Savane stands out both as Ali Farka Touré’s masterpiece, and as one of contemporary African music’s finest achievements to date.

By trimming excess fat (read: R’n’B choruses), Madvilliany keeps a sense of spontaneity, cutting off unexpectedly and never allowing anything to get stale.

This is no cynical cash-in; every new track adds gestalt to an album which in its original incarnation was pretty damn great to begin with.

Not every classic song from the era is here, but yes, if you do choose to own only one Tropicália disc, then this should be the one.

Orphans may not have something for everyone, but what’s missing says more about the listener than the record.

Most of Boy in Da Corner's most compelling moments come from this uneasy interaction between irrational youth and ultra-rational mechanized society.

From its opening bars of stop/start low end, to the motivational tape samples, to the aforementioned multi-tracking, Elephant just screams and begs to be viewed as a departure from the Stripes’ well-known approach. The problem is that in between all this commotion lie the same vintage jams that the group has trafficked in for years.

Labor Days is a wonderfully complex piece of work.

You could of course, if you like, rip the best tracks from each album and burn them together into some kind of RIAA-baiting SuperLoveBoxxx CDR that creams all opposition with its x-ray vision, amazing strength and ability to leap multiple genres in a single bound, but that would be missing the point.

Mike Skinner’s taken a big risk in doing this, but he’s found the bizarre and beautiful meeting point of The Specials, Danny Rampling and Serge Gainsbourg. A Grand Don’t Come For Free is a remarkable record.

From Here We Go Sublime may not be an evolution for Willner, but it’s a singular distillation of his talents into one album. Mixing gauzy shoegaze, slippery ambient loops, and two-cheeks-on-the-floor bass drum bounce, the Field offers an idyllic work of startling novelty, and perhaps ‘techno’’s most widely appreciable offering in years.

It's a bit of Michigan redux, which works because it's so uniquely Stevens and so uniquely beautiful.

It’s hard to imagine many other bands talented enough to even poorly imitate this.

It's hard to argue with any album that possesses the virtues Z does: James' voice, one of the most astonishing instruments in rock; a band who, turnover notwithstanding, play like they've been doing this for decades; a sense of delight that often eludes young men with guitars; and songs that let you use the descriptor “rocks” without fear or shame.

You may not get to sing along, but this is not ambient music; it is immersive and involving.

The Notwist are obviously talented enough to keep me guessing if they wanted to. They just don't. They are quite happy making simple pop songs, albeit with complex ingredients.

It’s an intriguing and thoughtful and occasionally lively record, but it’s not the rollicking, randy good time some folks would lead you to believe.

There seem to be enough ideas, stories, counter-melodies and references here for three albums worth of material - if for that reason alone, Hobo Sapiens ought to be one of the avant-pop templates for years to come.

Hayes’ performance on this album is so stellar one wonders why others don’t shoot this high.

There isn’t a single mis-step on Last Exit.

Queens Of The Stone Age are the greatest heavy rock band on the face of the planet and soon everyone will know it.

The genius of Wearemonster is that Mueller takes the clarity and mobility of house and synergizes it with the overabundance of melodies, textures, theories, and arrangement schemes found in IDM.

Fury is a twelve step sequence of poisonous, caustic, and lithe rap.

The quality level is almost inhumanly high, and the range of the tracks here gives you a better idea of what the band is like than any of their individual albums.

Review 1: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1414" TARGET="_blank">All the elements of timelessness are there, but the songs just don&#146;t seem to live beyond the last note. </A> [score=73] Review 2: <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1415" TARGET="_blank">The Shins&#146; music has grown by leaps and bounds. </A> [score=90]

The compressed, cleaned-up ferocity of Hypermagic Mountain is a leap of refinement in every way, a sign that the band, while lushly unripe, is ripening gracefully.

He has captured a sound that few current artists challenge, and none have mastered to such a degree. Quite simply, Ta det Lugnt is one of the best releases of this year.

TV on the Radio have crafted a work of immense, cataclysmic, almost overwhelming power and righteous fire.

Up In Flames is a record in love with music made by a music lover, futurepsychenoisebeatpop that reaffirms how much fun music can and ought to be.

Bejar is so wound up in his own idiosyncratic mythologies, so hopelessly himself that some fans have already said it sounds like a greatest hits record; appropriate that a meta-rocker’s final frontier is his own reflection in the mirror.

If Oh Me Oh My was Devendra&#146;s stunning introduction to the wide musical landscape, then Rejoicing in the Hands further marks his emergence as the most unique and important new voice in the music today.

From a Basement on the Hill is a far better album than it has any right to be, with its bizarre sequencing and improbable ambitions.

In Rainbows, then, is Radiohead as straight and lean as they’ve ever sounded.

The ridiculous in-the-red ruckus keeps you from noticing how hokey and contradictory the lyrics are.

