Abyss neatly encompasses the totality of her career, synthesizing the artist’s prolific catalog into her strongest and most ambitious album yet, a cavernous chasm filled with beauty, brutality, and endless possibility.

Mike Eagle manages to balance the sense that he is speaking for many with the certainty that no one else could do it quite the same way.

It hits very close to musical documentary with very few of the abstraction perils that usually haunt artists in converting ideas to their medium.

Despite the gratuitous, overripe details of these songs--potent, lurid confessions; broken plates and bloody lips--Heartbreaking Bravery is a peaceful, centered work.

It’s the subversion of the tyranny of the pop song and the aural manifestation of desire’s drift, or trudge, wherever it goes. In the background, throughout, her voice annotates, in stunning polyphony, like Horn’s watery associations, the unknowable trajectory that each song always already takes.

Although there is no absence of noise on this record, what is quieter about it gives space to hear what was always there: a fully embodied voice that, through pain as through love, ceaselessly gives only herself, an angel whose message becomes indistinguishable in grace from the messenger.

Matmos have successfully transformed their washing machine into an instrument of righteousness as well as introspection, and while I am not surprised at their continued high level of craft, this one feels especially deep.

Before Today is the best collection of pure pop songs released this year, and the experimental odds and bits only add to its considerable charm.

Andorra is a psychedelic and polyrhythmic trip to a place even less known than the actual country and a momentous addition to Caribou’s enviable discography.

An exquisitely polished, well-refined album that takes the best of what Liars have achieved in the past and fastens it in a crisp electronic casing.

This album sounds in many ways like an amalgamation of her previous work.

It is still more accessible than previous Low records, as The Great Destroyer was, but doesn’t ever compromise the pure sincerity that the trio have conveyed throughout their career.

Sacrificing none of their self-effacement in their pursuit of a more emotionally direct style, WHY? have stumbled upon something uniquely personal yet utterly commercial.

Huerco S. claimed he wanted to make something timeless. Both genuinely and emblematically, he’s done just that.

Honest is transporting in ways that few records are, and no matter how strong the beat selection might be or how perfectly the guest list is curated, credit is due overwhelmingly to Future for being able to sustain and justify such a broad range of moods for the duration of the record.

Feels is a psychedelic wonderland filled with life-affirming warmth.

Lekman perfectly funnels his signature sound of gentle string and horn melodies, audaciously appropriate sampling, and often corny balladry into a well-oiled, 12-song machine.

Rap is an extrovert’s game, but the dynamism that Megan possesses is nearly unmatched. Her verses are absolutely electrifying, packing the heat she sponged up from her favorites like UGK, Project Pat, and Trina. Sprinkle a little Memphis here, some Miami bass there, and a bit of Houston swagger, and it’s a chemistry experiment gone horribly right.

Other Life is a collection of poignant, emotionally powerful pop songs; but on a more conceptual plane, this album is a self-referential commentary on music itself, an intense examination--and, ultimately, an extremely heartfelt refutation--of the hollow, ironic appropriation that defines much of contemporary music.

While the Evens' sparse arrangements may lead the guitar-playing world to finally give drummers their due, an album that is too minimal runs the risk of being absorbed in too few listens, never to be returned to again. Of course, The Evens avoid that trap by going straight to the most obvious musical cliché, "excellent songwriting."

They go out not with a bang or a whimper, but with a wide-eyed and confident work tinged with sadness, knowing they were part of something truly unique and amazing that met an untimely end.

As each track unfurls, its glacial pace arrests the listener’s search for novelty, forcing attention to the profundities of the mix and the texture that the interlaced sounds create; and yet it also deepens the desire for what each step forward promises, the crisis that the procession patiently unveils.

On Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, rock, country, blues, and post-punk rhythms meld with Cave’s lyrics on sex, death, God, and America to create what could be one of his most perfect albums yet.

Nouns sounds as homemade as something released on a Warner Music affiliate could be. It’s crafted with a sense of pleasant haphazardness, gelling into one of those rare situations where everything that is thrown at the wall sticks.

Tommy is exhausting, refreshing, new.

Mirrored is a marvel, dastardly and wholly original as it is, and one of the year’s finest.

Known for their micromanaged and micromanaging tracks, it’s fascinating to see that even their words about themselves are efficient, each phrase and constituent particular effervescent in their appearance and disappearance, yet wholeheartedly lunging themselves into place, forming a whole crystalline and formative structure.

It represents an astounding step forward in its scope and ambition. The claustrophobia of Loud City Song and the self-imposed aesthetic limitations of Have You in My Wilderness have given way to wide-screen, exploratory, celebratory triumph.

On his masterful third album, Actress perfects a thrilling sonic aletheia that simultaneously reveals and conceals, opens and closes, remembers and experiences anew, giving some insight into the truth of post-rave electronic music as it has developed over the past 20 years, into both frame and artwork, stage and actress.

