Results including "Lucifer and God" and instant classic "The End of Things" equal Mould's most melodically explosive punk rock since his Eighties heyday in Minneapolis, all abrasive guitar work and barbed lyricism candy-coated by tunefulness.

Whether Combs is telling stories ("Dirty Rain," "Rose Colored Blues") or waxing political ("Bourgeois King," "Blood Hunters"), he makes every track feel like a visit from an old and dear friend.

Piano patriarch evacuates the Big Easy for the Big Apple, where like-minded sessionistas young (Nicholas Payton) and old (Marc Ribot) mean Ellington standard 'Day Dream' almost doesn't miss Johnny Hodges and closer 'Solitude' compliments Dr. John's inspired Duke Elegant.

Taut, toned guitars meet tendon-snapping rhythms and acrobatic frontman Mike Wiebe's almost talking punk blues--mocking, self-deprecating, unyielding in their needling efficacy.

Segarra taps into lamenting barroom country previously explored on "Life to Save," but uses the lightning-fast drumming of Puerto Rican plena to address the often physical struggle to protect the sanctity of any homeland on "Rican Beach."

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.

Superchunk's 10th studio LP delivers a perfect strike at the heart of mature-stage alienation.

With new mixes from original producer Glyn Johns (the Who, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin), Griffin's varied folk-rock collection marks another high-water mark in her beautifully arcing career.

As with the albums that have come in its wake, this one will be compared to 1997's Time Out Of Mind, the last truly great Dylan disc. Though not of that caliber, Tempest finds Bob Dylan still very much in the game.

Brighter compositions match the lyrical demands of more specified storytelling, most vividly on piano-led "Mr. Lee."

He's written better songs and told better stories, but Blunderbuss lends rare perspective on a man who generally lets image speak for him.

Like composers Mike Post (Law & Order), Danny Elfman (The Simpsons), or Angelo Badalamenti (Twin Peaks), Survive axis Dixon and Stein's heterodox hard-wiring ameliorates TV's ambient takeaway.

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.

With flashes of post-hardcore ferocity, country-fried slipperiness, and surf-rock hedonism bundled together in a full-throttle hook machine, Heart dances, burns, and most importantly, rocks.

Gibson avoids awkward genre mash-ups with memorable vocal melodies and a knack for seamlessly matching timbres of the traditional and contemporary.

Confident, crunchy, and catchy as hell.

Giddy, confident, and instantly memorable, The Remote Part is great Brit pop and great rock & roll.

It's a well-grooved vision filled with stunning images and sobering emotions.

Wolf Eyes play things a little softer, focusing more on the creep than fear.

Reportedly inspired by two rainy trips to the Portugese capital, Lisbon nevertheless sounds like a continuation of the NYC outfit's 2008 turning point, You & Me, a dramatic din of last-call waltzes and dimly lit remembrances.

The Ghosts of Highway 20 finds Lucinda Williams bending Americana with jazz phrasing, lush grooves, and unrestrained spirit.

Parker Millsap's sophomore LP kicks off raw and raucous, "Hades Pleads" chugging a howling blues that immediately showcases the 23-year-old's growth from his eponymous 2014 debut. The Oklahoma songwriter's eclectic roots reach likewise stretches impressively.

Nothing Feels Natural picks up where Priests last left us, poking holes in the American dream, aggressive and accusatory, where both the band and listener aren't safe from Priests' rage.

The Besnard Lakes have perfected psychedelic harmonies and slurring melodies, but they're so much bigger than that.

Free jazz indie rock? John Zorn might approve. Shards of corrosive woodshedding imbedded at every angle, Grinderman 2 sequels the lashing 2007 debut by Nick Cave's Bad Seeds satellite quartet.

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

You can imagine a modern-day Syd Barrett coming up with similar ideas after being locked in a closet with a laptop.

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

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

Wounded Rhymes functions as a young woman's bildungsroman, neatly capturing the tension between youth and adulthood that defines one's 20s.

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

Put this against 1994's acclaimed Foolish or 2001's Here's to Shutting Up, and it stands on its own, a reminder that Superchunk is still doing it better than most new bands today.

They may not be the loudest or fastest, but it's rare to find such a potent, low-end distillation of all that's alluring about angry noise.

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

At 19 songs and more than 75 minutes, Brighter Than Creation's Dark just barely slouches to excess, mainly because it finds the Athens, Ga., quartet at its most tuneful.

Scandalous doesn't venture far from its home turf, but that's because Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears' brand of Southern soul is a breath of nightclub air just how you need it.

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

His relapses into techno abuse are few here, and even in those clubbier depths, there's a thoughtfulness under it, building on the dreamier visions of Andorra.

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

Grinderman is in no way a conventional comedy album, but an accomplished cocksman like Nick Cave howling the "No Pussy Blues" is pretty damn funny anytime.

Lack of focus falters the whole, but Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone triumphs in Lucinda Williams becoming gloriously unbound.

Feels like a sequel.... a photocopy that's strong but lacks the original's clarity.

Encrypted menace, lonely tremolo, and herky-jerk rhythms abound on the Detroit quartet's second album.

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

While still supremely self-important, he probes his emotions like a narcissist at the mirror. The difficulty/trick comes in wondering whether Tillman goes out of his way to trip himself up.

