With Tarpaper Sky, he can clearly claim one of the finest albums of a sterling 40-year career.

Since only 42 seconds of the album is new material (the opening self titled track), it can, at times, feel redundant, almost unnecessary, but, with a musician of Claypool’s caliber, to see boundaries being pushed--and classics revisited--there is obvious value here. And, at the very least, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Along The Way sounds remarkably fresh and vital, in fact, the mark of a gifted musician trying to incorporate his philosophical yearnings into a concrete manifestation that can be shared at will.

Lyrically, the album is pretty mediocre, but the band has always seen their playing overshadow the words; Black Beehive is no different.

At a half hour, Too True might seem brief, but Penny makes the most of every minute.

The rest is a mix from great (Glen Hansard’s “Pressing On” and Deer Tick’s “Night After Night”) to the not so much (Aaron Freeman’s “Wiggle Wiggle”).

There’s little doubt Here Be Monsters will one day be considered the album that ensures Langford’s legacy.

The Take Off and Landing of Everything is another fine release from a band that has yet to steer wrong.

For beautiful execution of a beautiful idea for a tribute/concept album, try The Beautiful Old: Turn-of-the-Century Songs.

Kozelek replicates the rhythm of our lives, the tricks of memory, and the portents we later find in seemingly banal moments.

While Davenport and his crew aren’t doing anything here completely out of the ordinary (for them, anyway) with a batch of songs this strong it might stand as his best.

Workbook 25 is his masterpiece.

Maybe they were trying to evoke Leonard Cohen’s Songs From a Room but they came up with something sweeter (albeit noir-ish) in the process.

Only 8 songs here so they don’t wear out their welcome and know how to keep the fans wanting more.

With Holly, Waterhouse really comes into his own, branding himself as a retro crossover crooner whose immediate intent appears intended to instigate a ‘60s soul revival.

Dawson’s agility is remarkable to say the least, and despite the lack of additional embellishment, the music comes across as rich and riveting.

Gallon Drunk’s whiskey goes down rough on The Soul of the Hour, but the lingering after-burn is the best part.

Abandoned Cities is gorgeous and disturbing and a bit chilling, like old photos hanging on walls about to be demolished, like memory, like loss, like loneliness experienced in the midst of family life.

Chills on Glass may be rock viewed sideways, through a cracked mirror, after 48 hours without sleep, but it is till the recognizable thing. As such, it fits uncomfortably into the places you’ve made for rock, jarring you even as it feeds you.

Buy It’s Her Fault, a 12-pack, then enjoy the ride.

Their return is certainly great news to the diehards out there. For everyone else, at least the bar hasn’t been set too high for the follow up.

Though his songwriting skills have rarely come to the fore, the quality of the material here--all of which he wrote, save a pair of covers--makes these tunes first rate.

Backed by his acoustic guitar, a fiddle player, a bass and little else, Millsap’s record has a timelessness that will preserve it well years from now.

Ledges may be a quiet album but it resonates with strong emotions in its own low-key way.

Temples aren’t reinventing anything here so much as adding a distinctly British twist to well-trodden ground.

For a moment or two here, Quilt sounds like a lost Pretty Things track, but as mentioned earlier, this is really their own unique creation. And it needs to be heard right now.

Essential Tremors hides some of the bands’ strongest songs in years. You just have to dig for them.

If you’re looking for that next hooky, guitar-pop record you could do a lot worse than this.

The raw, mellow, hip-hop, electronic, jazz infused solo return of Neneh Cherry is an enjoyable ride; some songs are immediately addictive while others slowly become more appealing after several listens and sonic osmosis.

If you’ve never experienced Lucinda Williams before, this is a discovery worth making and music that will live in your heart and mind long after the disk stops spinning.

If energy and enthusiasm count for anything, then The Pack A.D. comes out a step ahead. The problem is, they don’t seem to know when to pull back.

Brousseau possesses a certain spirit and shine, but a bit more spark would give Grass Punks more of a means by which to elevate the intrigue.

They’ve created a complex and detailed world, and English Oceans adds more memorable characters to it.

Calling to mind everyone from Dinosaur Jr. to The Pixies, Boston indie noise rockers follow up last year’s great full length, Major Arcana, with the solid, but frustratingly short vinyl 12” EP Real Hair.

The band manages to sound half-inebriated and unbelievably tight at the same time, a loosely strung collaboration that is, nonetheless, completely in sync.

