MTMTMK is infinitely more fascinating when it's pushing the envelope, mixing weirdness and darkness into the radiant multi-culti stew.

Fire from the Sky fully returns the band to what made Shadows Fall so appealing in the first place--without taking a step backward.

The sweetest instrument, however, is Wyatt’s voice, whose fragile, high, quavering tone is honest to the core.

Dee Dee delivers an album that sounds like Chrissie Hynde backed by Hüsker Dü. Only in Dreams could make you wonder what other indie bands would jump up and thrive if only they had steamroller production.

There's so much going on, all of it so intricately plotted and clean, that you're left to wonder: by the time the rest of the electronic community catches up, what will Sepalcure be onto next?

It's a gorgeous performance that anchors Mothertongue with its strength and solemnity.

It's taken Isbell three albums to find his comfortable post-Truckers solo-artist groove, and on Here We Rest, he settles in quite nicely.

These 11 tunes deliver both the thematic and the sonic hugeness we expect from U2; you only have to proceed about 80 seconds into the opening title track before the Edge is spraying his trademark guitar sparks everywhere and Bono is observing that infinity is a great place to start.

Tomboy is a tricked-out, big-budget epic built for IMAX.

Onwards is, at its heart, just one big suicide tease, which is what makes it so fantastic.

Throughout this emotional maelstrom of an R&B album, Rihanna keeps finding gripping new ways to transform regret into a kind of threat.

If Apollo Kids is a warm-up, we can expect monster things from Ghost in the New Year.

On Shields, they achieve a fluid synthesis: Rossen and Droste still share vocal duties, but they often tag-team the same track, trading off lines and writing melodies for one another's voices. Their styles coalesce so smoothly, it's often difficult to tell where one singer-songwriter starts and the other ends.

It's all a lot to wrap your head around, and depending on your mindset, you could either follow the sound collage down the rabbit hole or simply ride the surface-level groove.

P.O.S. must have known he had a near-classic on his claws with Never Better.

House of Balloons is a gorgeous album that pairs moody beats and samples with morbid lines about drugs and late-night encounters, all of it caulked with sex.

In the M83 universe, emotion comes before logic, and for all 72 fascinating minutes, Gonzalez has you in the palm of his sweaty hand.

As long as Brit keeps the ballads to a minimum and plays to her strength as a willing pop renegade (which she does here more than on any of her previous albums), she will continue to make exciting, groundbreaking modern music.

In Ear Park improves on Grizzly Bear’s psychedelic folk æsthetic by both fleshing it out and making it more accessible.

The trick to El Camino is how steady it runs; whereas past left turns have been distractions, this is what happens when the pedal is floored.

Special note to the freakazoids who think "Starships" killed hip-hop: the rapper who rhymes "fri-vo-lous" with "po-ly-ga-mist" is X-Acto sharp as ever.

It’s now clear that though the District of Columbia might not have representation in the US Senate, residents do have a distinguished rep in hip-hop.

Who's Feeling Young Now? strikes a perfect balance between flash and form, running blistered fingers on otherwise scholarly templates.

Not only does this new song cycle retain the Euro-tastic sheen of its predecessor, it outdoes it in sheer dance-floor whump.

Here the material has the swagger and toughness of loud, sloppy rock.

Rhys is the ex-Britpopper making music that doesn't sound like dreary London fog - and as any New Englander reeling from a long hard winter's ass kick will tell you, that's an advantageous distinction.

Mature Themes is paced with brilliance.

[Sonic Youth's] most openly “mature” disc, possibly their best since ’95’s Washing Machine, maybe even the almighty Daydream Nation.

Building levees of emotion and tearing those bitches down - Explosions in the Sky have never sounded more thrilling.

As always, Apathy wins on account of the metaphors he spatters across tracks like so much blood, sweat, and tears.

It's a minimalist approach that started on the Soft Moon's outstanding 2010 self-titled debut full-length, and continues here with each composition taking on an overall instrumental feel despite the occasional presence of lyrical accompaniment.

Here, Dolls II make their move, surging forward while simultaneously nodding to a time that predates even that first über-influential incarnation.

These Nashville-based high ministers of retro-groove--known for their muscular live sermons--broaden their gospel on CD #2.

