The record is a jukebox boiled down to its greatest hits, a playground romp through the back-pages of pop music history, and in this case, the journey is well worth taking.

The result is a record that feels as weighty as a work of literature, but also as enveloping and beautiful as the best albums that the folk music genre has ever produced.

This is an album for the Spotify era--a disparate collection of eleven singles, with no unifying message or even common mindset I can discern.

For such an expansive, detailed album, it can be hard to forget this is just his debut record.

It'll be difficult to find many albums that can top the type of creativity Odd Soul contains, making it one of the essential must-have albums of 2011.

Hollandaze is a compelling enough release on feel alone, an album that smartly incorporates a subtle sense of tension, preventing its gauzy textures from devolving into directionless bliss-outs.

In place of Pluto and Honest’s love songs are emissions from the depths of Future’s psyche where light is unable to penetrate and whose denizens are twisted and ferocious.

Marriages created a ride not worth getting off until it ends.

mewithoutYou have done something that feels nearly impossible with Pale Horses, and that’s recreate themselves without losing what made them interesting. It’s so effortless that it’s hard not to wonder if a higher power was involved.

Almost two decades later, and they prove why everyone continues to keep tabs and standards for not only the band, but everyone around trying to live up to the influence.

In and Out of Youth and Lightness is not going to be an album for the impatient. A few listens are needed to soak in every layer this album has to offer.

Though Ty Segall often seems like he makes records at inhuman paces, Sleeper indulges his very human impulse for a good wallow, and proves that there’s more to the man than the distorted ripping guitars would make you believe.

When it's all said and done, I have a feeling Jaar's solo career won't be the only thing he's known for, as Psychic has put Darkside up there with some of the best groups making music today.

His propensity for pushing boundaries is carried over onto an album that devotes more than a third of its runtime to previously released songs. Terje took the remainder of that time and expended it on bold, successful new iterations of his aesthetic.

The best thing about Lenses Alien: its incessant begging for you to spin it again.

Ultimately, though, regardless of whether Hansard is cribbing moves from his own country's heritage, or from one of the biggest rock stars in American history, he manages to make it all his own thanks to the quality of his songwriting and the passion behind his performances.

The album never gets stagnant and avoids the pitfalls of sticking to the same sound or mellowing out with age and ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead have quite a few albums in them yet.

The complexities and dense topics still remain on Dinosaur, giving the album many layers for the listener to peel apart. Basically, My Dinosaur Life is the fusion of the best moments of Motion City Soundtrack's previous three albums and expanding on that, while maintaining all the uniqueness and quirks that fans love about the band.

Known as much for their rambunctiousness as their literate ways, Steel Train have managed to take all the hallmarks of their sound but pushed them even farther. And yet never once is their sound compromised.

Overall, The xx have created an album that is just as interesting, attractive and sexy as it could possibly be.

It’s dynamic and unpredictable while also being Into It. Over It.’s most focused work.

The album represents a triumph for Have a Nice Life after six years of mostly silence, and is a more-than-worthy follow-up to Deathconsciousness.

If you just want another batch of Torche tracks, some of which stand up to the best in their discography, then Restarter will prove to be a worthy addition to the Torche catalog.

It sprawls and can feel tenuous, even precipitously close to collapse under its own weight, but the moment of calamity never arrives. It stands instead as a monument not to the person who has erected it, but to the multitudinous influences that brought it into being.

Universal Themes has the makings to be one the year’s most intriguing collections of songs yet.

The Big Deep shows that The Sleeping will not be pigeonholed into one genre, and the track that best sums this up is final track (and lead single) "Young Vibes...Don't Run Away From Me." Still full of the urgency you've come to expect from The Sleeping, but it also incorporates all the progress shown throughout the album, thus creating a nice balance between the old and new.

I will simply say, if you are a young person who is unsure or drifting by in any way, give Holy Shit a chance. Scream along. Feel better. Live your life the way you find most wonderful.

Failed States is the band's best release to date.

Showcasing the very best of Archambault’s lyrics and the band’s musicianship while channeling more post-rock-esque breaks along with diverse shifts in pacing and tone into their brand of hardcore, Abandoned is undoubtedly the essential Defeater release and gold-standard for hardcore in 2015.

Nothing Was The Same is the best Drake album yet.

