Another One is a collection of a few of DeMarco’s best songs to date, all in a day’s work for this normal guy who just so happens to get a little wild on stage.

The Most Lamentable Tragedy can be a harrowing listen, but it’s also laced with jokes and music that’s fun and invigorating.

St. Catherine is just as pleasant than its predecessors, but, ironically, its dusted-off, straightened-out recording and more substantial lyrics point out the music as, well, a little less so.

No one song sticks out so prominently this time around, but that’s just because Star Wars works so well as a cohesive whole.

Dirty Sprite 2 is a tremendous compendium of everything you want from a Future album in 2015.

A couple of wooly moments aside, Monroe’s third album, The Blade, continues a remarkable hot streak for writers Luke Laird, Jessi Alexander, Chris Stapleton, and Monroe herself.

Its stakes are a little lower, and he’s no longer revealing grand truths about life, but documenting once-dire realities from a rosier lens is still a worthwhile undertaking.

Misfires aside, it’s tough to dispute that although Born in the Echoes may not be a great album, it is generally a competent one.

All of these lyrical open wounds could be hard to stomach if not for the salve that Emre Turkmen and Mikey Goldsworthy’s head-spinning instrumentals provide.

In the case of Twelve Reasons to Die II, the glass is slightly more than half full.

The real magic of Currents, though, is in how Parker so effectively (and genuinely, for the most part) manipulates the listener’s emotions without necessarily revealing any himself.

There’s no shortage of potential DJ weaponry on Homesick, but what makes the album truly impressive are the cuts where Matrixxman gets out of his presumed comfort zone and steps away from the club.

It’s tense throughout, but it’s also endearingly frisky, and the poppiest moments have a tendency of landing at just the right time to stave off any potential noise-rock monotony.

No longer ghosts, with this strong, same-as-it-ever-was album, Veruca Salt are now full-on zombies, the riffing dead. They don’t wanna go.

A pleasant surprise.

Maybe not what they originally had in mind when they used to call it “Electronic body music,” but a stunning reinterpretation nonetheless.

This 53-year-old minor folk vet’s drawl doesn’t obscure his flow, making it all the easier to follow his tales in real-time, inhabiting a husband cleaning his deer rifle or the bent-backed Deaver who watched as “Uncle Sam took away the neighbors’ land.”

Why Make Sense? smooths out Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard’s longstanding, ever-evolving musical partnership and collective existential quandaries into an album as polished as Larry Levan’s disco ball, and their most cohesive as well.

Sauna opens with the hissing and crackling of a steam room, and things get Benji-er from there.

Central bulbs in the now-blinding chandelier of Philly indie-punk, Hop Along’s thrilling sophomore effort plays out like sonic arrhythmia.

FWA is slicker than most mixtapes--and on tracks like the opener, his flow remains a spectacle--but there’s also the pervading sense here that he’s playing it safe.

These tracks don’t bear the outward signs of mourning of Rashad’s release, but at their heart there’s a sort of solitude that only occasionally makes its way onto the dance floor.

Though Django and Jimmie could have been a mere nostalgia trip, it’s more akin listening to your favorite uncles at family reunions, telling stories that they aren’t supposed to.

Power in the Blood is the work of an elder working against genre, knowing history, and moving forward into aesthetically unknown territory. For a septuagenarian, the optimism of it is heartening.

Elegant and nimble songs that are intricate in their beauty and restless in their heartbreak.

Turn is a haunting, often painfully beautiful example of how songs that may seem dead and buried can sublimely rise from the grave.

There are no musical clangers, and occasionally the guitar work is more ambitious than it needs to be. Bryan’s voice, when it is low and slow, is more exciting than his bro-holler, but both are pleasure for pleasure’s sake--and pleasure is enough reason to listen to this collection.

Occasional static aside, it seems Refused are really making good on their long-stated goal to take the airwaves back, or at least vibrating a little closer to the right frequency.