Sticking mostly to his usual tenor sax instead of adopting Parker's alto, Lovano isolates the strands of Parker's musical DNA and shows how they're part of the music's ongoing regeneration.

They were unadulterated shredders, too, as Capitol's extensive reissues of Siamese Dream (1993) and its predecessor, Gish (1991), remind us in bountiful fashion.

Any of these songs would have been a charttopper in the day. Should be now, too, but that’s another story.

For the most part, it's like a time-travel expedition back to when My Bloody Valentine ruled the land of college dorms everywhere - and pretty in pink was the way to be.

They were unadulterated shredders, too, as Capitol's extensive reissues of Siamese Dream (1993) and its predecessor, Gish (1991), remind us in bountiful fashion.

It's difficult to decide whether Butler's thing is psychedelic thuggishness or thuggish psychedelia, and he probably doesn't intend for us to figure it out. Either way, he's done the near-impossible in creating a sound that's wholly fresh and grows richer with every listen.

It’s as warm and melodic as the Soft Boys’ Nextdoorland was brittle and jagged.

In short, it's a triumph. Yes, it's still messy, and yes, Patrick Flegel's apathetic nasal vocals are too saturated, or buried in the mix, or both, but the intricate musicianship and songwriting take this from "yet another lo-fi garage album" to mini masterpiece.

There's no obvious precedent, and the session shows Redman at his best as he mixes funky riff-based bop themes with looser, free-form meditations, sometimes within the same tune.

Stripped down to a bare, live-band essence, and with the old-school touch of Roth/Daptone, Antibalas go places by simply playing it safe.

The music is what matters, and Prince Rama, with this highfalutin' silliness, have delivered big.

Telephantasm is a solid retrospective for a Seattle metal band who got wrapped up in flannel, became an MTV staple, and left the game before ending up like Nirvana or, worse, Pearl Jam.

It's arguably Mercer's and the Shins' most satisfying achievement.

The rotating cast of vocalists and the Saturday-night spirit of the instrumentation are together more welcoming than anything the DFA has dropped in years.

It offers a peppy antidote to You and Me, their especially downbeat 2008 offering, walking you through all the requisite Walkmen emotions: chipper resentment ("Blue As Your Blood," "Woe Is Me"), resignation ("All My Great Designs"), hung-over longing ("Torch Song"). But it's "Juveniles," the opener, that consolidates in one track all we expect the Walkmen to deliver.

On C.A.R., Cohn finds a loophole to get one of those rad concepts out of just that: a depressive who longs for suburban utopia.

The Fool feels like a séance, with guitarist Emily Kokal and her fellow female vocalists focusing their ghostly calls on a mysterious you.

Bibio's references may already be T-shirts in your bureau, and his dovetailing of crisp guitars, tangling melodies, smart electronic gestures, and resin-hit production values (all evident on the title track) isn't new by any means. But if you can get out from under caring (that is, if you can locate the title lane), you'll feel as liberated as Bibio sounds here — an artist making a mixtape of himself. Folk yes.

Silver Age is the best album Mould has released since his days in Sugar.

At its core, Earthly Delights is the sound of a band digging in so deep, they’ve struck something molten.

Daisy may lack the immediate accessibility of Brand New's previous efforts, but once it grows on you, good luck getting it out of your head.

Johnny Jewel's trademark retro-futuro-electro production sound underpins this 16-track set with a dreamy, after-the-afterparty atmosphere that feels like it could go on all night long.

Everything That Happens is a brilliant addition to a creative partnership that has yielded so much and shouldn’t have taken 27 years to rekindle.

Here, he recruits a cast of producers ranging from the familiar (Dungeon Family compatriots Mr. DJ and Organized Noize) to the surprisingly appropriate (Scott Storch, Lil Jon) to craft a palette of dexterous futurist funk that seems to be a logical successor to the groundwork laid by 2003's Speakerboxxx.

Part of Caveman's appeal, other than having the coolest debut album title in recent memory (a respelling of the moniker of the '80s WWF superstar), is making the complicated simple.

In Preliminaires, the Stooge King has put together a perfect soundtrack for a short, doomy stay in the Hotel Lautréamont.

