Their third record proves that even the most militant punk songs are often best served by a stripped-down aesthetic.

True to its title, Violence Begets Violence is the Philly powerhouse's most aggressive effort yet, a morally polluted playground that no sane unarmed person should dare to frolic in.

Despite its disparate influences and multi-handed production approach, All in One never feels less than cohesive.

With Room(s), Travis Stewart has somehow managed not only to wrangle in the off-the-cuff tendencies of the genre, but also create one of the more fully realized dance LPs in some time.

Lonerism is a life raft for the abyss of song-induced self-reflection it inspires.

At the end, after his inevitable untimely death, all anyone will care about will be the stately grandeur of the opening (and closing) music coupled with the star’s eternal blank stare: unknowable, unfathomable, and ultimately tragic. We’ll have to wait for the movie; fortunately the soundtrack is already here.

Fuller than usual of slow songs and piano ballads, One Life Stand is their mellowest, most thoughtful effort so far — which means it carries the risk of also being their most boring. (Contrast is one of their secret weapons, though it didn't seem like such a big deal until now.) But keep listening: slow to reveal, its charm is just as slow to fade.

This ninth studio album finds long-timers Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley regaining their focus with their best set of narratives since 2006's A Blessing and a Curse.

Its stories of survivors and struggling lovers have a wistfulness that spills from the lyrics into the tone of David Hidalgo’s vocal performances and the warm guitar lines, which draw on blues, classic rock, and traditional Mexican musical flourishes.

Yeah, the alternate/alternating track sequence is screwy for the first seven songs or so — Deerhunter build momentum only to lose it. But it gives the album’s backside something of a black-and-white-to-Technicolor moment.

One of his best, no doubt, and arguably one of the best-sounding records so far this year.

Attack on Memory is simultaneously abrasive and sentimental; it's a self-deprecating soundtrack for a new generation of adolescent loneliness.

A triumphant sequel.

All rappers ride on the claim that they’re the best, but on III Wayne makes his case.

Throughout Love on the Inside, Nettles and Bush trick out their twangy tunes with shiny new-wave guitars, creamy pop harmonies, and robust rock beats.

This is Stevie Wonder or Yo La Tengo territory, fearlessly approaching touchy-feely domestic ground where many fear to tread. They own it, too.

Calculated yet impulsive, Young Fathers prove Scottish hip-hop's viability.

Ancient Romans is not an easy listen, but for those with the attention span, it's a worthwhile trip.

Black Thought comes as brutish as ever, and their now-standard cast of collaborators (P.O.R.N. and Dice Raw) sound more at ease over these lanky beats than they did on more combustible previous efforts.

Endless Now is a record that will appeal equally to fans of the Buzzcocks or Blink- 182, and that rules.

Huismans has always fought the good fight in his attempt to fuse dubstep with comparably hard-nosed genres of electronic music, and Fever is his most fully realized effort yet.

Rough-edged and overdriven in the right places, super-slick as their Reagan-era new-wave touchstones elsewhere, this pomo-funk concoction from Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé is like a French kiss from Sonny Crockett.

Here you get an hour’s worth of top-notch disco-house jams crammed together into a non-stop megamix that emphasizes both the duo’s tune sense and their body-rocking beatcraft.

It's a refined sense of balance that sets her apart from Grouper and Julia Holter, artists to whom Evans is too often compared.

Whether telegraphing heartbreak, world-weariness, or menacing intent (the latter especially on the Psycho-meets-Bad-Seeds nightmare of "Sooner or Later"), Badwan and Zeffira excel at heightening their musical senses simultaneously to the graces of the Heavens and the billowy depths of Hades.

It'll inevitably be pigeonholed as post-house or something equally asinine, but for now, it exists without definition, and for that we can be grateful.

Brushes with the law and a cocaine habit sent his personal life on a turn to the dark side, something that's soon evident over the course of Mr. Rager's 17 remorseful tracks.

Like the Go-Betweens or the Field Mice, Europe is top-notch indie-pop, with upbeat music and literate lyrics coated in a wistfulness that can be debilitating if you indulge in it too often.

Keep an Eye on the Sky--which expands Big Star's three early-'70s albums with a bevy of demos, alternate takes, and a complete 1973 live set--shores up the band's legend for a new generation.

It's never been easy sticking with Quasi through all their quality-control ups and downs, but American Gong lets bygones be bygones, fitting their sharp wits and bruised hearts into a sound powerful enough to contain them.

Real Emotional Trash, with its long, winding guitar solos, extended jams, and emphasis on shifting psychedelic guitar textures, is as retro an album as Malkmus has ever recorded.