Sandoval and her collaborators may never modify the melancholy torch that they bear, but they keep that fire masterfully for those of us who still have a yen for patient, no-frills sounds that happen to serve as a miracle balm.

The elusive details in the songs here are what bring me back, haunted.

Love vs. Money exists, much like its creator, [is] stuck somewhere between timely and timeless, kind of like a dream, the infectious, can’t-get-out-of-your-head variety.

College Dropout contains some of the most intelligent and clever lyrics hip-hop has produced in a while, be it mainstream or underground.

The Worse Things Get is a no-brainer Album of the Year.

Albums of this caliber just don't come around that often.

There are so many ways into Blood Bitch that it’s dizzying: Chris Kraus, Nino Nardini, the synths, the immensely pillowy hooks, black metal, menstrala. The themes run from menstruation to vampires to capitalism to loneliness to pap smears, and any thread you pick can take you to the core. You have been invited in.

Trans Am's Liberation is one of those rare albums that combine great musicianship, irony, sonic diversity, and originality. And to top it all off, the album rocks.

This album is not going to win the band many new fans, but it is certainly a treat for the converted.

Oddly familiar but strikingly different.

Many of the songs continue to showcase Stevens' avid and passionate banjo-plucking, accompanied by similar harmonized vocals that resonate with beauty and commitment.

Overall, the songs are more accessible, with clearer melodies and less discordance. For many bands this would be a misstep, but it turns out that Q & Not U's penchant for the catchy is one of their best assets.

All of the hallmarks of the band’s debut remain blissfully intact, and yet they’ve managed to engineer an LP with even more seemingly absurd outliers than minimalism and Radiophonic blips.

Craig has become so good at his craft that one might be tempted to call Centres a magnum opus--it’s certainly grand enough.

It’s surprisingly comforting to hear a band like this come along and put everything in perspective, making you fall in love with music relating to your life, instead of becoming so grandiose and impersonal as most music has in recent years.

Like a stew, this album takes energies and flavors from its components, each contribution blending and acquiring the vibrations of everything around it. The songs reverberate, flow into one another, sooth and intrigue.

All heavy-handed metaphysics aside, RP Boo proves on Legacy that he is truly a deft master of the drum machine, inspired by the potential in pure sound.

Definitely a worthwhile buy for those new to Engine Down and certainly must hold a place in any Engine Down fan's CD book, iPod, or whatever it may be.

Each song of eight on the album develops its own world of feeling, each in a different mode and with a unique musical setting.

With Untilted, it's apparent that Autechre are still on top of their game.

The shorter form of most of the songs (none longer than five and a half minutes) means that you rocket through The Hunter at what feels like breakneck speed, strapped to an intergalactic, pyrotechnic rollercoaster of awesome.

The Further Adventures combines the absolute best aspects of well thought-out and researched studio work with the spontaneity and showmanship of live performance.

Ghostface and Younge’s filmic vision comes together with great aplomb, and yields one of the bloodiest, most ambitious, and straight-up funnest hip-hop albums of 2013.

The rich, roomy tonal fidelity on display is a big part of what makes Angel click.

Church Gone Wild/Chirpin Hard may not be exactly groundbreaking or revolutionary, but it's the kind of idiosyncratic release that reminds experimentalism to laugh when something's funny.

Garden of Delete is the exceptional post-performance of the readability conjured in the wake of OPN’s work, and as a result, it critiques experimental culture’s desire to fetishize.

The music enables Vega’s voice as his best accompanists have: providing the expository setting and minimalistic bedding necessary for Vega to project his scene upon and float above. His delivery will sound strange to those unfamiliar, but it will be oddly cozy to those who have known it all along.

With a less captivating vocalist, this kind of genre-hopping might have felt inconsistent, a potpourri in constant motion, too scattered to register an impact. But Polachek’s range, her penchant for leaving her gasps and deep breaths in her vocal tracks, her carefully thought-over phrasing — these tie Pang together into one very earwormy book of spells.

Easily the blissful equal of jj or Memory Tapes, A Sunny Day In Glasgow are diffuse enough to avoid easy classification, and Ashes Grammar is easier to enjoy than it is to write about.

Each of the nine songs here (this album, unlike Why There Are Mountains or Lenses Alien, feels less like a suite and more like a collection of individual songs working together toward a theme) merits extensive and attentive lyrical consideration, though such an analysis deserves a treatment not feasible in a standard-length review.

Divers steps outside of itself. Its lyrics are obscure, and its melodies are more variable and complicated than those of the “overstuffed gorge” some saw in 2010’s Have One On Me. At particular moments, though, it is plainspoken and personal.

So, if you're with indie-pop’s backward-gazing contingent, or if you prefer it when ‘achingly beautiful’ actually aches, or if you want an example of style-versus-substance as a false dilemma--then get this record.

