Even the lesser tracks here endear themselves upon multiple listens, and the best stuff is uniquely exciting given their context of departure from a well-loved sound.

Panda Park might not be one of the easiest albums to get into this year, but given proper time, it reveals itself as one of the best.

I Am the Fun Blame Monster is totally vibrant, totally groovy, and once again, totally awesome.

What makes OK Cowboy worthwhile is not a greater emphasis on the chilly tones that made Vitalic’s initial singles so impressive and characterized some of his savage DJ sets, but the demonstration of a surprising degree of variety and even humanity within those seemingly narrow colonnades of rising and whiplash synths over soulless, mechanical drums.

Ward’s controlled voice never falters or fails, which makes his words of wisdom drill into the soul with unquestionable power.

Writer’s Block has announced the renaissance of both pop music and love.

Why Should the Fire Die? may see Nickel Creek turn further away than ever from CMT’s trappings, but it also shows the band reaching to eclipse its more generic pop-rock reference points as well.

I don't have the conscience to recommend Sojourner to the uninitiated, but as a document of what Molina acolytes already suffer, it's essential.

There are thirteen tracks here spread over 50 minutes, but not once does the quality or pace dip below thrilling. Every track is bursting with ideas and inspired moments.

Far, far better than it has any right to be, an album that sounds like a natural progression of the band’s career and one that, if they’d made it instead of San Francisco, might just have held them together for a bit longer.

A disjointed mess- brilliant songs gone so awry that I find myself no longer excited by the prospect of listening to the album through, but disappointed.

The main, fundamental problem with this album is that as good as the melodies are, it really does fall flat in trying to get you to feel anything.

More rounded and less determinedly schizo than Fantasma, Point is a great album of delicious odd-pop made by a whimsically modest genius.

This album comes in a neat package: well-guarded and wry, artists competently displaying their hard-earned skill. It's all very professional, but no more meaningful than the titular appellations, the smile of a persona.

A wild and beautiful ride.

The Boss’ most lively release since Born in the USA.

What really makes Hawley stand out from just about every other contemporary solo artist is his modernization of the classic, silky pop sound and his adjustment of it to fit into today’s world.

The National are able to pack as much power into the songs on Alligator as any of the more heralded indie-rock bands working right now, only The National have taken the common influences and grafted them into something altogether fresh and remarkable.

It all sounds nice enough to start with, but as you hear it more and more you love it more and more, the simple charms showing themselves to be more and more complicated but no less delightful.

La Forêt has the sort of courage-minus-contrivance that is exceedingly (and ironically) rare in music of its dramatic and thematic ilk.

One of the best debut albums of the last five years.

This is their radio-rock record, and it's not a tribute, it's as close to the real thing as they've come since they actually had a chance at radio play back in the '90s.

Jarvis is strong enough, smart enough, and at home enough with its ancient rock-star concerns and unembellished songcraft, for "Running the World" to remain a bonus track. This album doesn't need rescuing.

Fennesz makes Boards Of Canada sound like Daft Punk and My Bloody Valentine sound like Oasis.

Haha Sound’s music is always competent, and often worthy of Broadcast’s debut album, but it’s disconcerting to see a band repeat a simple formula with such devotion.

Allow me to offer some parting advice: just because a record expresses emotion doesn’t make it bad.

The net result is an amazing pileup of discount psychedelia and stoner rock grind, with ample doses of ecstatic amplifier brutality thrown in to explode any ham-fisted accusations of classic rock necrophilia.

It is simultaneously the most resplendent, accomplished record the band has made, with all kinds of songs... that retain the worst, most self-indulgent aspects of one of underground rock’s most consistently imperfect bands.

Aerial isn’t perfect, but it is magnificent.

It’s a passionate and at times painful aural experience as a whole, but it’s one that has to be taken from start to finish.

The finest album of the White Stripes’ career.

Abandoned in the spotlight, Doom appears to falter, though again I think it’s just because we’ve grown so accustomed to cherry-picking his lyrical gems from a well-blended stoned barrage.

Cross is a big party record with a few exciting beats, as well as one of the few examples of desirable audio clipping.

“I am a writer, writer of fictions,” Meloy claims on “Engine Driver,” and that’s exactly what he does, but it’s what everyone else does too, the only real difference being Meloy hits the thesaurus and maritime literature a bit harder than most.

A complete album of epic scale, musical significance and a highly prescient lesson in listening, participating and challenging.