The album is not flawless; there are one or two songs that don’t quite hit the high bar Atkins set for herself with this outing. But songs like the drinks-in-the-air sing-along “It’s Only Chemistry” and the instant classic “Sin Song” more than make up for what you pay for this album.

It lacks consistency, but it works well often enough to make this a reasonably satisfying exercise in both 19th and 21st Century Americana.

These are lonely outposts in a landscape without distinction, where the most depressing aspect isn’t what happened to Landes and Ritter, but what happened to Landes’ songwriting.

What they’ve found, is pop perfection, and Fifth is a contemporary gem.

Her writing, which here often expresses personal sorrow and fear about separated or lost love (“1923,” “Nothing in My Heart”), is alive to the senses and nature but doesn’t get lost in abstractions about feelings.

It’s doubtful anyone will stroll about humming these tunes, but so too, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to find there’s something about them that’s all but impossible to shake.

Burn Your Fire For No Witness is a mutual journey in every sense of the term, the signpost of a brave new artist right on the cusp of greatness.

While the band clearly has an advantage, being able to handpick songs that were already pretty stellar to begin with, credit is due to the hard Working Americans for not simply churning out carbon copies, but slathering plenty of loose blues, jam band raucousness and stoner charm, to make these songs their own.

The formula--and the tempo--never really varies, although some of the musical settings are craggier than others.

It’s as good as anyone had hoped.

Darkly defiant, Nothin’ But Blood is turbulent and tempestuous to a manic extreme.

There are any number of landmark albums that critics are quick to label as essential, but given the fact No Depression jumpstarted an entire genre, none deserve that label more. The kudos earned by this good Uncle are clearly well earned.

Populated with smartly crafted, passionately performed songs, No Way There From Here stands as Cantrell’s best work to date and leaves the listener hoping that she doesn’t take as many years to make do her follow-up album.

It captures an aura of domestic bliss through songs that are unfailingly effervescent and jazz infused to the max.

An admirable effort in terms of daring and experimentation, Choir of Echoes reverberates ever emphatically.

Lanegan doesn’t need someone to make him great, he does fine by himself and it shows with the anthology of his solo work Has God Seen My Shadow?- An Anthology 1989-2011 (Light in the Attic).

Overall, This is Lone Justice: The Vaught Tapes, 1983 may just be the definitive Lone Justice recorded experience.

An unassuming venture, but capable and well executed one regardless.

Revelation continues to tow that tradition, with every song providing different twists at every juncture.

No matter what confection the band prepares, the melody is the cake and the trippiness the frosting, making Join the Dots one of the most non-head accessible psych rock records since Tame Impala’s breakthrough.

Given the earthier sonic aesthetic of the band’s previous LP, the gauzy mist of Warpaint may be hard to accept at first, but given time, the record’s sensuality becomes clear, making it more of a next step than a radical rethink.

The Hospitality of yore does appear on some of the tracks, but it’s clear the group has pushed itself towards newer territories which, while a little enigmatic at first, suit them perfectly.

Strong Feelings sums up the sentiments, but it’s the eloquent execution that makes this so sublime.

All in all, it makes for a rich and resilient brew, and maybe, just maybe, the kind of opus that will propel Jurado towards the greater accolades he so clearly deserves.

Almost by accident, it seems, you can hear memory, skill and poetry converging in a lonely kitchen with a baby sleeping nearby.

These two LPs still sound vital two decades later, just as the copious musician tributes and journalist essays in the accompanying pamphlet declare.

As the title suggests, The River & The Thread manages to surge and sway all at the same time. Indeed, it doesn’t get much better than this.

There’s nary a moment missed by the band to demonstrate that Sharon Jones is one of the greatest female vocalist currently operating.

In the grand scheme of things this is not epochal work. In the world of rock ‘n’ roll this is to the Rolling Stones or Bruce Springsteen as Chausson or Bridge were to Wagner or Mahler. But those lighter composers had their charms and pleasures, and with Herein Wild so does Frankie Rose.

Benson’s created an album that stands as his best thus far, a vivid, emphatic encapsulation of pure pop coupled with unabashedly enthusiastic execution.

It’s tranquil, amiable and very familiar.

The experimental sonic world Dosh creates is beautiful and he has created an eerily enchanting one with Milk Money.

More Is Than Isn’t balances vocals with lyricless tracks but at the heart of it all is RJD2’s strength in producing impressive music.

