May be his best yet.

II Trill but never too trill, the second solo swagger from UGKer Bun B spins triumphant, Houston hip-hop ripped both in celebration of properly executed gangster prophecies and passed partner-in-slang Pimp C.

Heartless Bastards return not as they started, but as an undeniable and tightly controlled force of nature.

Pile arrives comparatively light on melodrama, brimming with live fast/die young missives instead, anthems of restless spirits who drink love and life from the same red plastic cup.

The results are reason enough for Damon Albarn's other outfit to finally pack it in.

A haunting disc that lingers long after the laser dies.

"No revelations in the water, no tears into the booze," Bridwell imparts in closer 'Window Blues,' but Band of Horses keeps demonstrating both.

As San Fermin's best outing, Belong winds wildly through styles, but ultimately ties together its own unique intoxication.

Challenging, enigmatic, and melodic don't always go together, but coupled with Case's sleek vocals, they make The Worse Things Get ... a marvel.

Hills and Valleys rides a line the Southern Pacific Railroad would envy. Writing together where previously each songsmith mostly submitted his own material, Gilmore/Ely/Hancock's first six salvos here are their best run yet.

Garbus is a "new kinda woman," declares closing track, "Killa," and it's about damn time.

The Love Is Hell discs are far more dense and dark, making the songs a fun challenge to crack open, though it isn't difficult to determine what a no-brainer it must have been for Lost Highway to favor the brilliant Roll over the more spotty Hell discs. [Review applies to both EPs and 'Rock N Roll']

Pushin' Against a Stone showcases a stunning and unique new voice.

For Escovedo fans that have followed the local star through the Nuns, Rank and File, the True Believers, and Buick MacKane, Real Animal bares teeth and soul in rock & roll payback.

The ultimate effect is engaging and generally impressive, although you wonder if the Postmarks are targeting the wrong audience. [Oct 2009, p.114]

Where the smaller Backtracks offers a single live rarities compilation, the amplified heat fleshes it to two.

Together, these giants deliver a master class on how country music is supposed to be done. It's also the strongest work of their three-decades-plus partnership.

Through producer John Congleton's flourishes you can still imagine Jaffe strumming the songs on an acoustic guitar, each heartbreaking love song written for the same audience who embraced the subtle desperation of Suburban Nature.

Kurt Vile's sixth LP ups the Philadelphian's creative ante, speckling finger-plucked finesse and Farfisa whimsy into his laid-back blues/folk crunch.

The dolorous gloom of Foundations of Burden should be oppressive, but Pallbearer turns pain into beauty.

The results are predictably top-notch.

Meloy's touchstones form one of the Decemberists' best, precise diction; moody, compelling melodies in glorious arrangements; and elegant phrasing dripping like honey off the tongue.

Highlight and opener 'First Sight' consciously cops Postal Service pulse, but Elliott's emotion lies in the shading dodge that dances ever on the periphery of his poeticism.

Metal purists who still long for Leviathan Part 4 will find new reasons to excoriate their former saviors, but the rest will be too busy marveling at Mastodon's near-perfect fusion of might and melody.

Sing to the Moon is a bold and beautiful debut: airy and dense, soul and jazz, dark and light. Head in the clouds, toes in the dirt.

The freshest, most exhilarating rap album of 2013.

Their four-way harmonies soar to meet that now-familiar, West Coast country jangle, tart pop songs blending into a deep, rich mulch out of which melodies grow like wildflowers.

This John Dwyer-led, San Francisco collective's jagged psych-punk has always been ear catching, but this ups the ante.

From skittish garage-blues ("Duckin and Dodgin") to pale blue-eyed elongations ("Instant Disassembly"), it all hits like a blast of warm subway air on a cold day.

Billy Joe Shaver, 74, came into this world rough around the edges, so his songwriting resonates with unmatched autobiographical intensity and Long in the Tooth follows suit. Contrary to the album title, he ain't headed for pasture anytime soon.

Fans may have to have The Woods surgically removed from their players. It's just that powerful, demanding to be heard.

American Idiot is one of the most politically volatile albums to come out since the ascension of the Accidental President. It's also the best album of Green Day's 12-year career.

Although the Avett Brothers can't seem to decide whether they're introspective folkies or a big rock act, The Carpenter hits the right chords in such a manner that no one will likely care.

While hit single and opener "Helena Beat" suggests that Foster the People has mastered the sunny-but-bitter concoction, "Waste" and "I Would Do Anything for You" provide a sweet balance on the palate.

The Texas warbler meets the California ripper and results in a barnstorming burner.