So we've got pop music too lightweight to do much more than fancy up the background and a conceptual underpinning, that, due to the seamless way it's blended into these songs, is near imperceptible.

Avatar shows Comets capable of a level of sophistication and skill previously unconsidered.

Fur and Gold is admittedly not as strong and cohesive a record as "Wind in the Wires." At its finest, though, it does show off a rare talent for haunting and evocative songwriting.

Wilderness is Prewitt’s most accomplished solo effort to date. He has craftily corralled the large scale orchestral sweep of White Sky, but kept the intimacy of the guitar/voice confessionalism of Gerroa Songs.

Leaving Songs sounds a lot like a Tindersticks album, one that eschews their more baroque offerings for mature balladry.

Bright Like Neon Love may be too rock for the dance heads and too dance for the rockists, but for those without ideological hang-ups, it should be merely one of the most fun and exciting releases of the year.

Nick Franglen and Fred Deakin rarely miss with this album.

The experimental, lo-fi branding of his oeuvre is gone, but the originality of his sound continues to trump the nostalgic demons in his head.

It is intermittently thrilling, the first record since Perfect to show any of that record’s gleaming promise, but it is nonetheless brought aground by some of the same problems that dogged the last two LPs.

Separate, the songs all sound great, but together, they don’t make a real album.

The majority of these upbeat songs have howling vocals, scything guitar and, unusually for a current Brit group, a rhythm section that manages to be danceable without having to go out of its way to prove it--but it’s the slower tracks that end each side that turn the album into something cohesive.

When RJ sticks to the bounce aesthetic and Acey keeps his writing lucid and/or topical, the record becomes the most listenable of the emcee's recent output.

It’s not that the male-female duo vocals make it or even the moments where the group channels the Delgados in their sublime use of strings and horns; it’s more that Stars has gotten tighter since their last outing.

You could spend an age listing and describing the musical wealth of Damaged... Better just to listen to it, soak it all in, than fail with words.

The Obliterati succeeds in proving that Mission of Burma is not only capable of a comeback and a return to form, but also has exponential potential to evolve and thrive as a working band.

It’s abundantly clear that Ward is an indie-rock songwriter--a pretty good one sometimes--who doesn’t bring a whole lot else to the table.

Unlike the playgrounds inhabited by those chillout bands--and other post-Air types, for that matter--the rhythms aren’t just here to keep time. Instead, they add texture and purpose, swinging from chunky bass lines to dub soundscapes.

The cover of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” is pretty inventive.... Unfortunately for the group, the album doesn’t approach these moments of sublimity nearly enough.

It’ll take an adventurous set of ears and some headphones. Don’t worry, take a deep breath and relax. You see, Beans makes it easy for you by spitting with what is, perhaps, the most technically gifted flow in hip hop today.

It’s both business as usual and their most complex set of ideas to date.

The poetry is too good, the gloom too cached in symbolism and fine melodies to feel trite or melodramatic.

Rubber Factory is not as consistent an offering as Thickfreakness.... But make no mistake, the strengths here more than amend for the weaknesses.

The nice thing about God’s Son, although it isn’t fantastic or at the level of Stillmatic, is that it honestly doesn’t feel rushed. Nas is responsible for the lyrical content of the album, and it, like his previous releases, is nearly flawless.

Perhaps less transcendent, The Milk of Human Kindness may ultimately prove more enjoyable.

It is arguable that Gold & Green is the link between Super AE and the Bores’ much feted neo-psych masterpiece, Vision Creation Newsun.

Songwriting necessarily takes a backseat here most of the time, but it’s hardly missed when there’s so much gorgeous, woozy texture to loll in.

If you come expecting a great album full of hit singles, you won’t get it. If you come with an open mind, what will greet you is the opening chapter of a tale about a girl living through music, remembering through music, exploring her art and herself, starting out to create something special and different.

Musically, he’s ditched the clean, plainly instrumented indie-country schlep of his previous efforts for something brassy, something downright soulful.

Though The Wilderness is filled with stunning songs, by album’s end, they tend to meld together. Their uniformity is their greatest fault, though admittedly one that can be overlooked during its best moments.

With “Crazy,” the duo hits its apex without really shrouding the rest of the album.

It’s still identifiably Low, but richer and more diverse than before.

Guillemots are constructing their own universe and inviting interested parties to join them within it. I can’t remember the last time a band did that so effectively and so invitingly.

The Juan Maclean takes the mechanized side of music, the Kraftwerk precision and automated bass, but injects it with a personal, human vision and unmet, unwanted desires.