Seven songs long, it offers the impression of one continuous tirade, despite the moments of sublime tenderness that illuminate tender courting tunes like “Heaven Is Here” and “The Enemy,” each of which bring to mind such heartfelt Harper ballads as “Commune” and “Another Day.”

Brett Gurewitz’s buzzsaw guitars sound cool, but the blend of punk rock and carols turns out to be too predictable, so you know whether you need to hear this one even without hearing it.

The problem is that Pearl Jam at this point is just repeating itself--or others.

For while Costa Blanca superficially suggests a trip to some Euro-trash mall outlet, listen closer and you hear a dark, subversive critique.

He’s brought the whole Destroyer vibe to an entirely non-Destroyer set of material, and you can feel the waves of cool detachment, of stylish artifice wafting off these tunes just the same as always.

Brazen and breathless all at the same time, Nina comes across as the weirdest record of the entire year, and might even be the strangest album most people might encounter in a lifetime.

Among the Grey is still mired in... well... several shades of gray, so that when certain songs dissipate as a casual drift, it becomes all the more difficult to glean a more emphatic impression.

A transitional record, then, one that seems to be leading to a masterstroke.

While the lyrics here do tend to come off as pretentious at times, the sentiment is still admirable and actually pays off on songs like “March in September.”

Too often, it seems like the singer is leading us into blind alleys, stringing words together willy-nilly on bead chains, then scattering them like sparkling baubles in a heap.

The name of this project might be 7 Days of Funk, but there’s enough groove in this mofo to last a lifetime.

Accessible to a fault, and exceedingly mellow to boot, it flows with a natural ease usually accomplished by those with far more track time under their belt.

There’s a lot to like here and hopefully these three will keep working again, trim the fat and lock in for an even more thrilling ride next time.

Aside from the nine-minute rambling of “Everything Has to Be Just-so,” (coming at the end of the first disc, making it easy to skip), McCombs pulls off the rare feat of a double-disc that never runs short on inspiration or steam.

Yet even at its most opaque, Sun Full and Drowning connects subliminally, with its deep reassurances of folk-rock melody, its shimmering, vibrating intersections of interstellar guitar, its grand sonic spaces.

Locrian proves itself expert in simultaneously exploiting the warm blanket of beauty and the cold ice water of noise.

Overflowing with strong writing and excellent playing, City Forgiveness earns every minute of its two-CD sprawl.

It has a good sound to it, but as a whole, the misty quality in many of the songs doesn’t have much of a lasting impact.

Some of the half-crazed momentum is missed, particularly during the meandering tracks that end the LP. But mostly the Warlocks thrive in this environment of release-free tension, letting Skull Worship seethe rather than rage, and it’s no less effective for the restraint.

They direct their efforts with a determined forward thrust that spills over the melodic parameters with a celebratory display of rock ‘n’ roll revelry.

It is, obviously, a tribute to Fela’s lasting power and influence that so many different artists want to play his music, and not at all surprising that he was better at it than most of them. Still, no one wants to hear Fela’s fiery grooves diluted, slicked over, chilled out and made more commercially palatable.

Last Patrol is easily Monster Magnet’s strongest LP in years.

The only real misstep is the too-funky-for-its-own-good “Snow Your Mind”; otherwise Fulvimar has created another record that will appeal to a wide range of music fans as the indie rockers will give it a thumbs up as will the stoners, psych-mongers and electronic freaks, too.

Don’t Tell the Driver is far too gorgeously personal, too hushed, too subtle, too free-rangingly ruminative to ever play out on a public stage. Instead its chaotic swirls, its muted flares of brass, its clackety storms and ebbs of drumming seem destined to play out in private theaters.

They are trying too hard for precocious-ness, not enough for worn-in beauty.

Despite the variety, this is a decidedly marginal set of songs, one that’s well out of sync with even the most archival Americana.

These 14 songs sound as wholly irresistible now as they did when they were such an essential part of a soundtrack for a now-distant decade.

Overall, the EP--which would earn a higher grade if there were simply more of it--captures a contemplative Wareham midway between Luna’s driving pulse and the darker fare on Dean & Britta’s 13 Most Beautiful: Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests.

Call it a comeback. Call it a rebirth. Welcome back Barrence. Dig Thy Savage Soul rocks.

Good Mood Fool takes several listens before it’s possible to fully appreciate its full potential.