Boasting enough insidious imagination to evolve beyond easy metallic labels, Agalloch transports The Serpent and the Sphere into its own phantasmagoric astral plane.

2 is nothing if not authentic.

What a sublime hush of an album. Your iPhone dreams about this music.

The pounding "Portraits," gloomy "Severed Lives," and wonderfully odd "Deathtripper" betoken a metal band reaching new peaks in agile brutality.

Not only does the noirish blond front duo now boom, the group's theatrical flourishes wail like the harmonies howls punctuating the title track.

This is the first absolutely essential UK disc of the year.

Thirty-six minutes of a detailed, agonizing shot in the arm, a veritable buffet of musical stylings, each song bettering the one before, from a band that just as easily could've released a new version of "Gimme Fiction."

Danish raven Amalie Bruun integrates extreme intensity into both genres' [goth/black metal's] inherent drama.

Avalanche,... is all over the place musically but never loses the singer-songwriter's jaw-dropping vision.

It'll evoke memories of Wilco's Being There ("Open the Door"), GNR around Lies ("The Seeds"), and Neil Young doing "Big Time" ("Freaky").

The general expansiveness of sound on songs like "Ho Hey" make this young group's eponymous debut uniquely American in all the best ways: gritty, determined, soaked in sweat and love and drive. There's nothing precious or affected here, just three dedicated artists opening their hearts.

The lengths of hiss and silence can be unnerving, especially when his ethereal prose floats into a void. Yet when the swells come and Walker breaks the waves, it's a thing of absolute beauty, and the black turns neon.

The Crane Wife could be the best Robyn Hitchcock album made in several years; the lyrical marriage of whimsy and death bear the fruits of a master class led by the former Soft Boy.

It's an album of brainy rock songs that state their claims then defiantly step out from beneath the ethereal haze.

Especially refreshing in this city, the player lets his modern blues simmer and smoke, avoiding pyrotechnic blister. Somber and guarded, opener "Lost & Lonesome" pins the simple tools behind most of the album – evocative acoustic guitar, barely there percussion, and Nichols' wisely pleading voice.

Picking up both pace and vigor after Prick of the Litter, McClinton finds a Second Wind going all the way back to 1978, his voice still ragged but right and, here, full of piss and vinegar.

Joe Ely brings the desolation of Texas plains to life in a manner that's profoundly inspired.

With every release he proves his idiosyncrasy. Nobody else in the world knows how to make an Oneohtrix Point Never album.

Marshall has a voice as distinctive and enchanting as Billie Holiday, capable of summoning the same emotions in the listener -- awe, lust, bewilderment, a burning desire to reach out and shelter the delicacy of it from all the crude harshness of the world.

With material like this, he may even find a way to add a chapter to the Great American Songbook.

Something More Than Free offers further proof of Jason Isbell's preeminent acuity.

Aww, our little freak is all grown up.

There are cleaner, prettier albums, with more candor and a greater point of view, but White Lung makes few apologies.

A deeply personal album that will resonate with anyone who's ever found their life's path leading them down a dead end.

From the opening drum breaks of "Black Moon Rising," a sinister slice of psychedelic R&B, the LP ignites as one long, slow burn.

Destruction Unit appreciates chaos, as their guerrilla bridge show a few SXSWs ago demonstrated, but Deep Trip proves they know how to play their instruments even if ducking behind a wall of squall.

Scarlet's Walk not only evinces Amos' musical maturation, it's also the singer's most ambitious lyrical work.

Burrows deep into the collective unconscious of American song.

From its first chord hit and sustained, distortion displacing air, Le Noise courts Neil Young's classic platters.

With Showtime, the very idea of diagramming a single line is enough to cause black wormholes to open in the listener's mind – quantum physics by way of South London slang.

How a band from such an incestuous scene produced an album with such keen pop instincts that nonetheless stops well short of ripping anyone, local or national, off continues to boggle the mind.

The fearsome foursome's eponymous, 1969 debut pairs its volcanic blues and folk with a raw performance from that same year in Paris.

It shimmers and sulks, adding a rich dimension to the group's already delicious sound.

There's not a bad spot on the album, 12 tracks that taken as a whole make up the most exhilarating UK rock album in years.

San Diego triangle Isaiah Mitchell, Mike Eginton, and Rocket From the Crypt propulsionist Mario Rubalcaba hurtle third studio LP and first since 2007 into the void atop a gloriously earthen pachyderm crunch on four tracks.

Massachusetts outfit Speedy Ortiz's sophomore album is a biting, brooding affair: a Nineties feminist soundscape stippled with dissonance often verging on sinister, and wielding brainy guitar lines and lyrics.