With The Wild Hunt, Swedish maestro Kristian Matsson once again constructs lively, emotional pieces with nothing more than his strangely authentic Southern drawl and nimble fingers. The lyrics are beyond superb.

Seahaven lost themselves at sea (figuratively) and emerged with the most surprising and refreshing album of 2014.

Their talented musicianship signals they are out of step with their peers experimentally as grindcore architects; likewise, Darker Handcraft will trap you easily in frenetic whiplash mode.

No one really knew what to expect out of this project, and I think it's safe to say that Permanence exceeds expectations.

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.

11 tracks of stick-to-the-roof-of-your-eardrums music that sounds all at once immediate and laid-back.

It's a very satisfying record, and it's the type of album where every song will probably be your favorite at some point, and you'll almost certainly have each of them stuck in your head at some point in the next week.

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

Though the disc starts off unhurried and threatens to dawdle, the gentle lilt of "Goodbye to the Ground," makes for one of Moorer's most creative efforts to date.

Their ventures paid off supremely, as One Life Stand is an enjoyable and captivating listen on every level.

Like a rare, truly-great creepshow, it's the type of harrowing ride I want to experience again and again.

With Last of the Great Pretenders, Nathanson captures the organic energy of a city full of exuberant personalities, legendary landmarks, and gorgeous vistas, and the result is one of the most bulletproof summer discs to come along this year.

As you might imagine, it's yet another interpretation of classic surf-rock, but as crowded as this scene seems to have gotten lately, most of its practitioners do the style quite well. Surfer Blood are no exception, and their varied approach makes for an intriguing album.

The Beast in Its Tracks wouldn’t be a Josh Ritter album without at least a few home-runs, and luckily, the hits here are plentiful.

Take Care does a beautiful job of giving Drake the best group of features that complement his style while rarely outshining him.

Wasting Light isn't perfect, but its flaws are essential to its being.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few pitfalls outside of just weak hooks. The pacing of the album feels a little off, and it starts pretty early on with "Los Awesome" being a jarring change from the opener "Gangsta," though the former is much more enjoyable than the latter.

His latest release with the Black Widows, the pop-tinged, rock-and-roll based The Spade, is a collection of reasons why. It's tough to imagine why any band or artist would pass over a chance to work with Walker after hearing this release.

For all its flaws, Beach Slang’s debut is a fun and absolutely engaging listen.

Diamond Eyes is full of layers and dimensions, making it an auditory treat that listeners will want to continue to indulge themselves in. This is an album you can blast from my car stereo and then later dissect through headphones.

After we leave the forebodingly beautiful place of Little Hell one thing is certain--this is City and Colour's finest, most creative work to date.

The musicianship and songwriting is easily on par with Magic and exceeds the output on Working On A Dream, and as a whole, Wrecking Ball stacks up considerably with The Rising, which to this day I consider a top-5 Springsteen album.

This is what those album reviewers mean, when they talk about setting the bar high.

It's the ambiguity of styles, the insistence on bringing the listener along for a journey, that makes Total Life Forever such an endlessly interesting statement.

Sure she's unconventional, a bit puzzling but in the end she is undeniably rewarding and compelling. Hell, come to think of it, Hunting My Dress might be one of 2010's most pleasant surprises.

With her second proper full-length, Dessa has been cemented as one of the most important voices in not only hip-hop but all music today.

The only time the record comes across as flawed is the manner in which certain tracks happen to run into each other, however largely, this is easy to ignore when the rest of the record is so great. Local Business is certainly the business.

Bigger, badder, and louder than ever, Ex Lives will go down as the definitive Every Time I Die record.

With Leveler, August Burns Red stays true to their sound while remaining fresh. The 12 tracks contain new dynamics and elements that are sure to please old and new fans alike, while Jake Luhrs' performance places him to the very top of best vocalists within the genre.

This is Winterpills at their finest, this is Winterpills with a direction and a clear focus.

Twelve Years is a record that can and should become the soundtrack to many a young person's life in 2012.

Awakened makes for a reasonable continuation in the band's sound, but finds the group making a significant stride in their ability to mix their talents together while keeping the songwriting at dizzying heights.

While Migrant is Casey Crescenzo’s most accessible record ever, it’s also his most honest and real Dear Hunter LP yet.

The palpably effervescent joy of Rae Sremmurd feels untainted by the ills of reality and stands against a backdrop of contemporaries like Shmurda and Chief Keef who use their as a way of combating the grim reality of inner city rot.

