At the age of 63, Billy Bragg is not a young man anymore, and The Million Things That Never Happened reflects that but in a way that reveals new themes and thinking in his lyrics; it's a brave, smart, and effective set of songs.

It would have been more interesting if 30 Something dug a little deeper into Orbital's catalog, but as it is, it's a good balance of nostalgia and futurism, and a treat for longtime fans.

Lunatico is a brave and exotic experiment.

Secret Machines now sound uncannily like a fusion of U2 and INXS.

He's an artist with ideas and while they sometimes pile up and crash on Cupid Deluxe, it's always a spectacular crash, and that's something worth investigating.

Everyone makes sample-based music these days, but very few people use found sounds and prefab musical snippets as creatively and thoughtfully as Blockhead does.

Return of the Century is their most impressive record and shows that they were able to turn personal and professional turmoil into a work with great artistic merit.

Listen to this album three or four times in quick succession and you'll hear something different each time; it's difficult to imagine growing tired of it.

On the whole, her songcraft isn't so much catchy as haunting, and shines on the slower, sparer tracks.

"Broken Boy Soldiers" lacked tunes like these, tunes with considerable weight, and these songs turn Consolers of the Lonely into a lop-sided, bottom-loaded album that's better and richer than their debut.

In some ways, this feels like the album Susanna's career has been building toward; her music has always united the heart and mind, and she does so with striking creativity on Triangle.

The songs have more bite than those on "Other People's Lives," as do the performances, which makes Working Man's Café more immediate than its predecessor, yet it benefits from repeated plays as well, as those subsequent spins reveal that these 12 songs are as finally honed as those on "Other People's Lives."

Even if it's not always as coherent as Poliça and s t a r g a z e's own albums, Music for the Long Emergency's experiments balance ambition and emotion in admirable ways.

Leave Your Sleep is easily her most ambitious work, yet because of that welcoming voice, it provides familiarity enough to gather listeners inside this world of sound.

Bitchin' Bajas sound completely removed from the side-project stigma on these four lengthy tracks, presenting languid, textural explorations with too much focus and intensity to appear incidental or secondary.

Cistern doesn't play out like a sequel [to Composed], but fans of that album may well find themselves still drawn to the musician's particular spark.

Legends Never Die is as strong a collection of Juice WRLD songs as any, with already-searing songs made more intense by the shadow of their departed creator looming over the album.

The near perfect balance of cinematic classical and rock music here may put some off some headbangers, but it will no doubt appeal to anyone with an open mind, and more importantly, an open heart.

Front Parlor Ballads is built from modest stuff, but the finished product is as strong as anything Thompson has recorded in the past ten years.

A set of tracks that sound akin to an amalgamation of John Frusciante's early solo work and the great Skip Spence.

Wilson and her band have created a wonderful and almost seamless set of music that explores a lot of territory and yet still keeps its cohesiveness.

Nothin' But Blood finds the hard-living and hard-playing one-man band Biram sounding as intense as ever.

There's a good chance we're going to get a full-on rock album from Jennings now that he's gotten this out of his system, but as an expression of his country soul, Shooter ranks with his best work to date.

Dissolution is the album The Pineapple Thief have been promising since 2012's All the Wars: it's poetic, erudite, emotionally powerful, and chock-full of musical imagination.

As Lo puts her stamp on all of Sunshine Kitty's different sounds and emotions, there's a breeziness that hasn't been present in her music since Queen of the Clouds.

Perhaps the only match for the cerebral weirdness and eventual beauty of Mars Volta's lyrics is their music itself.

For as much as Way refers to other acts, this is a thoroughly original work, a vibrant reflection of all his artistic obsessions.

Delta Spirit's commercial aspirations may be more apparent this time around, but they've done an awfully nice job in pairing that inclination with material that benefits from the slick production, resulting in their most cohesive (and television- and film-ready) collection of songs to date.

Rodriguez has been hinting at the ambition displayed on Lola for some time. What's surprising is how a record of such scope and imagination can be rendered so intimately and elegantly.

Tahoe is far from being simple, and is much more emotionally complex than the average ambient album.

Song for song, it's as strong as any of their records -- if anything, these 11 songs are the tightest they have ever been -- and Stuart Murdoch remains faithful to the aesthetic he essayed at the outset of his career, finding sustenance in the fine details, his obsessions carrying the weight of passion.

It's a tighter, less primitive album than its predecessor, but as such, it has a lot more to offer as well.

Blues Funeral, while an adventurous, strident, and complex album, will likely polarize longstanding Lanegan fans; but if they can't follow him into this new terrain, it's their problem.

Ultimately, with Alix, Generationals deliver quirky, catchy pop songs that stick in your head like DayGlo bubblegum on a hot summer parking lot.