Exploding Head is less an interpretation of a forgotten sound than a restoration of an abandoned mission. Even if you've heard it all before, you certainly haven't heard the end of it.

Danilova has crafted perhaps the year's most emphatically romantic record--defiant, loyal, indomitable.

The simplicity of the punk-driven songwriting and the bare, urgent honesty of vocalist/guitarist Hutch Harris’ delivery drive home the album’s political points with startling effectiveness.

Without a smidgen of a doubt, See Mystery Lights has egghead-party-album-of-the-year potential. But its value is greater than that.

At times, the album draws more from drum and bass than from UK funky or any other bass music du jour.

New Moon is their most purposeful beast yet.

Four records deep, Pissed Jeans may have trimmed some heaviness, but they open space for discovery.

Thirty-some years in, the Beasties are as sharp, hilarious, funky, and escapist as they've ever been.

On the whole, Forever is downcast, introspective, and melodic.

Johns’s stylistic schizophrenia might set you off here; even his singing on Young Modern changes from cut to cut. Everyone else: dig in--this thing is quite a feast.

Nirvana launch into a 90-minute onslaught of fugly-beautiful grunge-guitar fury.

[It delivers] 55 minutes of pit-in-your-gut tension from two of bass music's foremost masterminds.

Carry on, ye bearded gods.

Even more than on last year’s auspicious digital-only "Exposion," Austin’s White Denim stomp down the fine line between fertile versatility and iffy uncertainty. More often than not on Fits, this works out awesome.

America is a beguiling, remarkable work, a deep, carefully measured, completely idiosyncratic breath released on the dawn of a promising day.

The key is confidence. Moments that would be cringe-inducing if delivered by the less intrepid come across as triumphant.

The Unthanks’ voices are hair-raisingly exquisite in the most sororal of ways.

Halcyon Digest is the perfect LP to spin twice, love unrepentantly, and walk away from. This refreshing tonic (poured from the cash bar of overrated newer bands) is straight from the heart of Mr. Bradford Cox, poet and purveyor of Deerhunter's zen pop psych.

Easy review: three tracks, each between 10 and 29 minutes, every moment electric.

Alpers has a knack like few others for spinning our over-interconnected loneliness into something more like a blissful collective daydream.

Her fourth album is arguably her funniest ... but also her leanest and most melodically daring.

He'd be proud of what his little girl's done with that sheet of paper.

With the help of Moreno, Harland, and bassist Matt Penman, Parks turns the sound of contemporary pop into real jazz--his own.

Beware emulates and elaborates on the familiar, and Oldham's strengths as a songwriter and bandleader shape the album into something beautiful.

Feel-good nostalgia meets the stoned Dazed and Confused-types and the glam-punks halfway. The album's fuzzed-out appeal ... makes it a summer go-to disc.

Every song, no matter how familiar, is transformed by one detail or another.

As the obviousness of Write About Love's title implies (it could have been called Play and Sing!), Belle & Sebastian are looking to get back to basics with their first album since 2005's tremendous The Life Pursuit.

F*ck Hurricane Irene - Hurricane Grace is this year's force to be reckoned with.

Lewis may be covering territory that a lot of other artists tread, but he's earnest and soulful, injecting the romantic lyrics with a smoothness that reminds me of Avalon-era Roxy Music.

For the most part the band play it straight, delivering a fresh fistful of metal.

Experimental without sacrificing anything in terms of hooks or melody, passionate yet never overbearing, and clever without giving in to the urge to indulge, it places TV on the Radio on a plane with no peers.

The trio's strongest asset has always been inspired, thoughtfully crafted pop songs, which Share the Joy should finally make clear.

Any initial quaintness complexifies into something richer, more layered.

Tortoise's John McEntire steps in for long-time producer Roger Moutenot, but any of these songs would fit perfectly on the band's last half-dozen albums.

Cut in Nashville with ace session players, what might have been a disastrous mess in other hands coheres into one of Costello's most satisfying releases in some time.

As perfect as Twilight is, though, Surtur Rising houses it handily.

More than just a slack reunion, the album marks another turning point in a band who may yet wind up describing a circle.

For anyone bored of being bored of being bored, strap this one on and ride away.

His most compelling collection of songs in years.