On their Bloodshot Records debut, the sextet have stepped up their game and have announced themselves as one of 2015's most important alt-country efforts.

If You're Reading This It's Too Late comes with all of the baggage and experimentation a mixtape brings while managing to surpass the quality of most artists' output.

Matangi can be looked at as a return to form, but it's more fitting to think of it as a "getting back on track" kind of record.

This is necessary listening for the carefree weeks before school picks up again in the fall, and it's a record you'll end up holding near throughout the entire semester and then some.

Fallon's story is far from finished. This guy is one of the best songwriters of his generation, in any genre, and if his future albums--solo or not--are as full of pleasures as Painkillers, we have nothing to worry about

[Pageant Material] sounds effortless and fully formed from first note to last.

Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness is especially welcoming given that it’s probably his most consistent front-to-back set of songs since Transit.

+- stands up to all of their previous records easily, and while there aren't any major shifts in their trademark formula, it is another step forward in the ever expanding career of the danish band.

The album has the feel of a stopping-off point of sorts for a band an evolutionary path, headed toward an even higher level of greatness.

For this record, Lana Del Rey went all out with her ambition, bringing her vision to life in a way that only she could. She's making music that only she could make, that possess a unique sound no one else is bringing to the table right now.

Very much a step forward from last year’s The Coming Tide, Everlasting Arms is a sterling effort from an artist who fully understands who he is and what he is and is absolutely loving every minute of it.

If you dig songs with twang, Here's to Taking It Easy is as tuneful and affecting a set of them as you're likely to come across.

The genius of Lights Out is that it packs a punch without any gimmicks.

If you’re looking for something heartwarming in the short term or an album to warm cold nights, give The Bunkhouse Vol 1: Anchor Black Tattoo a go, however here’s hoping that the second volume of The Bunkhouse holds something a little more defined and innovative.

Once More 'Round the Sun is the band's most accessible record yet in a lot of ways. The choruses are catchier, the guitar solos are flashier, and the production, while not too overdone, isn't too raw to leave any recognizable barrier to entry.

Echoing themes that bubble beneath the surface of all his work both with TSMZ and Godspeed, Menuck spins vitriol and tenderness, desperation and hope into a narrative that is both vivid and somewhat frightening.

Overall The Fire is the essential Senses Fail record to own. Time and time again, Senses Fail proves that whatever doesn't kill only makes you stronger.

Regardless of the reason, Country Sleep is more immediately accessible and rewarding than most of the records from the artists listed above, a stunning surprise debut that will be sitting somewhere in my annual top ten come December.

Guilty of Everything is the sort of first album that takes itself too seriously in the most endearing way--it's something that must be purged before a band can move on.

Plastic Beach is a full blown hip-hop/trip-hop album and a prime example of how to stray away from one genre to dominate another. If Albarn has done anything with this project, he has shown his knowledge of flawless production and the ability to create aesthetically pleasing tunes.

Those who soak up the sex-addled, beer-swilling rockstar lifestyle will find plenty of kinship with Most Messed Up, but don’t for a second call it their best work though, it’s far too narrow to be given that glory.

The Terror is a frightening trip, a fantastically cohesive album, and one that could have benefited greatly from a bit more editing and perhaps a little better track sequencing.

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.

In short, a few stray hiccups only gives a listener more reason to be excited for the next release.

Isis' Temporal is an honest and respectable attempt to not only chronicle their career perhaps intrigue a few more people in the process.

On her debut album, Azealia Banks has established herself as a brash and crude personality both on and off record, and she’s complemented it with a competent execution of a bold artistic vision.

Those who enjoy seeking out the layers of composition and the finest of details will no doubt appreciate and gravitate towards a record as expertly crafted as this.

Frank Turner definitely does whatever he wants, and he's a lot better at it than I am at pretty much everything.

Potential runtime issues aside, Rot Forever is a great record.

They are still a force to be reckoned with and they still write some of the best and most beautiful instrumental music but without a small revolution in sound; their catalogue will (albeit, beautifully) end up blending together like one long song.

It's ... very much worth your while. Many bands should wish that their most impressive work was as good as Motion City Soundtrack's least impressive.

Repave is integral to retroactively understanding Vernon's canon and also establishes a path forward from the runaway success of his past.

On The King is Dead, The Decemberists decided to fully immerse themselves in a style they've flirted with for years.