If this isn&#146;t a breakthrough album for them that takes them to the top of the heap, seeing them showered with money, women and limos, well, then the consumer and music fan is not doing their job.

It’s easy to get over-eager about a decent album that appears after some significantly less magnificent efforts, and perhaps that’s precisely what I’ve just done. But I don’t especially care. What I hear throughout this release, and what I’m latching so strongly onto, is my own imagined version of what a Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds record should be like.

Fishscale intermingles skewed narratives, expert guest choices, exquisitely conflicting production, and a concept and focus—the drug trade is the near exclusive subject mater—that, while somewhat reductive in scope, sharpens the album into an immense, furious, and focused album.

It’s a swaggering, spitting, utterly contemporary album of politically dissident, sexually forthright Anglo-Sri Lankan dubstep bhangra hip-pop IDM in which M.I.A. stars as protagonist, antagonist, chanteuse, MC, exotic schoolgirl tease, graphic artist, chastiser of the immoral, and fun-loving London-living party girl. And all in under 40 minutes, too. It’s special. We’ve not heard it’s like before.

Vernon’s music is stripped-down, uniformly quiet, and confessional, his clipped, cracked, Will Oldham-inspired lyrics not evidence of cabin delirium, but the work of an artist warmed by a creative glow that only pure isolation (read: freedom) can fully render.

It’s easily the gentlest, brightest record to be associated with the Animal Collective.

Throughout The College Dropout, Kanye subverts cliches from both sides of the hip-hop divide, which again isn&#146;t unprecedented, but still refreshing and revelatory coming from someone who could have just as easily stood pat on his massive Midas-producer stacks.

Significantly altering the sound that won him critical praise and sold a quarter of a million albums takes some nerve. And that's what Showtime is about: Dizzee's newfound confidence.

The Dirty South is relatively toothless in comparison to Decoration Day and the breakthrough Southern Rock Opera, rarely even building up that predictably satisfying head of steam.

This is, quite possibly, one of the finest releases of last year, and certainly one of the most overlooked.

Frankly, the results are incredible.

The listener who comes away from the two-hour experience of …And Their Refinement of Decline without becoming a bit misty at least once is too hardened for my friendship.

The silent partners in LSF, Butler, Haynes, and guitarist Seth Jabour, all turn in their best work, making Friends the band’s most propulsive and moving offering yet.

Short of getting into a time portal and hurling yourself back to the late 70s, this is the closest you will get that sound in 2004.

Gala Mill realizes rock polemicist Joe Carducci’s ideal of real-time give-and-take as fully as many of the SST releases he touts in his 1990 book Rock and the Pop Narcotic.

While they’ve enlarged their presence on record, they’ve also peopled their songs with themes and accusations more resonant than Funeral’s mournfulness.

This tapestry of homemade instruments gives the mythology of Konono a potent, raw edge, and the ferocity with which they play them only further substantiates the feeling that the music has been pushed into a raw, indelibly pure zone.

Mainstream and casual fans will remember them best for Things Fall Apart, but probably only hardcore fans will be able to see the value and dedication that much of Phrenology holds.

An album of quiet, introspective folk music.

While Seven Swans is possibly a better record than Michigan, with such an overtly Christian sheen, it will be interesting to see if the liberal music press gives it as much praise as it deserves.

In a voice that shifts from pout to growl in a beat’s time, M.I.A.'s verses and hooks are as mercurial in tone as the backing tracks.

Even if the album sounds more restrained, there is nothing holding back the quality of the material.

There’s a cohesion and a simplicity to this collection that makes it a must for any fan of the label.

Yes, of course, it’s a total homage to his favorite music—but it’s an extraordinarily moving one, both emotionally and physically.

Perhaps the greatest expansion in Herren's sound is the range of emotion conveyed in One Word Extinguisher.

Battles unite process and expression, making playing that’s as quantized and mechanical as Kraftwerk sound as wild and urgent as Albert Ayler.

This is a return to the Wu sound; in-house production, more Clan cameos and less material dictated by current trends commercial.

Although at times M83 evoke Jean-Michel Jarre or Air, this is far from being an album of Franco-synth by numbers; it is the layered, hypertextual futurism of My Bloody Valentine and Brian Eno which seeps through the electronic Gallic gauze as the most palpable influences.

Pagode will probably be the best love album of the year (and maybe one of the best, period) because Zé has always understood that you can explore feelings without just expressing them.

It's one of the few Europop albums that not only deserves worldwide domination, but also has a really good chance of achieving it.

Finn is a decidedly great lead non-singer, and because of this, he has to rely on brainy, culture-referencing wordage as opposed to impressive melodic style or range. Fortunately, his banter rarely disappoints, even if it is a little repetitive at times.

&#147;British Sea Power&#146;s Classic&#148;? Not quite. Not yet. But we can see the high-tide mark.

You Forgot It In People is a tremendously accomplished album, magnificently achieving its goal of creating bonafide pop music and doing so with admirable style.

