The most elaborately impenetrable album we're likely to hear this decade.

The bass can get lost in the mix as well beneath all the moving parts. With the kinds of rhythms The Budos Band lay down, you need the bass up front and center. These qualms are minor compared with the overall delight the album conveys.

Maybe it's because we've come to expect these guys to knock us out with each album, but Smother can't help but feel like a misstep.

Have One on Me isn't at all a ploy for greater likability. It's an affecting, indulgent, and thoroughly fleshed-out monument to Newsom's considerable ambition.

It is simple, it is pure, it is predictable, it is Another High on Fire Album.

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.

Quarantine The Past, a "best of" compilation designed for those who didn't experience the band at the right age (a group that is now well out of college), attempts to put the band's best musical face forward.

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.

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.

I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass is the statement of a band insistent on showing the world it is not quite through being relevant.

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 majority of the album is exactly what indie rock has been lacking for over a decade, and this is too crucial a release to get caught up in nitpicking.

An exquisitely produced magnum opus.

The 10-track album is heavily front-loaded--while the texture and tone remain relatively consistent, the writing "relaxes" a bit about halfway through, and there's little in the record's second half that's as intensely arresting as any of the aforementioned songs.

This is far from an album that will appeal to all, but it's a hell of a lot more fun than the Hold Steady's previous two efforts.

From the lavish orchestration courtesy of Van Dyke Parks to the richness and sheer abundance of language at Newsom's disposal, Ys is a supreme achievement.

Here, they sound polished and crisp, which is a remarkable change from other issues of these recordings. Presumably the band is happy sounding this way, but it often feels a little too clean.

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

From its painstaking production to its dense lyrical constructs to its mammoth choruses, High Violet is likely to be one of the year's best.

It's his finest work yet, which is saying something, and the kind of record that will resonate for years not just because it's reveres history, but because it understands it and isn't afraid to demand answers from it.

The rest of Wind’s Poem plays out slow, shimmering, and really just classic Phil Elvrum, even if the album’s tone is darker, well produced and generally well executed. But once an experimentalist folk musician, always an experimentalist folk musician, and kudos to Elvrum for experimenting even further outside of the realm.

Radio Dept. caught flak for being derivative early in their career, but Passive Aggressive posits that they may have sounded like a lot of different bands during their run so far, but they've always just been themselves: an overlooked band deserving of more attention than the little they've received. This comp should fix that.

Rather than the stripped-down or lonely songs that so often accompany the bill of "solo effort," these five songs are as polished, highly wrought, ornamental--take your pick--as any on Veckatimest.

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

Flower Boy is a fascinating, singular effort from Tyler, The Creator. He’s crafted a record that finally measures up to a promise that has always been there.

Ghostface can rest easy in the fact that Apollo Kids shows that the drop in quality on Wizard of Poetry was just temporary, and amongst rappers who are 40-years-old or older, he's the definite champ. There aren't even many graying rockers making art as vital as Apollo Kids, radio play or not.

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

This Is Happening is a record that knows -- made by a band that knows -- that disco is better when it's just not so satisfied with itself.