It's a strong debut from an excitable band barely able to contain themselves as they blow through their songs like a friendly tropical storm.

Apocalypse is a song cycle that places the usually extremely inward-looking Callahan in the unlikely role of observer and interpreter of various American myths; myths both externally held and culturally self-referential, that inform the interior world of the protagonist.

Glass Animals' most cohesive and satisfying album to date, Dreamland is a well-deserved triumph that's as rewarding for fans to hear as it was for the band to make.

Bragg and producer Joe Henry, owner of the aforementioned basement where Tooth & Nail was recorded, make for a solid team, allowing their shared love of rural Americana to run wild and each song enough elbow room to get comfy by sticking to a pantry of few seasonings.

Acid Tongue is where Lewis finally pulls it all together and delivers one killer of a record.

While it's hard not to be overtaken with a sense of nostalgia while listening to this album if you knew these songs from back in the day, Phillips pulls them out of their original context and in the process reveals their strength is more timeless than one might have imagined.

An ambitious exercise of restraint, it's a lumbering beast that's minimal but still feels expansive. Epic, even.

While Fake Surfers might not have the immediate impact of Finberg's earlier albums, but it takes his music in some bold directions without losing its smart-alecky, catchy-despite-itself essence.

On this very nice debut, Spielbergs are a tough band to pigeonhole, boasting quality writing and a hooky approach that transcends whatever sonic space they occupy at a given moment.

These are doomy, bass-heavy arrangements, rife with layers of orchestrated sounds that build and swell with a sustained dramatic tension. Think Matthew Dear meets The Downward Spiral-era NIN and you'll get a good sense of the grayscale atmosphere Biliński has achieved here.

While the newer additions to Thurston's muse are all well and good, The Best Day is most exciting when he returns to his most familiar trademarks, again investigating a sound that has spawned generations of imitators but still sounds like no one else.

Devil sees them continuing to move forward again, and although Hale's presence will certainly be missed, fans of the band will find that the return of Frost and Owens more than makes up for the loss.

The record is good enough, and the band skilled enough, that even one year without a new album from them would feel like an eternity.

While the retro-future production on some of the songs gives Migration Stories a distinctive flair, it's still by and large a typical Ward joint, replete with all of the idiosyncrasies and retro affectations that have become a stylistic hallmark of his catalog. Familiar as it may sound, though, he doesn't skimp on quality and there is plenty to love about this latest entry in his impressive catalog.

It simply finds Stickles and his crew moving from one position of strength to another, and it's as bold and exciting as anything they've delivered so far.

The only thing that would have made it perfect would have been releasing the original demos alongside the redos so T&S devotees could do some compare-and-contrast work. That's an extra-credit quibble that can be easily dismissed, though, because in every other way Hey, I'm Just Like You is a vital addition to the Tegan and Sara catalog.

Stripped down but nonetheless gorgeous for it, the album is an inviting combination of heavy themes and unassuming delivery, and easily some of Hayden's most colorful and intriguing songwriting.

We Knew may be a less immersive listening experience than Kudos was, but it makes up for that by sounding better and having better songs.

Fifth State generally feels easygoing yet energetic, and informed of the state of the world while trying to achieve inner peace and enjoy life to the fullest.

Aisles is a bit of a one-trick pony, but a cool one that seems prime for themed dinner parties and TV sync placement.

It succeeds as an introduction to Charli XCX the Pop Star while retaining her whip-smart songwriting and attitude.

Drowaton pulses with ideas and energy, and there doesn't seem to be a musical style beyond the Mints' grasp.

She keeps up her end of the bargain, writing a batch of heartfelt songs and delivering them with her always lovely style.

At this point of the Brockhampton story, the boys have tempered the antics and wild-child energy of past releases, maturing with an authentic grace that will only further endear them to fans of past work looking for more substance and sentiment.

Embodying hard times as well as the way friends lift each other out of them, Oh No also exemplifies the drama, mystery, and deeply felt emotions that have made Xiu Xiu a vital musical force for decades.

Straightforward and relatably human, High as Hope may not be the rousing version of Welch from previous albums, but as a document of her personal growth, it's an endearing and heartfelt study of truth and self-reflection.

Together, usually accompanied by little more than acoustic guitar and piano, they create emotionally rich musical miniatures that only ever take up as much room--both musically and lyrically--as they need.

Culture clashes never sounded so good.

Things are decidedly darker this time around; although his music has always been psychedelic, Raposa's In the Vines aligns itself more with a bad trip than lazy, woozy-eyed stoner fare.

Bahdeni Nami's greatest appeal will be to newer fans who may prefer more contemporary production to the gritty lo-fi dabke aesthetic. That said, despite various flourishes, these producers try hard to remain true to Souleyman's spirit and, with only one exception, succeed in spades.

