One doesn’t listen to these songs waiting for these moments; one listens to the album knowing full well that it will consistently wrestle with one’s grip. That’s the contract listeners face, and I’m not surprised some people don’t buy into it, but for those sticking to earth, % is teeming with more rewards and audacious invention than virtually any other debut 2010’s seen so far.

The music won't knock you on your ass, but the overall delivery is a real treat, if you go in for this sort of thing.

On his latest, How the Thing Sings, Orcutt summons from this compromised thing a droning, sputtering blues that is utterly personal, theoretically rigorous, skeptical of tradition, and completely enthralling.

Here’s Yo La Tengo as embracing, alienating, and prolific as ever, with another strong new album, Popular Music.

In Prism’s genius is to service the newbies and true believers in equal measure.

For such a musically potent album, it sometimes lacks something interesting to say.... But make no mistake; this is the most daring, catchy, and dramatic dance music you're going to hear this summer.

The sound of loving is consistent, even as it appears in radically different instances. The mechanism of love song fits all bodies, all modes. It lands on ears, it laps and licks and it does no harm.

What we have on The Jazz Age is music that’s haunting itself.

Here, then, is a songwriter capable of drawing remarkable depth from swinging pop-rock, crafting a distinctive voice among an oversaturated pop-music landscape and leaving a front-to-back winner of an LP as evidence.

He’s gently guiding, minding small details as they contribute to the success of the larger mission and never forcing their emergence, Eno’s keen grasp of these two forms of songwriting allowing him to easily walk that line.

Centipede Hz feels celebratory.

It brings out the best in Toth both as a musician and a songwriter.

If you like Palace Music, Joji will most likely make your day.

It’s as wicked as Twins at a fraction of the cost, as weird as Melted but twice as pretty, oozing acerbic coffee, acid mud, and gasoline.

It's human connection despite the odds that has been at the heart of Bush's music from the beginning. With 50 Words for Snow, she casts the theme in a bolder and bleaker light than ever before.

Even his lyrics, a mix of front-porch reflections and impressionistic images, are more sound than sense, the stuff of ambitious art-rock, not folk.

The organic lushness should please indie-pop fans reluctant to embrace synth music, while the emphasis on sound instead of structure holds appeal for fans of loop music who’ve grown bored of its now-familiar tropes.

Heavy and heartbreaking, teeming with a warm, analog energy, Snow looks backward at each defining element that made the band so memorable to begin with. But like many of the best moments, maybe you just had to be there.

This is mind-meets-body music.

Despite some questionable, off-putting decisions, there’s a wistful, melancholic temperature to this eponymous debut, one belied by the band’s sophomoric war metaphors and rubbery noodling, and it makes their self-titled debut one of the most essential records of the season for me.

Most songs take the form of this kind of zen guidance, but Eyes on the Lines avoids stagnancy in part due to its relative brevity--only 9 tracks--and in part due to Gunn’s combination of flowy melodies and shifting chord progressions, which can trigger a kind of relaxed euphoria.

TRST is a f**king great dance record. While it is so much more than this as well, considering the negative connotations "dance" can have within much music discourse, it's initially, at least, the album's most notable appeal.

Because of its ambition and grandeur, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming might get criticized for its long runtime, for trying too hard to achieve aesthetic balance and thematic coherency.

The performances in these songs are as dramatic as they are musical: disarmingly direct, phenomenally compelling.

As a Bon Iver release, 22, A Million is the band’s most impressive record to date, surging forward with oddities that, while certainly nothing new to adventurous listeners, bridge the gap with satisfaction.

Long’s trax are emotionally at a remove from the soulful sirens who are sometimes associated with deep house--that tension between joyful celebration and a modern-day blues, between major and minor keys.

This is a supergroup, and part of the fun lies in the interplay between musicians, especially Cartwright and Hames. In the classic tradition of the "answer song," the two singers take turns poking holes in each other's vows and proclamations, comically deflating their assigned roles in the pop tradition.

Itâ??s the hyper-distinguishable leap from idiosyncratic-but-lovable to just-plain-lovable that makes Bromst--and Danny Boy himself--of increased import.