With more concern for melody and rhythm than partisan politics, they use modern technology and an open mind to nimbly skip between the opposing camps of black 70s Disco and white 70s AM Radio, but in their songwriting methods The Sisters embrace the now mythic open arms party spirit of the early dance movement.

He exudes a level of charisma matched only by Ludacris on a global scale.

Congotronics 2 sticks closely to the sonics of the first volume, possibly because the bands do actually sound similar, or possibly because the bands have been recorded in similar fashion.

On almost every level, Jeff Tweedy and Co. have concocted the perfect follow-up to an epochal, career-defining record--taking greater risks and yielding deeper rewards--and finding more challenging ways to channel pain that just won’t quit.

To understand why the album is disappointing, you must consider the different perspectives. The fresh listener sees an EP's worth of quality songs and a six-minute skit roadblock. Someone who heard the leak is confused as to why more wasn't done to circumvent the lack of newness inherent in early disclosure. Diehard MFers will retain respect in spite of reused beats, but won't be able to avoid comparing it to the solid-but-sparse King Geedorah record.

Make no mistake about it, I Phantom is a fantastic record.

If the original and inspiring Icarus Line take on itself had been continued from the beginning or, better yet, the record had been shortened, we’d have a masterpiece on our hands. As it is, a much better outing than Mono and a brilliant song in “Getting Bright at Night”.

Part Banana Splits, part The Wicker Man, part genius, The Coral may just have produced the most intriguing, tuneful, humorous and enjoyable debut album of the year, and then some.

Hissing Fauna is severely front-loaded, not necessarily because the closing songs are duds, but more because the album’s first half is nearly flawless.

While most of the tracks on The Shining lack the abstract ideas and flow of Donuts, it’s still an admirable record.

I suspect those left cold by Satan will find Icky Thump a welcome reheating.

With its charming and imaginative love poems as lyrics, Heart is a true love album that hits all the warm and fuzzy spots directly.

This record is Weezer-lite, emo-lite, corporate radio, MOR rock junk.

This debut will not be the record of their career and leaves me wanting more already, but it is the right record at the right time and a stupidly profound and convincing debut that is up there with the best releases of the year thus far.

As ever Wagner’s voice is rich and warm, the instrument of a faltering singer that just gets better with age, cracked and croaked and delivering lyrics with a strange phrasing that makes the most indecipherable and idiosyncratic observation take on a wealth of meanings for the listener depending how they first, or last, hear it. [combined review of both discs]

Thanks to some subtly disquieting diction it’s almost as disturbingly memorable as a cuddly cartoon blood orgy.

Honestly, the first few listens are the worst; Cedars grows on you to the extent that you get past its often-horrendous lyrics after a while and learn to appreciate its strongest moments.

Sometimes it does sound like The First Ever Country Record On Matador, too tied down to ideas of what country records are supposed to sound like.... And then Laura looks you in the eyes and you realise that really, you’re being a bit of a twit. She’s still there, the same as she ever was. Her surroundings have just got a bit grander.

By refocusing outside of dancefloor functionality for Suckfish, Dear invests in his material enough to give it a weight beyond the novelty of sensationalized titles set to jacking tracks.

Neko possesses one of the most terrifically powerful voices in music today.

It’s phat, it’s hooky and it’s got tune after tune after tune of stylish, contemporary urban ragga-soul for 60+ minutes, all wrapped round with a voice like socially-aware and really angry honey.

Much in the way Pete Rock or Kanye West reinterpret classic 70s soul for a new generation, Since We Last Spoke is RJD2’s trip through the AM dial 30 years ago, the songs of the period experienced anew.

Played start-to-finish, New York Noise begins to cohere into a joyously multi-hued mass, where hip-hop is a natural cousin of atonal noise, where minimalism becomes the perfect complement to funk, and where not even the skronked-out mess of DNA or the melodramatic ultra-seriousness of Glenn Branca can get in the way of a good party.

Barnes has created some utterly brilliant compositions, captured a perfect blend of melodic energy and sincerity while never sacrificing catchiness, and has used both achievements to create one of this year’s most cathartically fun albums.

Hey Hey is an impressively cohesive collection of pop songs.

It doesn’t feel right to be beating Will Oldham down for doing something that is so distinctly his own, even though he is doing it again and again to a greater or lesser extent.

Where this release stands out is in overall sound and songwriting.

While not entirely mainstream, Tones of Town is also not all that interesting.

This is a pretty great album, filler and all.