This solo debut makes all the right moves to sail past retro on its way to timeless.

Far from A Far Cry From Dead, that polished product of posthumous overkill from the tail end of the millennium, Sky Blue allows the songs of Townes Van Zandt (1944-1997) to sit and breathe free from distraction or "Squash." Nothing ventured, plenty gained.

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

Wrapping in just under an hour, this ultra tight-knit collection telegraphs timelessness in story and song, a lasting chronicle rooted in folk tradition that sits among Griffin's best work.

Back to basics, Side Effects draws a dynamic through line to White Denim's jittery origins.

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.

Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest's entirely acoustic arrangement harks to a catalog defined by stillness and moments of quiet revelation.

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.

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

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

Steeped in vivid details of a queer romance, Forevher partners jubilant pop with its ideal mate: physically charged songs of electric devotion.

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.

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.

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.

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

Arising from largely improvised performances that accompanied a cosmic expedition at San Antonio's Scobee Planetarium, The Spiral Arm ranks not as the Austin ambient trio's spaciest effort – that's 2016 debut Original Soundtrack – but as their most beautiful.

Lifting both blast beats and thrash dynamics from metal, the Belgian indie rock trio galvanizes enough sheer fury to knock the needle off your turntable.

Summation of their best recorded moments, X echoes the pulverizing claustrophobia of Source Tags & Codes (2002) and sheer aggression of bone-crushing 1999 debut Madonna, erecting walls of drill-bit noise and floating ennui codas.

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

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.

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.

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.

Although certainly not the capstone to Wennerstrom's extraordinary personal and artistic journey, A Beautiful Life reaches a new pinnacle for the songwriter, and signals a remarkable turning point on a new path forward.

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.

A marvel of tone and production, the Austin trio's third half-hour aneurysm mutates root metallurgies into a future missing link of punk extremity.

"Lucifer on the Sofa" has enough endearing moments to sit comfortably in the meaty middle of the band's catalog.

Epic, over-the-top, enormous in scale.

Swirling strings and thudding guitars compare more than they contrast, brilliantly revealing that the band's "normal" music – a prowling, rhythmic churn that moves like sludge metal but strikes with blackened ferocity – is actually pretty avant. ... You'll marvel at how scrubbed of obvious influences they've become.

May to December, Waylon & Willie ride again.

Nelson swings looser and more comfortably here, more barroom stage than backroad sage. Self-produced, Nelson noted that he wanted songs that could move a crowd, which Sticks and Stones delivers in sound and ethos.

Known for their self-mythologizing irreverence, Being Dead uses fairy tales as a heartfelt escape on When Horses Would Run.

The album's whole second side rises to a bar set mile-high by the band's national breakout.

Recasting not only prolongs a song’s life, but renews it – reinvents it, revitalizes it. Airing out lifetimes locked in a closet of emotional gravity, Echo Dancing rechannels these selections’ romantic existentialism and magical realism into a techno meditation.

By not being "smart" enough to subdivide their appreciation of pop into a series of echo chambers, Junior Senior comes close to recapturing the preteen joy of responding to music unhindered by stigma.

These love songs aren't the kind that make you giddy, but Johnston's ability to articulate the naked foibles of human emotion and Linkous' somnambulant soundscapes elevate Fear Yourself beyond easy platitudes.

This wonderfully realized album by songbird/ violinist Caitlin Cary is proof that sophomore slumps are strictly for amateurs.

Rouse has pushed out the boundaries that molded his first two full-length albums. And he's done it in all directions.

Forget the new school of post-punk bands. None of them approach the intensity and rhythmic engagement of Wire, still flying the pink flag of twisted rock after all these years.

These are tunes that would've fit perfectly on Top 40 radio in the Seventies.

While Up isn't stylistically different from his canon, it proves that Peter Gabriel is back in the big time.

They borrow from Cheap Trick, the Beach Boys, Big Star, Roxy Music, Buzzcocks, and Robyn Hitchcock, and concoct a dizzying potion that sounds remarkably fresh and unlike anything that's come before it.

A set of apocalyptic relationship odes as pretty as an ornate church hymnal and as dour as the bleakest Sunday.

Brighter than Bloodflowers, denser than Wish, The Cure presents Smith as a wild-haired sorcerer's apprentice, conducting another mad symphony of infatuation and angst.

Adding to the pages written by Elliott Smith and Lou Reed, Buckner is the modern age wrapped up in the frustrations and sympathies of a wanderer.

Ghost is not a lot of fun. Still, it's an accomplishment, because it's an angry album.

A baby elephant still, bigger, brighter than its two siblings, but it's in your kitchen, and it ain't leaving anytime soon.

He's a thief, a con, a 60-year-old with nothing to say. And he continues saying it.

The secret to Fountains of Wayne's genius is the ability to infuse personality into a typically personalityless segment of America, making sadness and mundanity both interesting and deceptively fun.

The real feel good "hit" of the summer.

A lesson in less is more.

Mercury Rev has not only matched the Herculean effort of Deserter's Songs, they've surpassed it.

Travis has added some emotional weight and musical punch to its stock-in-trade, which remains surreptitious melodies that nestle in your thoughts and reappear as eminently hummable snatches of song.

The funk on the reverend's latest may be too smooth for some, but I Can't Stop will make even casual fans want to jump up and kiss somebody.

