Opticks is also more mature than her previous outing, which at times can seem like the happenstance work of an adorable child. It's clear that Silje Nes is coming into her own as an artist here.

Pilot Talk II is brilliant because it builds on its excellent predecessor, but finds just a touch more focus.

In its essence, Death To False Metal is competently put together, and adequately celebratory in its own way (as the album title might suggest), but there is very little to latch on to as far as a reason for existence.

As an album The Lady Killer achieves everything it purports to be. Its music is familiar enough to attract broad attention.

Dark Twisted Fantasy is an album full off melodic ideas, copious guest features, winding songs, unexpected twists, and improbable pairings.

In a career full of successful fusions of metal, psych, crusty punk and indie rock, Spiral Shadow is another triumph.

Small Craft probably wouldn't make it as an art installation. It gets too diverse and obstreperous to make good musical wallpaper.

As a funk or electro album, As U Were is fun to listen to. A little cheesy, maybe, but it gets the proverbial party started, which is always a clear sign that something's going well. It's when Lyrics Born tries to hang on too tightly to his old roots that things start to get messy.

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.

Whether or not you think antipathy and self-destruction are legitimate themes for music, or you feel that even the pretty remote handling of rap that Salem has done as three white kids is too much, you can't dismiss what started all this hub-bub in the first place: the fact that the trio has crafted a sound that still doesn't really sound like anything else. Whatever else it does, King Night stays true to that.

Songs for Singles sees the Miami band continuing to experiment with upbeat, accessible metal songs, and while not fully pop yet, the addition of a more advanced rhythm section helps offset their perpetual need to drone their guitars out. The album inches the band further to reaching a goal of good pop metal that, while seemingly impossible in 2010, is a fight worth fighting.

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.

It's all there in those opening lines: Your familiar arms, I remember.

Each pass cements that Stevens has done the impossible yet again: He's released another album that's both genre-defining and genre-defying.

For most of I Am Not a Human Being, it seems like Wayne has forgotten how to write a verse. He's all about couplets now.

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.

As they've made it to their fourth album, they've quickly become one of indie's most reliable bands, each new album bringing the promise of some of the year's best music.

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.

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.

But for at least 10 tracks, Gucci is able to sustain a hell of a run, forming perhaps commercial rap's best dispatch this year. There have been, and probably will be, better rap albums this year. But none will be more fun.

As great as these songs are, how much you love them will rest on how long a leash you're willing to give Young and Lanois with the all ringing, sometimes overbearing, noise they wrap them in.

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.

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.

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.

On this album she proves herself as something more (way more, in fact) than an eternal scenester and competent drummer.

As an album, Epic is disjointed in places, but as a collection of songs it's strong enough.

It's an album that marries the buzzsaw abrasion of past Swans' albums with the country-cum-death-blues feel of his work with Angels of Light. That's an easy way to explain it, anyway.

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