One of the strongest albums of 2005, Beanie Sigel stands among the greatest of the Roc-A-Fella catalogue with technical ability and an emotional severity worth experiencing.

It’s a classic first album: A band unpretentiously tangling various genres they--or even listeners--thought would never sound so brilliant together.

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

Much like Aaliyah’s sophomore effort One In A Million a decade ago, Ciara: The Evolution is the sound of a babydiva starting to really find her voice.

For longtime fans, there’s little reason not to buy this. For newcomers, Peel Sessions might not be a logical starting point, but you’ll still walk away understanding why Galaxie 500 are still revered.

PROG, like all their recordings, is another collection of professionally played and well-produced tunes that present themselves to a potential mass audience with hectic grace, sober whimsy, fluent navigation of chaos and without the slightest shred of pomposity.

The album moves in gasps and groans, with a steady flow to its twelve songs that weaves together like a symphony.

The slight progression of the group here is discernible with a better understanding of balancing the musical peaks and troughs.

If there are complaints to lobby against this remarkable debut, they lie mostly in its sound-quality. Namely, it sounds like what it was: self-recorded and self-released.

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.

Is Is is over in eighteen minutes, not one is wasted.

All in all, The Needle Was Travelling is probably the most “human” post-rock record to come out of Berlin.

Prefuse 73 sounds freer, and yet more deliberately formal--most of the songs break down like classic hip-hop does, two-thirds of the way toward the end.

Witch manage to do a lot more in forty minutes with little more than a bunch of badass riffs and a decent rhythm section than most metal bands these days can do with seventy minutes.

If you’re so inclined toward this type of music, you’ll assuredly love Precious Memories. But if you think you’re not, you may be surprised.

I wouldn't want to call it a "return to form" because Lil' Beethoven was actually pretty good, but it certainly perfects that album's aesthetic and infuses it with some of the giddy energy of the earlier Sparks stuff.

As beguiling as much of Under the Skin is, these songs would benefit from the Mac’s supple, still-underrated rhythm section.

At this point, Wilson looks like the most important new artist to hit country music since the Dixie Chicks.

The substantive quality of the political commentary found on Ahead of the Lions may not measure up to Rage Against the Machine’s most agitprop knee jerking, but there’s no questioning the sentiment is clearly and loudly expressed with propulsive rhythms, radio-palatable hooks and real production values.

A solid, atmospheric, singer-songwriter record.

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.

You might not agree with him the entire way, but the gale force of Ali’s convictions and talent will leave you willing to believe most of his truth.

It improves on Mutations with sparkling variation and a depth of emotion Beck seldom seems to achieve.

She’s found the perfect collaborator to match her voracious appetite for all things pop.

While it could be asserted that More Fish is leftovers to Fishscale's ten-course spread, we're still talking about something well beyond your average table scraps.

It’s almost as good as ['Hearts & Bones'], and likely to be as undervalued, but don’t worry: give it 20 years and its cadenced ruminations and instantly dated production will get some love from the usual suspects.

Ultimately, it's that broken, half-told beauty that gives Dog its mystery, but also perhaps its feel of a record you may always like but around which you may never really feel completely comfortable.

The songs... are as wonderful, as creative, as exquisitely saddening as ever.