Garbus' greatest asset remains her voice. That wail she employs as a macabre bedtime croon carries in it more than child's play.

If the post-punk revival needs a poster child, Shame is a good choice.

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

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

Formulaic song-structure stagnation lingers since the group's 2005 lineup overhaul and subsequent lackluster LP, Wilco (the Album). In Fact, the sextet borders on complacency in its rock-ribbed space-rock safety net, despite that music's surface eccentricity and innovation.

A stellar supporting cast matching his vision, Walker produces one of the year's most exciting releases.

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.

Blood Mountain is a big slab to grab, especially shakier bits such as Josh Homme stinking up "Colony of Birchmen."

Gifted a falsetto reminiscent of famed Kentucky balladeer John Jacob Niles (1892-1980), his voice soars along rural Americana and across desolate plains ("Where I'm Calling From"). Through the tense, starry twilight of "Outlands," tranquil, meandering rivers and sprawling juniper trees ("Juniper Arms") outline a rocky terrain wherein "Some Beast Will Find You by Name." To that topography, add Adam Torres.

A solid third LP, but it's not Beach House's "masterpiece." They've still got some gold dust to kick up.

Ultimately, Nine Types of Light offers a reminder that love's sometimes best at the bitter end.

Metz locates a bittersweet spot between post-punk calculation and garage-rock urgency.

You never heard a sadder album than American V.

Servant of Love is anything but standard. Griffin deftly experiments with Arabic-style guitar-picking and eerie, chanting vocals on the stark and political "Good and Gone."

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

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.

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

Ellis remains brilliantly elusive, torquing songs in unexpected directions.

Perfect.

Like Clockwork: great for rock & roll, great for culture, great for the world.

Where previously Americana-tinged alt-rock teetered precariously on the bandleader's reedy whine, here that country DNA seals a seamless blend of Farm Aid authenticity.

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

The band's post-thrash attack still levels steel, but minor tweaks--snakefinger solos ("Slave the Hive"), waltz tempos ("The Sunless Years"), thrash dynamics ("Luminiferous"), and psychedelic haze ("The Cave")--bolt a crushing new frame on a classic chassis.

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.

This album is alive.

If this record isn't as compelling as Frosties past, it at least signals a veteran innovator still engaged in his craft.

There are too many golden slumbers ("The Night Will Always Win"), and since the snapping and grandiose arrangement of "High Ideals" passes for the pulse quickener on Rocket, tempo could vary more, as it does in the banging build of "Open Arms," another British best in any decade.

Full of old-school gallop and intelligible vox, the Digipak configuration bonuses a DVD plundering three unflagging hours of live footage from Germany, a run of nights covering peak LPs The Avenger (1999), The Crusher (2001), and Versus the World (2002).

As with any Prophet effort, themes are at times tangential to the rock, and he rocks in a way that seems almost anachronistic these days.

As ambitious and poetic as Russell's ever been, Mesabi continues the Texas dweller's renaissance from aging folkie to adventurous craftsman.

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

Second LP We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed continues on the path blazed by their 2008 debut, all urgent joy, jubilation, and communion.

Even sharper and more cunning than its predecessor.

Thee Oh Sees distilled their focus to fine effect on 2011's Carrion Crawler/The Dream. That sweet streak continues on Floating Coffin, whose darker, more foreboding tone covers a lot of stylistic ground in its 10 tracks.

A lesson in less is more.

Recorded in his Brooklyn apartment, Salad Days tosses off the same charmed, lazy pop songs with a balsamic aftertaste.

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

Jeffery redefines what trap could be going forward.

On Wide Awake!, Parquet Courts uses punk mood swings and Gang of Four-style vocal barking to camouflage some of the prettiest songwriting of their career.

The bottom falls out of Wolfie's second half --'Rome' declines, 'Countdown' never reaches orbit, and 'Girlfriend,' no--but closer "Armistice" beats fresh out of the dryer on golden Versailles pogo. Merveilleux!

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.

Lyrically, Springsteen walks a fine line on this outing, filling songs with descriptive if somewhat pedestrian tidbits.

There's a seductive quality to the simple yet sophisticated and intimate ambience Jones creates with this music.

The results are predictably top-notch.

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

Everybody Works feels like a good jumping-off point, Duterte potentially able to take the project anywhere she wants.

2007's stellar Woke on a Whaleheart found him miles from Smog's lo-fi folk prophesies, the music revived, almost jubilant. Eagle's halfway there but sounds preoccupied, his stoic baritone never giving too much away.

The real treat in hearing Dylan rework tunes like "Autumn Leaves" is a slow-motion, humanistic view of how he finds the song's critical path.

Rock Music proves BSP can hold their course.

Third proper full-length Can't Wake Up now completes his metamorphosis into an exceptional songwriter whose songs manifest into cinematic novellas. Characters living therein and their actions come to life in dreamy detail. Delivering them all, the singer's voice floats like a passing cloud along blooming stretches of reverberated chords.

No one song stands apart, but Burn Something Beautiful hangs together as one of Escovedo's most entrancing works.

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

There's no doubt that the reality rapper with "an ice maker for a heart" is steady "Thuggin'," but Gangsta Gibbs can also ride any track the Beat Konducta throws at him.