The disc alternates between unsettling, exhilarating, and devastating in its emotional impact; it's also difficult not to get distracted by everything going on musically.

Jangling Jack's back.

Immediate viscerality that rewards close attention.

Wrecking Ball spins Springsteen's most focused work since 2002's The Rising and most defiant and hooky since 1984's Born in the U.S.A.

Kudos to White's preservation of Lynn's loving, narrative songwriting even when paired with his own grittier sensibilities. In doing so, the two unlikely bedfellows have cut a classic.

The force of Okkervil's last LP, '03's Down the River of Golden Dreams, is strengthened and stretched on Black Sheep Boy, bursting with the heaviness of heart.

On the London quartet's debut Silence Yourself, the group whips up a storm of aggressive rhythms, strident vocalizing, and six-string sheen as if the succeeding pop trends never happened and Gang of Four and Siouxsie & the Banshees rule the charts.

Embryonic gestates the Lips to a new phase, turning eerily inward to finally face the flipside of their frantic catharsis.

Often delivered in an off-key falsetto, the vocal stylings of Bardo Martinez aren't technically sound, but like the band itself they overflow with warmth and infinite charm.

With Little Honey, she pays back fans whose faith had waned as her songwriting grew pedantic on recent albums such as "West."

It's a slow-motion ballet immortalized on album.

Help Us Stranger moves garage-punk polymath Jack White from the Sixties to the Seventies. And from the sounds of things, he, Brendan Benson, Jack Lawrence, and Patrick Keeler did it in Z/28 with an 8-track player and a hash pipe.

Even with producers Billy Harvey, Charles Arthur, and Gurf Morlix lending their talents, Everything You Love plays seamlessly, like one of Lucinda Williams' classic early albums, pristine, honest, and lingering.

The Alabama Shakes mainspring's first solo release showcases R&B borne of a dark, introspective place, grooving like a 35-minute scream into a pillow.

T.I.'s Southern drawl bends pedestrian phrases into irresistible melodies hotter than the summer streets to come.

What's most surprising is the strength of the original B-sides, such as the shoegazed summer dream "Happy Place," girl group siphon "Suck," and bassist Ben Lurie's "Rocket," which could easily reside on any of JAMC's studio LPs and absolutely trump anything by the band's innumerable acolytes.

Each track is full of Laurel Canyon vibes – vulnerability, grief, acceptance – and melodies you'll never get out of your head.

Great albums are great from the very first note, and the first 10 seconds of Walking With Thee will stop you dead in your tracks.

Childers walks the line of down-home idiosyncrasies and smooth popular jams with a star-making perfection.

As much Tom Waits as Roy Orbison, both Amigo the Devil and Born Against expertly navigate the twisted path between a metaphorical heart on a sleeve and real live beating one bloodying up his flannel.

Fortifying her monstrous singles "Galang" and "Sunshowers" with further molten munitions, Arular is primed for worldwide insurrection.

Pianos bounce, strings swell, and the band gets down to business on all 12 tracks.

The 17-year-old sensation takes pop iconography and musical status quo and lacerates it, opting out of femme fatale for tomboy cargos and goth macabre, and sleek soundscapes for creepy eccentrics.

Gone are any remnants of yesteryear's "rock music" ideology, thrusting Radiohead into a mature state of potentially their best work still to come.

The album brims with delicate moments like the title track and standout "Victor Roberts." In the former, plumes of electronics caress empathetic lines with genuine emotion, while the latter introduces new associate Victor Roberts with crystallized observations of childhood trauma and grimy electricity. Exhibition of vulnerability and invincibility, Ginger blood-lets an emotional palette where wounds are finally left to heal.

Where Rufus' work is fabulously bedazzled, Martha's remains earth-hued and loamy--rich, deep, complex--making Married well worth the wait.

With its durable theme and shambling demeanor, United States makes a different kind of sense with each successive spin. It's adult rock music in the best sense of the oxymoron.

Cotonou Club is first and foremost a tribute to that place and time – a period partially documented on 2009 Analog Africa compilation Legends of Benin. The 11-piece Orchestre reprises some of its best material, most notably the rebel soul of "Von Vo Nono" and standout "Gbeti Madjro," the latter featuring Angélique Kidjo, and both for the better.

[They] have taken their love of Fifties kitsch and Sixties pop off the Jesus & Mary Chain Gang of Love and down to the Velvet Underground.

The cameos (T.I., Janelle Monáe, Gucci Mane) hit all the right spots, the skits are delightfully juvenile, and Big Boi's idiosyncratic delivery and tightrope cadences throughout teeter toward Jedi mind tricks. Stank you very much.