I’d imagine Thunder Lightning Strike will not age well nor reward a thousand listens, but for what it attempts to do, and succeeds, it’s worthy of attention.

The record is sprawling and beautiful, a genuine pop masterpiece through and through.

An immensely pleasing and happy album.

45:33 works both as exercise-soundtrack and discopunk-odyssey because James Murphy understands how to make people move on a basic, physical level. [Review of UK release]

After disappointing would-be breakthrough releases from so many of the discopunk frontlines, this is an album that’s more easily classifiable as “great” for what it isn’t, rather than what it is. It’s not inconsistent. It’s not a total deviation from what we know of the group. It’s never dull. And, most importantly--it is in no way a let down.

I've listened to this album more than anything else released this year, and I still don't feel like I've fully explored its depths.

Feast of Wire is a startlingly diverse album.

This band is so exciting it’s almost unbearable.

The feeling I'm left with, after 'Your Hand In Mine' ebbs away, is that I may never need another instrumental album like this again. The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place has already provided what may be the ideal version. And for that, it is absolutely essential.

Chavez Ravine drags occasionally, the result of too many serious narratives, but the stories that do work are jaw-droppingly simple and painfully familiar.

Boxer is a National album through and through but blessed with a restraint and self-assuredness of a band on top of its game, resulting in a startling masterpiece on par with Turn on the Bright Lights, Bows & Arrows, or any other austere tribute to urban alienation you care to name.

It is a wonderful album that explores separation and endings and life&#146;s journeys &#150; and their inevitable end - in Zevon&#146;s inimitable style.

Honestly, I can think of few albums more perfectly structured than The Lemon of Pink, and far fewer that end as nicely.

With a more succinct drollery and a better sense of studio control, Cee-Lo Green has outdone his fellow Atlantans [OutKast] on Cee-Lo Green is the Soul Machine.

It’s hard to say that Andrew Bird is anything but a master-songwriter, capable of penning a song for any sort of occasion. It was the hardest challenge, however, for Bird himself to understand this power and to control it. He’s finally tamed that quivering urge and, in the process released one really long perfect moment in adult contemporary pop.

Unsurprisingly, everything on Fox Confessor Brings the Flood is sublimated beneath Case’s vocals: music, momentum, the need for tunes.

Bright Eyes may well be on the verge of finally bridging the gap between his precocious talent and the maturity of an ageless songwriter.

Not a dud, certainly not a work of cosmic art. It’s meekly above-average.

This is an album that seems to effortlessly evoke the kind of lazy summer days that everyone claims only ever happened when they were kids.

While it&#146;s unrealistic to expect another Kid A-like transformation, by pulling all those familiar elements together, Hail to the Thief sounds, well, a little familiar.</A> [Note: Score listed is an average of two separate reviews: a <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/musicreviews/radiohead-hail_to_the_thief2.shtml" TARGET="_blank">68</A> and a <A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/musicreviews/radiohead-hail_to_the_thief1.shtml" TARGET="_blank">90</A>.]

Edan has lowered his tone, beefed up his content, mastered an independent, creative production style and crafted a concise album that makes a strong stab for early album of the year bids.

It would be a joke to call an album as lush as Twin Cinema “lo-fi,” but it is a more subtle, reined-in New Pornographers.

For Hero: For Fool is a complete work from artists working at the top of their game.

You’d hardly expect songs as strong as these to be in anyone’s wastebasket, but with only a few exceptions the material assembled here is just as, if not more, intimate and honest as anything on those proper albums.

His effort to make the most tense, uncomfortable record in the world has resulted in something that actually feels pretty straightforward, uncomplicated, and digestible.

The highlights would be far better suited to lesser status on a great album, and turning away from the impressive vocal performances of Rock Action to fully retreat into vocoders and hushed mumbling is a step backwards. [Note: Score listed is an average of two separate reviews, scoring 91 and 72.]

One of the best albums of 2003, one of his best albums post-Clash, and as the highest note Joe Strummer could have exited on.

Finally--a Go-Betweens album with the clarinet solos, harmonies, programmed drums, and splendor this band needs. Oceans Apart really sounds bright yellow and bright orange.

Kicking Television is consistent, professional, and unapologetically inclusive. It’s also a uniformly strong testament from one of rock’s most endearing acts, capable of producing both heady noise jams and shameless lighter-wavers.

Ideally [Fall records will] feature two things: semi-incomprehensible (yet strangely prophetic) ramblings from the eternally tetchy Mark E. Smith, and a band who sound as if their music is perpetually falling down the stairs. The Real New Fall LP delivers on both counts. To much rejoicing.

It is, to be frank, one of the most remarkable and forward-looking rock albums that you will hear all year, and testament to Lanegan&#146;s ability to take desolate lyrics and fashion beautiful, redemptive tunes around them.