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']

Feast of Wire is even more intricately arranged than The Black Light, though the sheer diversity of this album prevents it from approaching the grand gestalt of Black Light.

An excellent, bracing, work from Jason Molina and company.

While Point is ultimately plenty of fun, it's also serious work that can be taken seriously.

Like its predecessor, Give is edgy, irreverent, and yes, fun.

This time, she adds a healthy dose of Southern soul to the mix and the effect is extraordinary.

Gold sprawls but it rarely meanders, all the while signaling Adams' rite of passage from alt.country bad boy to Left Coast post-folkie.

The spaciousness of James' yearning borders on the mystical, imbuing It Still Moves with its contemplative nature.

After the acerbic, introspective detour of Mutations, Mr. Hansen has decided it's time to get his freak on.

An album full of voluptuous soul samples fused with brusque perspectives on love, life, and common thuggery.

About a Boy is that rarest of bewildering beasties, the soundtrack that stands by itself.

The dynamic atmospherics of ATDI's swan song Relationship of Command are here, but the delicate moments are more focused, and the powder-keg bursts just as potent.

Happiness in Magazines is a huge stride forward for Coxon, who here seems to have jettisoned his scattershot aural experimentation in favor of meaty melodies that actually stick with you.

Any complaint with this set begins and ends with the list price of $54.98. Beyond that, no Cure freak can do without it.

On Veni Vidi Vicious, the band plays like rascals on their way to jail, with the prospect of conjugal visits depending on the music's extroverted energy.

The Argument is the first outing for the Dischord flagship band since '98's End Hits, and offers substantial improvement over that LP's uneven sonic experimentation.

Get Ready is one of New Order's better works, and that's saying a lot.

The Walkmen have something the Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs are lacking: passion.

If you're presently in love, A Rush of Blood ... will make you want to frolic like Lily Tomlin with the cartoon animals in 9 to 5. Otherwise, it'll probably make you want to puke.

The first two discs rock with transcendent grace, but stumble on disc three, in part because their last studio albums were uneven.

Like XTC's Skylarking, the Sunshine Fix's Age of the Sun utilizes the song-cycle form to take listeners on a warbling, blissed-out journey that revolves around the life-giving power of the sun as a central theme.

Elbow is a sad lot, likely to lead to a life of Merlot, Silk Cuts, and a straight razor or two if you don't watch out. They're gorgeous just the same.

Built mainly of solitary guitar/keyboard figures and elementary rhythm parts, the songs are too direct for this to be Daniel's Kid A, but he's obviously enjoying tweaking people's expectations.

There are hints of everyone from Pink Floyd to the Animals here, but somehow the Coral feels remarkably now.

Wise beyond his decades, Masta Ace stands at the altar with lyrical depth as his bride.

Houses of the Molé is signed, sealed, and delivered so powerfully that one can overlook the fact that it's basically Psalm 69 or The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste Part II.

Soon to be a jukebox staple at every down-at-the-heels dive and java joint in hipster America, More Adventurous has the potential, and the songs, to go a lot further.

With sound, Arthur paints with both broad and subtle brushstrokes, and his lyrics can stand free as poetry.

While a few songs aren't quite as fleshed out as others, nearly every selection on White Blood Cells provides the sort of bluesy good-time kicks otherwise unavailable in today's pop marketplace.

Heathen's swirling production, courtesy of Heroes/Low/Scary Monsters producer Tony Visconti, is so much more of a piece that it hangs together like a Thin White Spider concept album instead of an old dog/new tricks effort.

Campy? To be sure. Derivative? Absolutely. But cock-rock of this sheer magnitude and pomposity has been dormant at least since "Smells Like Teen Spirit" washed away "November Rain," so who really cares?

Opener "I Only Want You" busts the QOTSA model with a little funk and jive. The rest of the album follows suit: a Queens backbone and Seventies rib.

Already heralded as Black Thought's coming out, TP finds the always-dependable MC stepping up his game with the hunger of a neglected thoroughbred.

The maniacal conviction with which the Hives tear nonsensical pop songs to shreds on Tyrannosaurus is no shuck 'n' jive.

Reaffirms the iconoclastic duo's ability to be novel without succumbing to novelty.

No bad news here, just more headline-making from an innovative, ever-maturing group of musicians.

Throughout, Ludacris' wordplay is sharp, tight, and filthy, filthy, filthy.

Unlike the Strokes, and say, Interpol, no sophomore face-plant here.

The Primal's early, earthy strut is matched here and wrested to the dark side – Jesus and Mary's Black Rebel Motorcycle Chain, all atmospherics, with huge, galloping riffs.

More structured and electric than Either/Or, but without the overproduction of Figure 8, Basement is the next logical step.

Paired with his ever-fertile tunesmithery, ether-plucked choruses, and airwave melodies, singer and song beget a pop ball worth fetching again and again on Retriever.

This debut's fantastic energy does peter out toward the end, and some may consider it unfortunate that the bawdy, simplistic lyrics aren't the kind of life-changing poetry you'll want someone singing at your wedding.

Hearing the newly recorded album as a completed work instead of dismembered modules is a rollicking reassertion of Wilson's compositional genius.

By the time "Everyone's a V.I.P. to Someone" brings Thunder, Lightning, Strike to cinematic closure, you're all out of breath and wanting to ride again.

Its admirable honesty and unswerving beauty proves that she's retained her ability as a vocalist to enthrall us.