With Ritual Union, the band forges their own path and does not take the easy way out.

It is the bravery of the album that is its greatest triumph.

Open Your Heart is incredibly intricate and technically masterful.

The resulting album is one that is deceptively simple, a send-up to the aggressive cultural awareness of old-school rap on the surface, filtered through a hundred different post-apocalyptic scenarios, musical and lyrical.

There is so much to both genuinely appreciate and enjoy on Swing Lo Magellan that it makes you wonder why these have to sometimes be exclusive ways to experience an album.

I Know What Love Isn't is more than a great pop album – it's the most singularly rewarding statement from one of the more uniquely gifted songwriting voices of the past decade.

The album is a widening and a deepening of the style we've come to expect of Walker – but it's also got elements of a brightening of that sound as well.

The material here is as strong as we've come to expect from this band, but its pleasures aren't nearly as surface-level as even Kid A's. The best way to judge The King of Limbs in the long run may simply be to hope someone spurs Radiohead on in this direction.

It makes its own statement, and it does so with the level of maturity and succinctness that we've come to expect from Hecker, an artist who has well earned his place as a leader amongst his peers.

Yeah, Gang Gang Dance's idea of accessible and pop-ready is just as trippy and emotionally affecting as ever. Now, you can play it in the car on a Friday night, too.

It's dark but inspirational, catchy but never kitschy. Most of all though, it's honest.

Biophilia is Björk, the sum total, and this album is her continued claim to the throne as the monarch of avant-pop.

Bad As Me is yet another sensational landmark on the long, well-traveled path of a man who simply refuses to age.

This is a great pop-rock album because it doesn't feel the need to be anything else.

With a heavier reliance on piano and this newer emphasis on these samples, it's an astounding achievement in a young career already marked by solid works.

It's definitely a taxing listen. But it's also one of the most cohesive and powerful records to come around in a long time, and it doesn't tire after multiple spins.

Anxiety matches the emotional heights and immediacy of the music Ashin was inspired by, but what arrives from his limitations--as a singer, as a DIY-ist--adds to the record a personal foundation and raw authenticity no amount of budget could erect.

Is she singing lyrics? Hard to say. But these songs are unquestionably emotive, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were actually prayers.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver settles itself around a more narrative structure, letting the baroque arrangements move from one destination to another.

While Skying is not as large a leap forward as Strange House to Primary Colours was, it's still the work of a band firing on all cylinders, and an exceptional offering from a group that, out of nowhere, is quickly becoming one of the most exciting young acts around.

It's said that Lamar's goal here was to prove himself capable of standing alone. Well, in certainly one of the greatest critical understatements written, he's done it.

There's a simultaneous show-of-hand that somehow compliments that emotional weight rather than hinders it. It's that weight that gives these compositions durability, and considering how naked Acab leaves his samples, some staggering life. All said, it's really the bottom line here.

An insistent, vital, full frontal assault.

Their identity is hard to peg, and its just this that allows the music to completely possess the forefront, that makes it such an engaging, entertaining, and, perhaps most significantly, fascinating listen.

Celebration Rock is in perpetual motion, driven by a visceral sense of urgency that most modern guitar music is so sorely lacking.

There's No Leaving Now is one of the best albums of the year.

It's the best album of its kind to come out this year and, perhaps even more significantly, Segall's best work to date.

The songs are expensive in their depth of emotion but comforting in their intimacy and alluring appeal.