Trees might be at its best when Moore gives into the freewheeling vibe that is the natural outgrowth of spending your adult life engaged in on-stage jam sessions.

It’s Dulli sounding like Dulli at his best. And Lanegan delivers some of his more devastating vocal performances.

Spirit If . . . takes plenty of time to revel in the beauty of its surfaces.

It’s a low, slow groove that might be coming out of the bodies of the musicians as much as their instruments--echoey, held back even at its most intense, every note sung or played with a determination not to force anything.

Working with producer Adam Kasper, Vedder played nearly everything on the album. And that gives Into the Wild a cozy, intimate feel.

Bloom is a sonic boomerang: resist if you must, but you'll inevitably end up right back where you started - sucked into their heavenly sonic utopia.

Although it doesn’t attain the career-defining cumulative power of 2005's "Gypsy Punks," it's a broader, more intricate disc.

The one-woman choir may seem eccentric, but by the last of these nine vignettes, Barwick has accomplished what few purveyors of such pristine beauty can. Through its oddities, The Magic Place shines.

It's a killer.

The lyrics resonate hard, though, felt most strongly when Rønnenfelt sings with broad expressive shouts.

Full of airy vocals and synths, the album sounds as if it could lift off at any moment if not for the drum thumps tethering it down. But the beats sound weighty only in contrast.

Several cuts on +/-’s third full-length... feature tunes sturdy (and dreamy) enough to satisfy a Death Cab for Cutie fan. But Let’s Build a Fire is also full of moments that suggest Baluyut has grown tired of the straightforward indie-rock approach.

Here, as on Red Album, they keep finding new ways to make old Black Sabbath tricks seem fresh.

Although some songs ("Taxi Cab" and "Holiday" especially) can make it seem like just another, nicer sweater to knot around our necks, the other word I never expected to use here is perhaps the most important for a young band of VW's talent: better.

This is an album steeped in a generation’s worth of nostalgia, but unlike most rehashed coming-of-age exercises, Saturdays = Youth manages, in its own small way, to offer something entirely new.

This is the longest the band has had the same lineup, which adds to the overall tightness from start to finish.

His philosophizing is rarely twee, and his fine-oaked voice gives new authority to his pastis-and-mushroom-fueled musings.

With one foot rooted in the past, the band is yet pushing forward, with an album that promises longevity and, maybe, greatness.

Indeed, although she's best known for those late-'70s Hotel Chelsea/CBGB-era fringe-punk albums, Outside Society illuminates some of Smith's underrated pop-minded phases.

It's the album's more subdued tail end, particularly "Ahead of Myself" and "Temptation," that shows a songwriter rising above his comfort zone to deliver a career-defining transition.

For the Ghosts Within descends into a strange netherworld bordered by art pop, jazz, and classical that few seek to visit.

Double-O and Nawledge were not yet capable of chopping up the sort of cuts that people sing in traffic. They are now--there's no boredom in Land of Make Believe.

They’ve gotten good at re-creating in the studio the sound of a dingy rock venue in full throb.

Produced by the late Jerry Finn, the album is a slice of American rock radio, polished, compressed, and routinely combustible.

Some things, like this album, are best left unanalyzed and simply enjoyed for their own bone-headed dedication to rockin’ out like a motherfucking banshee. Which Going Way Out does in spades and diamonds.

The only real sore spot is Wes Eisold's overdramatic Robert Smith singing style -- his pain sounds fashionable and forced instead of penetrating and raw.

It's a broad spectrum of styles, but sometimes that's just another way to describe the comfort of being your (multiple) selves.

It's nothing new, sure, but it's proof that mining from the past is a surefire way to keep things sounding familiar yet fresh.

These songs (which include settings of three Shakespeare sonnets) are so well-tempered with raw, emotional moments that the album never seems dour or austere. On the contrary, this is one of his most personal, sanguine releases.

Little Big Town make implicit the debt they owe to the California rock of Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles in a way that makes Little Big Town seem fresh and thrilling compared to most other Music Row acts.

Woke Myself Up is smart, arresting, and nimble; at 30 minutes, the only real disappointment is that it’s over too soon.

It isn't new indie-rock territory, and spring is certainly an odd time to release such a puzzling (and puzzled) record, but I couldn't stop listening to it.

Given its origins, this could have been a morbid, self-indulgent exercise. Instead, it's a fine indie-pop album.

He's mastered the tuneful shrug, the song that sounds unfinished and tossed off but sticks fast to your brain and keeps revealing a depth you hadn't noticed.

No bad songs, but any other record they've made is better.