A wild funhouse of an album, Jewelleryis more challenging and idea packed (not to mention more fun) than a lot of self-proclaimed experimental music.

While this is definitely a darker album, the fuzzy synthesizers help to give the songs warmth, preventing the album from becoming suffocating.

The majority of Fundamental is like the majority of their great album Behavior in that repeat listens are required to do these rich songs justice.

Spoek makes the "hard truths" sound like "real talk" while putting some of the world's most innovative rebel music underneath.

It's an honest record, stripped of artifice, and it will hit you hard if you give it a chance.

This is a pure country album, loaded with fiddles, acoustic guitars, and close harmonies, but retaining the Chicks' signature flair, sense of humor, and personality.... An instant classic.

Even though there's little stylistic maturation in his approach since his first release in 1986, Yoakam's songwriting craft keeps improving, and any track from this album could be a hit single. With Tomorrow's Sounds Today, Dwight Yoakam has fashioned a contemporary roots-conscious country album whose qualities, like the artist's distinctive style, are timeless.

Beats and percussive effects are far more present and grounded in hip-hop as much as they are rooted in dub, which lend the tracks an organic touch never before present.

It's a nice blend of the self-conscious Flowers in the Dirt and the organic, natural Flaming Pie, combining the craft of the former with the attitude of the latter.

Between its fizzy lyrics, brittle guitar riffs, cheesy Casio keyboards, and primitive rhythms, the record seems very much out of touch with contemporary pop; its ebullience and innocence hark back to a time that now seems very long ago.

A well-made, funky, fun record that proves two things -- the Hi sound lives and Al Green still has it.

Even if The Concretes is slightly disappointing in some aspects, it also has more than enough charms in its own right.

Though Variaciones Espectrales might be too noisy to work as background music for some listeners and too experimental for the dancefloor, it's another accomplished, fascinating slice of sound/beats exploration from this consistently pioneering artist.

This is unfettered joyful listening, and in its own small way, even profound.

His debut for Domino, 2009's Insides, is his first record that many people will hear and it's a promising, but flawed, debut.

Chamber Music, with all its throwback collabos, only faintly reminds the listener of yesteryear, but track by track it satisfies with the core Wu members sounding purposeful and sometimes even united.

To be sure, this is recognizably within his comfort zone--as always, when you do it as well as he does, there's no need to change--but beneath that supple exterior there are a few surprises, chief among them the re-emergence of Strait the songwriter.

No longer young upstarts, they wear their years proudly on this terrific album, sounding like the veteran roadhounds they've always aspired to be.

It's not that he's become Sinatra, but over the nine songs of the release he brings his ruminative, elegant creative ear to some excellent partners in the Magik Magik Orchestra.

Genre-hopping, Indianapolis-based singer/songwriter Liz Janes' fourth studio album for Asthmatic Kitty plays fast and loose with traditional indie pop themes.

James Farm offers real compositional depth and spirited, sophisticated improvisation, making for a deeply satisfying listen and a promising debut.

Had it not been for the underground releases, this disc would be one of 2012's best debuts.

Everybody's Talkin' is what every live album should be: an accurate, exciting reflection of a band at its peak, playing full-throttle and providing plenty of surprises.

This collection is proof that Kylie is arguably the best pop singer of her era and more importantly, is fun from beginning to end.

Rather than offer anything new, they instead focus on re-introducing the band as a creative unit whose capacity for musical excellence is undiminished.

Forget the limiting rubric of country-pop: this is one of the best mainstream pop albums of 2012.

He's made an album that sounds so good and authentically psych-like, and one that wraps the listener up in a warm embrace of misty melodies and cobwebbed arrangements.

In the end, it's still just a live album, but this sideline release is a must for fans, recommended for the casual techno head, and worth checking if a pumping, hypnotic, and otherworldly journey sounds attractive.

A lot of the sounds they try on Love Triangles Hate Squares fit them, and their polish and savvy suits them as well as the slicked-back pompadours they wear on the album's artwork.

Quite a bit bluer and calmer, where her previous music featured the four-on-the-floor pep of traditional house, this album falls closer to witch house and the rainy gloom associated with trip-hop.

Nothing Can Stop Us is a triumph for the backing band, but Campbell's number has been due for years, and now that it's been pulled, it's time to wake the town and tell the people.

Perhaps it can be too sweet, too cloying at times, but it's warm and ingratiating, suggesting The Blow Monkeys can ease into a convincing middle age.

The album is full of straightforward and jangly guitar pop, full of hooks and production turns that would feel at home on mixtapes of early-'90s underground alternative acts, the likes of which Pritchard himself belonged to and came up with.

The Soul of the Hour confirms that Gallon Drunk are bloodied but unbowed, still raging against the world around them and just as powerful as ever.