New Multitudes is a resilient tribute to Woody Guthrie based on the folk pioneer's unpublished lyrics.

My Love Is A Hurricane ransacks David Ramirez to emerge bloody but unbowed.

Crack the Skye is a prog-metal classic, void of pretension or hesitation.

By the Way is orchestral, taunting, sinister, beatific, rousing, jocular, nervy, ethereal, and dare I say it, mature.

If you're a fan, The Storyteller is something you'll treasure. If you're not, it's sure to make you one.

Their music is an amazing nexus where surgical precision, ace musicianship, and thrifty minimalism intertwine joyously.

Much of Play sounds like it was beamed directly from planet Sad Guy, but it's far and away Moby's most cohesive and affecting work to date.

The album's trap-psych spaciousness blends so that most of Astroworld plays out like a single long, spectacularly mixed track.

Thompson's never been less than inspiring in concert, but here his singing seems especially urgent, while a few of his guitar leaps will leave you shaking your head in wonderment.

This year's 40th anniversary of Woodstock brought many tributes and recollections, but none as satisfying as this 6-CD collection of music and more.

If the Datsuns' retro sound is currently getting them Strokes/Stripes levels of hype, their blow-the-doors-off passion should allow them to leave their peers in the dust.

The craggy acoustic set sandwiched between electric workouts (metallic "Black Queen") counts off the hits ("Only Love Can Break Your Heart," "Guinevere," "Teach Your Children"), never better than Nash's breathtaking piano rendition of "Our House" at Wembley. Glimpse it on the rather short-shift, bootleg quality 40-minute DVD, where the foursome's harmonies cut through the cynicism of the times like a dove finally vanquishing the hawk.

Green Twins realizes a sound that's truly Hakim's own.

Here Be Monsters, the Brit expat's latest under the recurring Skull Orchard banner, embodies all of the qualities of Langford's best work, emphasizing the bittersweet, introspective edge that's become increasingly prominent in his work in recent years.

Follow-up Take Care, Take Care, Take Care largely forgoes the wide-screen expanse of the band's Friday Night Lights film soundtrack (2004) if favor of a more insular experience, casting intrigue in the minute details.

He's the finest true soul voice of his generation.

"Fool" embodies this power structure as she manages to forge together all ranges of her nostalgic vocalizations and eclipse them outright with a full-on frontwoman wail. Feats such as that can only be pulled off with pedigree and talent, both of which Molly Burch debuts in spades on Please Be Mine.

Rather than adapting Kerouac's writing into the usual frantic jazz inflections, Farrar lifts lines into rootsy blues and Americana shades, surfacing the author's uniquely skewed and stunning phrases.

Intense doesn't begin to describe Midnight Boom, but loop the Russian roulette sequence from "The Deer Hunter," splice in some grainy security-cam voyeur-porn, pop it in the Videodrome VCR, and you'll at least get the picture.

Impressive company, and Johnson earns his spot among them.

This is breathtaking, life-affirming music with the power to heal and restore. It's that beautiful.

The sun-kissed Laurel Canyon pop of "Dangerous Place" tackles the push and pull of creative collaboration, neatly summarizing Burch's modus operandi: wide-open sonic aesthetics with a pointed and poignant message behind it.

It's Ray Wylie Hubbard at his best, candid, shrugging, unapologetic, and dispensing rock & roll philosophy in words that matter.

American Idiot and Born in the U.S.A. both pave the way for American Slang, and as the quartet's third album, it's Gaslight Anthem's Born To Run.

These anthems drive their points home with unearthly force.

One Beat is the Portland, Ore., trio's best work to date, illustrating yet again that women can play and will be heard, with or without a political platform.

Filled with a brand of progressive folk music unlike anything you've ever heard, it crackles, sways, and whines, breaking through barriers we didn't know existed while creating a listening experience that's spellbinding.

As thoroughly self-possessed as Portrayal of Guilt's celebrated bow resounded in punk and metal pits, follow-up We Are Always Alone now standardizes the locals' splatter into a trademark sound. Success breeds fearlessness, focus, certainty; No. 2 harnesses No. 1's tempest.

Tassili's more acoustic than previous efforts but entirely transfixing, filled with haunted pleas about solitude ("Asuf D Alwa"), faith ("Ya Messinagh"), and drought ("Takest Tamidaret").

While the album retains some of the lo-fi insularity of his earlier four-track work, the full band backing makes Supper more of a living-room album than a back bedroom one.

Though repetition of "Losing My Religion" and "Man on the Moon" exhaust, there's a mighty pop to R.E.M. at the BBC.

The rest of UGK 4 Life rolls celebration, not just for one of Houston's greatest personalities and foremost musical pioneers but also for the Bayou City's finest hip-hop unit. Long live the Pimp, hell yes, but this is one fantastic curtain call.

