and originality still exist.

Total immersion in the passion of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah reveals the true power of music as a means of artistic expression.

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

The Chemistry of Common Life is not a technically proficient album despite its epic leanings. Like most albums primarily consisting of anthems, its impact tapers off slightly on repeated listens. But the sheer power of the album is key.

The members of 13 & God have created a genuinely rewarding record that is better than the sum of its parts.

You can see every angle and every side of the shape they've made. And the unimpeachable logic of each song, added to their odd tunefulness of the songs, makes them exciting to listen to.

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.

Rabbit Habits struck me most where it rescues the jazziness that's sorely missing from 2006's "Six Demon Bag." At the same time, though, the band continues to develop some productive tendencies from that sophomore outing.

There is something distinctly perfect about the naivety that the Pains of Being Pure at Heart seem to effortlessly inject into every bouncy ballad of young love and young living that makes their self-titled debut not only a welcome throwback but a much needed vacation from over-calculation.

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

In Advance of the Broken Arm is at least two songs too long. Yet Stern's manner of weaving together fiercely subjective, lyrical daydreaming with Olympus-level fret-searing finally means that the album justifies the majority of its many decisions.

The result is Kala a stark confrontation of set notions of authenticity and identity--and my new favorite record.

Food & Liquor is the best hip-hop album of 2006.

The project is structured much like a high-end runway show, so although most songs work on their own, they’re far more revelatory as a group.

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

It's impossible to guess what kind of album would've turned out had this seen the light of day two years ago, when it was originally expected. Chances are, though, we wouldn't be talking about intensity or hunger or survival with the same emotion in our voices.

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.

It plainly improves Grizzly Bear’s sound, and lends itself well to multiple spins, because each repeated listen reveals another perfectly crafted shard you missed on the last go-round.

The addition of vocals may initially turn off some, but in time the new style melds with the old, much in the same way that what has come before sits comfortably next to what is yet to come throughout this forty-two minute album.