The only problem with this album is the difficulty you're going to have explaining what the hell it sounds like to your friends after they hear you raving about it.

Stetson very literally breathes life into his instrument, and in turn, like the statue transformed from stone to flesh, his music softens our hardened selves--it reminds us that we were once made, too.

On Merriweather, their art reminds us that immersion in Western tropes need not be met with scorn, that not all of its idioms have yet been exhausted, that embracing optimism and melody can still be so relevant--and it aches in the most soulful of ways.

Crack the Skye has the feel of a classic metal album, steeped in impressive musicianship and stylized construction; it’s the kind of album you can repeatedly rock out to without ever feeling the desire to skip even one moment of its sprawling majesty.

Everything that Happens Will Happen Today is the product of one of the better collaborations that modern music has known.

Art of the Improviser is a testament not only to the improviser's art, but also to solo and group composition, both in the immediate and overarching sense.

The timing may be off, but Total transcends trends to be one of the year's best dance records, and a likely cult classic in the making.

DS2 finds a hellish, motivating power by articulating how it’s possible to have the best time of your life during the worst time of your life. And it all sounds so good.

Sad music has never sounded so uplifting.

It's an album from a songwriter at the peak of his powers, having tempered his imaginatively destructive impulses with his affection for all things old, rough, and beautiful.

Now, on On the Water, they've paced themselves, slowed down the tempos, and left room for ambience, such that the album's fevered points hit much more poignantly.

This is complex, life-affirming music that's both serious and playful, steeped in tradition yet as highly original and forward-thinking as anything you're likely to hear this year.

These are performative anthems, which use the sonic and affective history of their sounds to construct towering emotional peaks. It is essential inasmuch as it succeeds in touching on something inherent, drawing from a pre-conscious set of sounds to create music that is as striking as it is affecting.

Daniel has successfully harnessed this concept to produce an impressively cohesive art object on all fronts, one that yields perhaps the most provocative statement any musician is likely to make all year. It just might be a little too provocative for some.

m b v is good, Slowdive is great.

Volta is Björk’s best album yet.

Riveting from beginning to end, Now Here Is Nowhere is a delightful record filled with memorable and often astonishing songs, showcasing a young band that has set the foundation for one exciting future.

Composed by two musicians at the height of their craft, the album reveals itself, thus far, as the apex of a limited genre still forming and as one of our finest contemporary acts of remembrance and ascension.

After many detailed listens, the record feels like their strongest yet, a bold statement considering the importance of their previous works.

The past few years have shown West first-hand what happens when the populace turns against its demagogues, and with Fantasy, he's letting us know that he's ready for our scorn and adulation.

What Shackleton has done with this mammoth album is create a full-bodied, visceral experience that meditates on the nature of the essence of a sound in a time and the space of time in which it appears, and the narration only presents the voice as the confrontation with time.

Overall, it's Boards of Canada trying new things and experimenting outside of the box that they built for themselves; commendable and quite addictive.

The Age of Adz is an outrageously fun and messy masterpiece.

All the things that give an album its personality--the sound of a band finding its feet, the little tempo fluctuations, the requisite "are we rolling, Bob?" fits and starts--are here in spades.

The ease of the instrumentation and the hushed vocals do their part to loosen you up as the music whisks you away to the innocence of childhood and teenage dreams that have never left the recesses of your mind.

Once upon an Axcess and Ace, this was a musician who would let his timid voice and simple themes sink in until they were a full part of the consciousness. Now, and more so than on the MEC premiere, strings, slide guitar, peddle steel, banjo, violin, trumpet, and piano are filling in every cranny to create less of a full-on effect, but an equally satisfying rash of strong songs.

It’s a masterclass in formal brilliance meeting dogged idiosyncrasy on equal footing.

The greatest aspect of Tournament of Hearts is Bry Webb's singing. His voice convinces you of the truth of the emotion and power of his songs.

It's as stunning a debut as I've heard in a long time.

Fear of Men speak with clarity (for all their lo-fi charm) through the idiom of twee and jangle pop.

The songs on Twin Cinema are simply of a higher caliber than anything the Pornos' individual members can create by themselves or had created together before.

Xe is a complete ecstatic experience itself as well as a dynamic text that reflects (on) these structural limitations that we employ in making sense of experience.

Its funereal funk can be hard to shake off; its catchiest hooks stain and discolor.

At 35 minutes, Room 25 is more of a mission statement than a treatise on Noname’s self-examination. Its 11 songs leave us wanting more.

The high points are so fantastic that their missteps are easily forgiven.

Illinois certainly isn't perfect, but it does do a couple important things: it proves that Sufjan has the skill and the talent to prove flexible and long-lasting, and that it's not much of a stretch to expect even better albums from him in the future.

Despite it being a massive departure from their previous efforts, there is almost nothing to dislike about Crimes.