Foundations of Burden is the sound of an already excellent band reaching their potential, and in the process setting a new standard for the genre.

El Pintor is a well-produced album that proves Interpol are still a quality band, even without the extreme hype to back them.

Songs of Innocence is a great record. Not a perfect one, mind you: for one thing, Danger Mouse, the record’s primary producer, uses a few too many of his tired stock tricks along the way, making the record sound more generic than it would with Brian Eno behind the boards.

While Ryan Adams doesn’t take as many chances as some of the other records that Adams has made in the past decade, it’s also as cohesive and consistent an album as any he has ever made.

On They Want My Soul, Spoon’s most wide-ranging and eclectic album of its career, this isn’t a band who are settling in to their collective stride, but searching for new places entirely.

Unfortunately, Rustie’s seemingly inherent need to zig when expected to zag has resulted in an awkwardly stitched together ragdoll of otherwise intriguing and successful pieces.

A shake up in the lyric department would be nice to see next time around, but on this outing Lana Del Rey is able to sell it with striking vocal performances and breathtaking compositions.

Branan is a supremely confident songwriter who is not too proud to poke fun at both his craft and his profession. That sense of levity makes The No-Hit Wonder worth many repeated listens. Easily one of the best country albums of 2014.

In between, we get plenty of striking melodies, at least a dozen quotable lyrics (“Tomorrow’s the name we changed from yesterday to blame when the train just don’t stop here anymore” is an instant Duritz classic), and an arrangement that shows off the Crows at their loosest and most vibrant.

Lese Majesty is an entirely different beast than Black Up, and the group manages to continue sticking out in the hip-hop world for their incomparable creativity.

You Will Eventually Be Forgotten is easily one of the best albums of the year.

Prawn have shaped themselves into a band who offer more than lyrics, but counseling. And Kingfisher is catharsis created not through grit, but melody.

A tangle of influences and contemporaries; yet she manages to keep space in which her frail breath of a singing voice can survive.

It’s disheartening that the album isn’t the game-changing record Fallon promised, and it’s too bad that it doesn’t have the thesis-statement cohesion of albums like The 59 Sound and American Slang. But the songs are still great, the production is still excellent, and the performances of the band members have rarely been in finer form.

Coming in at 11 tracks, Gemini, Her Majesty doesn't contain a single song that you'll want to skip.

The band has continued to expand and refine their ADD-riddle pop-punk into something more substantial and LP3 chronicles the growth in songwriting while maintaining the spastic charm of the band's earlier releases.

Self-production is no small feat, but with years of experience, they made an impeccable sounding record.

What Antonoff has accomplished with Bleachers that he hasn’t yet with fun. or never did with Steel Train is create an album that inspires as much as it transports. It’s so sure and precise in its vision that it almost feels like a concept album without a concept.

There are absolutely stunning passages on here to be sure, but as a whole the record fails to really take your breath away like one would hope.

FreeBase may not find 2 Chainz making any big leaps forward, but what it does offer is a refinement of some of the things people love from 2 Chainz. The beats are top shelf, his flow is versatile but never overly complex, and his lyrics are humorous, if a little unremarkable.

Lowborn is a fairly strong record on a song-for-song basis, and the added emotional heft of it being a swansong helps to elevate it above the weaker entries in the band’s catalog--even despite its numerous issues.

The EP is five songs of huge, intricate, explosive guitar work, thumping drums that refuse to take a rest, Day and O'Connor's signature call-and-return vocals, the occasional necessary breakdown and gang vocal portion, and the catchiest choruses FYS has ever penned.

Nikki-Nack is an outstanding successor to W h o k i l l and the year’s most memorable pop album yet.

Fullbright’s first record, From the Ground Up, scored a surprise Grammy nomination in the Americana category two years ago, but don’t be surprised when Songs starts topping EOTY lists in December.

For a record that trades heavily in production experiments foreign to both parties, Royksopp and Robyn by and large succeed at creating what they set out to--a monument.

Just Be Free is a wonderfully functional album, displaying Queen Freedia at her very best.

With From Parts Unknown, Every Time I Die have hit the Ultimate Splash on its competition, absolutely cementing its legacy as one of the greatest heavy bands of our generation.

As long as they keep crafting albums as fresh, loose and fun as Remedy, chances are they’ll keep this truck roaring for another two decades.