Although this monochromatic palette tends to highlight the limits of co-producer Jack Antonoff's bag of tricks -- nothing here feels surprising, even when he's playing with textures and teasing out the music's dream-pop elements -- the narrow focus is the main attributes of Midnights, as it plays to Swift's sense of control and craft: she may be singing about messy emotions but she sculpts those tangled feelings into shimmering, resonant songs.

Ordinary Corrupt Human Love isn't going to change detractors' minds about Deafheaven. Instead, with its searing depictions of emotional and spiritual struggle in a relentlessly ambitious musical presentation, it should attract a new legion of listeners as well as deliver assurance and solace to those who found their earlier records so compelling.

Other songs like the sea-shanty-goes-Jacques Brel 'Italialaisella Laivalla' and the more openly indie-pop 'Tytto Tanssii,' with its guitar lope and synth-horn break floating over a softly rumbling cloud of melancholic, echoing textures, further add to the understated but enjoyable variety of a fine album.

On Helplessness Blues, he's just as interested in the landscape of the human heart. Still, it's the music that stands out, and the band's acoustic folk/chamber pop combo makes every song sound like a grand tribute to back-to-the-land living.

Mezmerize doesn't fail to be unique.

If hip-hop had existed in the days of the Filmore, Woodstock and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Edan would have been right on the bus.

Though not as "experimental" as their previous couple of records, as a whole Purple is far more focused, and it's certainly more euphoric.

The dense and shrouded nature of this album means you sometimes have to wait for the clouds to clear before certain lines resonate or choruses grab you, but once they do, they don't let go.

This focus on ambience really makes Sky Burial feel like it exists in a very specific, and very secluded, space, and while you probably wouldn't want to live there, it's amazing to visit.

While that may disappoint some waiting for a masterpiece, there's no shame in mining the same ground as long as they make records as tight and tuneful as this.

The forceful sound of Girl Going Nowhere may camouflage the subtleties of her songwriting, but it's also an asset, as the production, along with her powerhouse voice, demand attention.

Part experimental rock, part electronica, and part hip-hop, Subtle's For Hero: For Fool is a complex, innovative, sometimes bizarre, and usually utterly confusing journey into the minds of lyricist Doseone and his five bandmates.

Though some of the songs here, especially the earlier ones, can be quite simple, even raw at times, there's a sad, clean sweetness that comes through despite the occasional bit of tape hiss, of tinny chords.

Juxx seems to have benefited from Sean Price's mentoring as he works a perfectly cadenced flow and manages to maintain a high energy level throughout the LP. Still, the most exciting moments on The Exxecution come when Juxx's Duck Down elders stop by.

An immediately engaging debut, Seasons of My Soul has the potential to repeat the crossover success of Norah Jones' Come Away with Me and Amy Winehouse's Back to Black, its unquestionable authenticity signaling the arrival of an equally timeless and unaffected voice.

It is interesting to look at the epic, ambitious group by their attempts to cross over, and while not all singles were as worthy as the album cuts, this alternative view has some massive high points.

A wild work of twisted genius and more fun than rabies, that's for sure.

Chris Cornell is a reverential capstone that charts the tortured artist's highs and lows, providing an ideal first step for anyone wishing to dive deeper into the impressive catalog of one of rock's loudest and most emotive voices.

Patience provides the most inspired-sounding one yet. It's just more proof that despite not being the flavor of the month anymore, Sondre Lerche is quietly releasing some of the best and most interesting pop music of his era.

The Drift isn't an equally severe leap from Tilt [as Tilt was from Climate of Hunter], but it is darker, less arranged, alternately more and less dense, and ultimately more frightening.

Horseback makes extreme underground music from the mysterious South; this compilation is the indisputable proof.

There's a bold stroke of genial Southerness that runs through the music and keeps things tempered, honest, and effortlessly authentic, despite a predilection for eccentricity.

With greater emotional depth and sonic clarity than her past recordings, Working Class Woman is an exciting breakthrough for Davidson.

It's an exciting album that comes on with such subtlety it's easy to miss how immaculately constructed it is the first several times through.

Like a folky, more rough-hewn Blossom Dearie, Sternberg's quavering voice will not please everyone and their musical palette is delightfully out of step with the times, but their candor and warmth of character are universal.

With Happy Songs for Happy People, Mogwai gets to have it both ways -- it's ironic and sincere, concise and expansive, challenging and accessible, and it's one of the band's best albums, no two ways about it.

This is one of the best rock & roll albums of 2003, and truly the finest, most cohesive work he did after London Calling.

It is the combination of street tales, social criticism, and self-awareness that made him a unique artist, for whom the term gangster rap truly does not do justice.