The fact that Paley and Francis wrote this album together over the course of three afternoons and then recorded it in two is part of its charm. There are no big guitars and not much percussion. What you get is two compelling performers and their songs, backed by a couple of Muscle Shoals aces, bass player David Hood (yes, Patterson's dad) and Spooner Oldham.

Balam Acab have crafted a fully fleshed-out record, with enticing dimension and its own subtle meanings.

If a breathy, acoustic aquarium is up your alley, then take the dive and swim alongside Porterfield's magical lyricism.

True, Camu Tao hadn't mastered the art of songwriting: verses and choruses abound, whereas bridges are conspicuously absent. But even half-built tracks like "Bird Flu" and "Intervention" are proof that he could create engaging and catchy hooks alongside vocals that matched his new palette without diluting the hip-hop aesthetic. Such songs are tantalizing examples of unrealized potential--a sad indication of what could have been.

Lynn Teeter Flower... delivers on the promise of 11:11.

Over time, the Mountain Goats have explored different emotional territory. Here they prove they can still make humble, evocative music.

Although titles like 'Suicide' and 'Drugs' may seem a touch overt, the songs are not overwrought cliches.

Glossy and palatable, but also decidedly sophisticated.

His music always offers an emotional complexity to mirror its melodic sophistication.

The 12 songs are rhythmically warm and appealing thanks to Jay Bellirose’s spare-cymballed drumming and the beautifully knotty guitars of Henry, Bill Frisell, and Greg Leisz.

The keyboards that colored his swan dive into dance music before he re-embraced rock with 2005’s Body of Song are simply another subtle layer of muscle for this sinewy disc.

Visitations finds Clinic four albums into their career, but they launch each new tune with the unhinged spirit of a band who are just discovering the power of rock.

It delivers on the promise of Louden Up, with infectious beats and a kitchen-sink approach.

On Excellent Italian Greyhound they deliver the expected fistful of vitriolic by-number chuggers.

Peyroux still sounds like Peyroux, only more so. Which isn't a bad thing either.

Martyn's early-'70s blend of romantic blues and eerie valentines remains potent, and on this double-disc tribute, 30 participants give him a smooch of respect, trying to update the hazy passion he brought to his best work.

Wilco (The Album) finds the band looser and more assertive than they were on their two previous efforts.

The album itself--melodically inventive, melodramatic, and incredibly rocking--sounds about the same as it did when it was first reissued in the '90s.

As in most of Metheny’s work, what could be mistaken for glib virtuosity--or, in this case, gadgetry-reveals new depths at every turn.

Featuring actor Rhys Ifans, who's purported to be SFA's original singer from way, way back, the Peth (Welsh for "thing") make what sounds like psychedelic rock recorded in a pub, all claustrophobic and ear-ringingly fantastic, after the pile-up of pints has turned drunkenness into a not-so-silent lucidity.

At 52 similar-sounding minutes, It's All True is a bit of a robust meal to digest all in one sitting but, served in moderate portions, it's irresistibly tasty. Junior Boys: still itchy after all these years.

The lack of innovation is frustrating, since these guys nailed this formula long ago, but they mostly make up for the lack of newness by expending insane amounts of energy.

BMSR have, however, gone for extra credit and studied up on their Free Design and David Axelrod; they may even have taken more quaaludes.

All in all, not bad for the inevitably disappointing follow-up to the greatest rap disc ever made.

The British duo's second full-length in as many years mashes ghostly electro-pop tendencies with live instrumentation, empathetic orchestration, and tape-machine snippets, creating a world that is both compulsively listenable and eerily foreign.

Hansard gave himself a hard act to follow, but he pulls it off with Repose. He doesn't shun the sound that made the Once soundtrack a hit, but he does expand his palette and show off the breadth of his songwriting prowess.

Fascinating speed-bumps aside, it's a mission still very much accomplished.

You won’t care that it’s gleefully empty, shamelessly primitive, pre-rational, lo-fi. You’ll be too busy dancing.

The songs on this debut album are lethargic, syrupy, and sinister, with the rough-edged peaks of a maxed-out mix.

Ferry is as cool and debonair as ever on his first collection of new material in eight years.

Live instrumentation and organic jams keep it all from sounding très moderne, and though it touches upon some typical Air tropes (free-floating whispery shimmers, B-movie space sounds gone glitzy) the overall loosey-goosey methodology is refreshing.

It’s one of the most unabashed love letters to anthemic ’80s synth-pop ever laid to hard disc....If that sounds like an unappealing clarion call from a dark musical period that you’re still trying to forget, this isn’t the album for you. But for those of us who weren’t beaten up by Harold Faltermeyer in a dream, Head First is a wondrous piece of creative anachronism.