Unsurprisingly, the true treasure for devotees occurs in long-vaulted studio moments.

Zack de la Rocha's fevered shout doesn't sound any more graceful now than it did then, but Tom Morello's riffs still cook, the grooves still burn.

Backed by Budos Band and Dap Kings' Tom Brenneck, and produced by the Black Keys' Patrick Carney, the band somehow remains degenerately disheveled and brilliantly bombastic in a way that belies their tightness.

Production given over for the first time (to Sam Kassirer), the sound rises to meet the heft of Ramirez's writing, though surprisingly, through melancholic, Eighties-pitched synth and guitar. The author finds focus as well, his deeply personal laments attuned with political purpose.

An eerie, whimsical sheen coats jaunty guitars, arty baroque keys, and choral intonations, with delicate lyrics skewing surprisingly funny at times as they warp the burdens of addiction and the lovelorn.

We Were Dead sounds like Modest Mouse, only better.

Though Waits holds a reserved seat in the small club of artists who don't put out bad albums, the whiff of wild youth hangs around Bad as Me as if it was recorded in back alleys, behind churches, and in bars after hours.

"Black Dog" and "Over the Hills and Far Away" back-to-back are gonzo.

Unexpectedly, one of the most beautiful and hopeful albums of the year comes from Black Angels singer Alex Maas. Luca capstones 2020 with a reminder of what's truly important and wondrous in the world.

Metals is darker, more contemplative, heavier, a heady, atomic blend of folk-pop and emotional menace.

Since I Left You is as much of a revelation now as Primal Scream's life-changing Screamadelica was a decade ago.

For Emma is a paradigm of uninhibited closure, a gentle touch on a sad day.

There's an enduring ebb and flow, and perhaps some intentional indecision, as the Denton-born Sylvester Stewart swings the band from humanist psychedelia to Church of God in Christ gospel modulation, James Brownian run-outs, and even showtune sing-alongs.

The Roots are the best hip-hop band today and ever, no questions asked, and Undun is Black Thought's greatest mark.

Broken never sounded so divine.

Abandoning "another album with a rhythmic premise" according to So Beautiful's deluxe edition DVD, Paul Simon nevertheless injects echoes of Graceland and The Rhythm of the Saints in "Dazzling Blue" and "Love Is Eternal Sacred Light," respectively, feeding their author's master class mixtape of varied musical mattes (the Moby-like spiritual sampling on "Getting Ready for Christmas Day") like There Goes Rhymin' Simon and Still Crazy After All These Years.

With Stone Rollin', California's vintage soul man is doubling down on the classic R&B while drawing from a deeper well and muddying up the water. Hitsville is still part of the formula, but so now are Howlin' Wolf and Sly Stone.

Black humor, demons, g-o-d, easy women: Welcome to the cult of Father John Misty.

Torture builds speed, human gristle, and institutionalization. Unforgiving ("The Strangulation Chair"), its Howitzer recoil runs molten currents of melody and rhythm.

No other big band out there makes their pieces fit like this. Not Queens of the Stone Age, not Nine Inch Nails, certainly not Crossfade, Seether, or Chevelle. Audioslave are officially in a league of their own.

You're Dead begs complete listens as a whole, with tracks just long enough to capture particular thoughts before you're pushed onward.

From cow-punk ("Killed a Chicken Last Night") and DIY metal ("Dontcha Lie to Me Baby") to gritty classic rock ("Wind up Blind"), Biram proves the ultimate outlaw.

It's unclear whether the stunningly simple sound of 1985's feedtime was forged by artistic primitivism or limitations in musicianship, but its monotonic songs ride feeling rather than melody, and when it's good, like "Fastbuck" springing outlaw quatrain, "I got a Pontiac, gasoline, grab the cash, split the scene," it's paralyzing.

Volume Two echoes the series' progressively perilous shift toward the supernatural, a track like "Danger Danger" pivoting from the evocation of bike-riding best buds toward the debut of a demoniacal monster in a parallel universe.

As if on cue amid the recent critical hemming and hawing over indie rock's cultural appropriations drops Vampire Weekend's official debut with enough justified buzz to render the entire debate moot.

ts sleek, dance-oriented patina veers appreciably from the linear evolution of the Austinites' previous output. This might be Spoon's most radio-friendly release ever, and given its jarring position in the catalog, their most adventurous.

At times atmospheric with a grounded mysticism ("Astral Plane" and sweeping strings on "Just in Time"), June's voice still serves as mesmerizing focus, especially the slow drawl and moan of "The Front Door" and closing blast of "Got Soul."