With songs as downcast and despondent as “False From True,” “Worthy” and the title track, the steady ache doesn’t abide all that quickly. That said, Trouble & Love does find some cause to break the stranglehold of sadness and despair.

Pink City is her prettiest, most cohesive work yet. It’s well-constructed enough to showcase the weirdness that crops up in her songs without making her seem like a novelty act.

Here, together again, they pick up more or less where they left off, slipping subdued hooks into strummy reveries and spiking easy breezy tunes with jarring, occasional violent lyrics.

The themes that combine to create this opus are also suitably sprawling, with subjects that touch upon key events and cultural touchstones essential to British history.

Shovels & Rope displays a firm grip on its craft on Swimmin’ Time, and a willingness to use it in service of any stylistic boulevard it chooses to walk.

The record is a slow built; one that will likely take a few listens to finally grab the listener. But when it does take hold, these songs are hard to shake loose.

With Easy Pain, the trio go full fang on this fourth LP, harkening back to the most extreme aspects of Louisville loudness.

Manipulator represents a defining statement from a musician that should enjoy a long, healthy career to come.

These 12 songs can work individually or as a whole, depending on your mood and in the end they’ve done it again, one of 2014′s best.

Louis Armstrong may have provided the raw material for Ske-Dat-De-Dat: The Spirit of Satch, but make no mistake: this is a Dr. John LP through-and-through. As it should be.

For most, this will make superb background music for meditation or musing, a tangled tapestry that’s ideal as a soundtrack for seduction.

Breaking away from their by now trademark South Jersey, cruising with the radio on brand of punk rock that first got them noticed, the band is likely to alienate some early fans with Get Hurt. In doing so, however, The Gaslight Anthem is doing much more to preserve the band in the long run, evolving at a steady, but satisfying clip.

The Alvins don’t tamper with Broonzy’s basic template, and truth be told, their feisty renditions of “All By Myself,” “Key to the Highway,” “Big Bill Blues” and practically every other song on this set sound as if they’re of a vintage variety.

SB makes hermetic/occult music by design, made to appeal to cults and that’s what makes them so proudly unique. Nevertheless, here’s hoping that next time, their ambitions include stretching out their songs and their ideas stuffed inside each tune.

Meteorites is a clarion call to all of their followers, from the Flaming Lips to Interpol, that Echo & The Bunnymen have finally come back to reclaim their rightful place back in front of the spotlight.

Country Funk II is an archivist’s delight.

The word “essential” is bandied about quite a bit these days in reference to landmark recordings. Yet, here it applies in every sense. CSNY 74 is one for the ages.

If Provider was Webb reveling moment-to-moment in a new life, Free Will comes to terms with the fact that the more you live, the less you know.

The band allegedly recorded this one just for fun, with little intention of ever releasing it. You know a group has hit its stride when even its goof offs are worth releasing.

What you end up with on End Times Undone, is a trance-y, pop-psych, hypno-rhythmic romp that showcases a group of players that have magically meshed into a single hive-mind, behind the very talented Mr. K., at the top of his game.

Given that parts of the album seem intentionally radio-ready, there’s reason to suspect the Rosebuds may have shed their thornier side to win greater acceptance. Happily though, they’re able to dispute that notion with entries that remain unerringly intriguing.

All in all, United States demonstrates McLagan’s allegiance to a pure pop mantra.

Muffs fans, then, are the ultimate winners here, as it sounds like Shattuck & Co. are having the collective time of their life.

Although it’s easy to lament the fact that Petty and the Heartbreakers don’t vary all that much from their usual template. Hypnotic Eye also affirms the fact they remain an austere and unapologetic outfit.

Weird Little Birthday is one of those albums that sounds like nothing much the first couple times you hear it, before you begin to lock onto the war between musical ease and lyrical dislocation.

It may not carry quite the swagger of Sweet Apple’s first album, but The Golden Age of Glitter still proves to be shiny indeed.

Not everything needs to be emoted so hard, not every line requires an instrumental ta-dah! Try a little simplicity next time. It makes the big swells all the more impressive.

Corb Lund, the former Canadian punk rocker turned roots country singer, is back with his eighth record and has settled into a comfortable, stripped down grove with a little lap steel thrown in for good measure.