It's a lavish aural luxury worn by Meloy, his limited range worked to its finest by the glorious Welch chiming in, the two matched like a 21st century Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris.

With more than two-and-a-half hours of music and enough extras to keep children of all ages occupied deep into the long winter's night, Stevens once again pulls off a wondrously wide-eyed antidote to the boring Christmas album.

Not since the maniac thrash of 1986's genre-eclipsing Reign in Blood have these SoCal wastrels managed music that sounds so frighteningly out of control and yet wholly, idealistically pure of intent.

Peaks are pointedly hot, and Content's unfinished texture is a broadside against studio sterility.

The Black Album stands up alongside Reasonable Doubt and The Blueprint as Z's most ambitious work.

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.

Chicagoan West innovatively samples Elton John ('Good Morning'), imports Coldplay's Chris Martin for the 'Homecoming' hook, and plays to Young Jeezy's ad-libbing ability on 'Can't Tell Me Nothing.' Lyrically, West sticks to his "I'm so self-conscious" tip, but unlike 50, he knows his rhyme schemes.

The characters are memorable, the satire sharp, the music luxurious, and the arrangements maybe the most gorgeous in all pop music.

Twenty-one discs address it in explosively comprehensive detail for The Box, all seven of Blur's full-lengths now doubled by a brimming parallel disc of era singles, B-sides, demos, and live swaths.

In such stories, McMurtry locates again and again an element of humanity that saves his angriest screeds from easy pigeonholing.

This is the Octopus Project you've witnessed a million times, the one you've been waiting to show up on your speakers.

By effortlessly topping her own best work. Lemonade now sets a new standard for cross-genre collaboration.

Rook is an epic undertaking that plumbs the depths of the seas ("Leviathan, Bound") to the heavens themselves ("I Was a Cloud," "The Hunter's Star") for the sounds that make the stories sing.

But for all the influences that rip through the LP, the youthful abandon recasts them for a new generation.

This is third wave hardcore, and it's a return to form, where commentary rules and violence and ignorance won't be tolerated.

It's a headphone masterpiece that bangs on shelf speakers.

Every emotion is intense and genuine, and the musicianship is just as moving as Mercer's lyrics.

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

Ben Kweller is breezy and buoyant, hallmarks of grand pop albums. And this is indeed a grand pop album.

Willie Nelson, 85, keeps going from strength-to-strength, and Last Man Standing is the strongest yet.

Their robe is cut from cloth that matters: melodic Peter Hook-like basslines; the divine shoegazer textures of My Bloody Valentine and Ride; a peppy, Strokes-like bounce; and a singer who's a dead ringer for Ian Curtis.

Like Austinite Ariel Abshire's "Exclamation Love" last year, much of Jarosz's appeal is youth, but that's grounded so deeply in talent that listening to her is a sweet promise for the future.

Picking up where 2001's two-disc BBC Sessions: 1964-1977 left off, this 5-CD/1-DVD UK import meticulously traces the band's enthralling path.

1993's Icky Mettle thumps Warp's warpath between lo-fi sad sackery ("You and Me") and shitstorm post-post punk ("Sick File"). The Archers of Loaf vs. The Greatest of All Time EP ignites a bonus disc as anthemic as 1977 Clash ("Bathroom").

It sounds unfiltered, raw, and rough, and the quartet's mixture of guitar, organ, fiddle, percussion, and flute (Jethro Tull in the house) makes it all the more authentic.

If Alabama's Drive-by Truckers are the Second Coming of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Tennessee's Kings of Leon are ZZ Top -- barons of boogie.

Yorn's signature cigarette-stained drawl plays over some of his most personal lyrics yet, indicating he's ready to reclaim his role as talented brooder after treading water in relative obscurity the past few years. [Jul 2009, p.131]

Muscular production from the Blasting Room's Jason Livermore brings Stephen Egerton's melodic guitar to the forefront, and Alvarez and Stevenson's lockstep percussion sounds downright youthful.