Shinsian popsters rejoice. Here's another dreamsicle caked with sugar sugar.

By sidestepping guitar herodom, The Story of Sonny Boy Slim stakes out territory Gary Clark Jr. can proudly call his own.

Make no mistake, The Cool's stuffy and its plot a bitch to decipher (only four joints detail the story), but every 16-bar verse is stuffed, even the glitzy Snoop collab, "Hi-Definition," with zingers garnishing crates of encrypted metrical compositions that demand critical analysis from student groups of no more than four, no less than two to a table.

Confident and composed, the Boys have grown into and perfected these 16 songs.

The band's third LP scales back and sharpens the electronic textures and cinematic sweep that defined 2007's "Parades," and the result is Efterklang's most immediate work.

Danceable grooves and R&B beats heighten the disc's eclectic imagination.

The accompanying DVD offers only a higher fidelity version of the audio performance, but Sugar Mountain remains a magical and rare portrait of a budding genius.

This set proves they're not only the best at what they do; they're the only one's that can do what they do.

From quirky ("Needle Click") and Zen ("Chamber Lightness") to dystopian ("Kites III"), Music for Installations surveys Eno's myriad musical personalities, but what rationalizes the hefty price tag is an oversized art book. Packed with rare photos and a new essay, the book captures its subject's most ephemeral work in images that will be new to even the biggest fans. It's basically coffeetable porn for ambient music nerds.

The Monitor is a near perfect union of cacophony and immature angst.

No chips or cracks in this debut's silly-grin inducing veneer, just one short, sharp jolt of postmodern skank.

The Oakland quartet, now on Jack Johnson's Brushfire imprint, has a greater sense of urgency, sharper edges, and a more mature sound overall.

New DVD/CD combo Live at Reading rides the wave of mutilation that was Nevermind, but its best moments dump Bleach, the busy shoot pausing to catch Cobain picking out debut detention "School."

A rare record from an extraordinary artist, and one of the year's best.

Singing sometimes borders on yelling, but the promised heights reach their summit.

A near-perfect sonic snapshot of London under Blair's blowback blitz.

If Richard Swift isn't on your radar yet, time to adjust the antenna.

It almost goes without saying that the D4 kick the Vines, Hives, and White Stripes right square in their trendy asses.

Underneath the blustery sass and cynicism sparkles a tender human being still nursing old wounds.

FSHG continues this wheelhouse effect, drifting from Smile session bounce on opener "Honey Bunny" into the heavy-psych wind tunnel of "Die" and sprawling anchor "Vomit."

After almost eight years, APC couldn't jump back in too soon. Every aspect of this disc is delivered with blinding urgency, from the hook of "C Thru U" to the pseudo-prayer delivered toward the end of "Reflections."

Traveling Wilburys-vibe results in an impressive coherence, and though they inhabit one another's songs expertly, these Monsters' genre-expanding combinations prove equally inspired.

Any rock album that tackles such a wide spectrum without compromising the music deserves respect.

Earl Sweatshirt finally reconciles those influences and the voices inside his own head on sophomore effort I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside.

Badu's brave New Amerykah is a liberated land, a wild embrace of experimentation, and a gleeful if occasionally paranoid freak-fest.

The first disc of the 4-CD trove provides the best comparisons, showcasing the troubadour's most familiar tunes ("This Land Is Your Land," "Pretty Boy Floyd") with vocals and picking that are rich and unblemished.

An album that absolutely cannot be ignored.

It's evident that the band's traditionally simple sound has been augmented with greater influences and a desire to overstuff, miraculously without overkill.

If you haven't heard the plaintive and curiously uplifting songs of longing and loss from this rising phenom, you're missing the emergence of one of the most affecting new talents of the past five years.

Ultimately, it all plays out like a 60-minute calling card that illustrates hip-hop's most liberal producers aren't afraid to keep on keepin' on.

The 22-song epic marries Stevens' personal history to that of the state, as well as knitting spare emotional lyrics with lush orchestral and choral arrangements, upping the ante for singer-songwriters everywhere.

In the years to come, Low will trudge onward across the vast tundra of gross underappreciation, but in retrospect, their canon will likely be seen as one of the most important and influential of our time, so you might want to start paying attention.

Rogue Wave has reinvented itself with soft-edged, yet masculine, music that's far from fluffy.

Sophomore triumph Sound & Color aims higher.

Eschewing categories entirely, let's just call this trippy l'il slice of vinyl a masterwork, combining elements of salsa, house, reggae, hip-hop, and ska into one remarkably cohesive whole.

Let's just hope it doesn't take another near-death experience for their next album to be this good.