It’s a spellbinding portal into a horrific cultural experience that continues to burn and radiate spiritual sustenance to the world.

It’s a fierce, fun and unforgettable album that would be an achievement for a singer/songwriter of any age, but particularly for one on the far side of 60.

Untethered Moon may lack the shiny object-appeal of the band’s debut, or the epic brilliance of their major label debut, Perfect From Now On. But it showcases Martsch’s strengths and suggests an artist who, despite his qualms about universes micro and macro, has reached a comforting détente with who he is.

This is one of the most beautiful albums you’ll hear this year or any other, speaking softly but resonating deeply and long after the last sounds fade away.

Miller has turned in one of his most satisfying solo efforts to date.

With Pan the band has created an album that places them squarely amongst the pantheon of musicians they so obviously adore.

These fourteen songs bob and weave, rise and fall and generally make a first class racket in the best way possible.

Who is the Sender? is a beautiful piece of work from a veteran talent that world has finally woken up to experience.

Doldrums have given voice to the psychology of the outsider, fashioning a work of art whose queasy, warped nature is just too hard to shake.

Having not lost a single step, Failure is as potent a force now as it was when its style of music was king.

Why Make Sense revels in ‘80s dance, R&B, hip hop and pop throughout straddles between sheer musical delight and melancholy as the upbeat music balances earnest lyrics.

The musicianship is so uniformly good that you forget about it and allow yourself to be swept onward by the songs.

Non-Believers slips masterfully between vantage points and emotions.

It’s an impressive show of strength and act of endurance not just in its multi-part structure but also in Gelb’s long term commitment to his craft and his determination to make something endearing out of the downcast canvas that he’s made his own.

Jamie XX has rearticulated dance music once again. This is an album that surfs from one emotional peak to the next. It’s an album I was actually sad to have end.

Both rocking and reflective, Small Town Dreams is chock full of the kind of ready for prime time anthems that effectively assert both his acumen and authority.

These days lots of different bands/songs are called noise pop, but these folks are doing it right.

This is a well-crafted album that manages to reach some rare sonic ground save for a few missteps. The band works best when it is allowed to let the songs build and layer over one another.

Closing entries, “Oh Dolores” and “The Walls Have Drunken Ears,” provide the album with its most emphatic impressions, leaving no bridge untethered.

The operative term, then, is explosion, and the JSBX effectively conjure the jittery, edgy, colorful vibe of the city they live in.

While not much new ground is broken on A Forest of Arms, and it fails to surpass 2012’s excellent New Wild Everywhere, something can be said for the additional polish the music gets from heavy string embellishment and rather refined production values.

Votolato’s new album, inexplicably titled Hospital Handshakes, offers yet another example of his considerable skills, a collection of songs that fires up an urgency that extends from first song to last.

If this album doesn’t bowl you over, it doesn’t disappoint either and rest assured that their next record will be something different that you didn’t expect either.

The contrast between the style and the subject matter is so arresting that you kind of wonder what will happen on the next record when Nelson is, perhaps, not mad anymore.

Clearly, Boz is back, and at age 70, he’s never sounded so assured.

The real nuances come out when this music is heard closely on headphones, but even when they blare out of speakers, there is something alluring to grab the ear and pull you in.

Despite the unlikely set-up, there’s a classic archetypical feel to the set as a whole.

You almost can’t grudge Bishop for his globe-hopping, 9-5 shirking, guitar-buying existence when it produces music as wonderful as this.

Working with a cast of Chicago jazz, improv and experimental luminaries and newcomers, Walker casts a most enchanting spell on Primrose Green, and while it may reflect his influences more than spell out his vision, the love he bears for those influences comes through in every plucked and sung note.

Some long-time fans may object to Lightning Bolts new legibility, missing the communal chaos and staticky buzz that made listening to previous outings like opening a box of bees. But the maelstrom still looms, the intensity remains, it’s just a bigger, more focused sound.

Carlile has that unique ability to convey sentiments that can be both celebratory and circumspect, and on tracks like “Wherever Is You Heart,” “The Things I Regret” and “Blood Muscle Skin & Bone,” her declarations of devotion are sung with both assertion and affirmation.

Their self-titled debut was a good record, the follow up is a great one.

A vigorous, emphatic outing that offers little let up in terms of its energy and intensity.

There’s a lot here, all of it sounding exquisite.

Citizen Zombie resurrects a band that’s still evolving, rather than a nostalgia act, and is all the better for it.

Staunch and undeterred to the brink of defiance, Complicated Game finds McMurtry’s rugged resilience again setting the tone.

Terraplane, though, is the sound of a man utterly rejuvenated.

Hexadic is a dramatic shift for Six Organs of Admittance, lurching into noise and abstraction with hardly a nod to guitar folk or psychedelic rock.

What he has done here is more than a lark. He really loves what he’s singing, and it shows. And he has a lot still to teach us about the joys of music.

Giddens emulates her forebears with reverence and assurance.

Modern Streets brings the eerie emotional heft of psychedelic soul into the age of the personal electronic device, working on a small scale towards mind-expanding ends. Nicely done.

It’s hypnotic in and of itself, and all impressions are purely in the ears/mind of the listener.

Berkeley To Bakersfield is the perfect shotgun rider for any road trip. With the breadth of its variety no other music passengers need be invited along for the ride.

This record isn’t just Worthy--it’s essential.

Gone are the raucous “Whiskey River”-style jams, but in its place are an albums worth of lazy afternoon porch songs that you can’t help but love.

An exceptionally strong debut record, Soul Power will make you believe in the title concept.

Half a century later, Look Again to the Wind serves as a stirring homage to an album that remains as daring and defiant now as it was when it was first offered to an indifferent populace.

There’s a Bluebird in My Heart is the sound of a great artist coming back home.

The album is a holiday classic in waiting, even if you don’t own a single pair of skinny jeans and couldn’t grow a beard to save your life.

Mark Kozelek Sings Christmas Carols is a remarkably faithful, utterly transcendent take on what I will humbly submit is the beatific, unadorned side of Christmas music.... This is the holiday release of the year.

With IX, Trail of Dead consolidates its stance as one of the ‘aughties’ most consistently interesting prog bands.

Taken as a whole, Kykeon seems more cohesive, less add-x-to-y, than the self-titled debut.

It’s quite a gift to fans, too. Live in Memphis—which has a corresponding DVD available separately--finds Chilton, particularly, in good voice, his obvious playfulness all the more engaging given that he’s performing before a hometown crowd.

In sum, The Best Day is the Sonic Youth album that Sonic Youth fans feared would never happen in the wake of the band’s split in 2011.

This third full-length, after a slew of singles, fills out his sound, soothing abrasive beats with a floating fog of sustained notes.

Museum of Love is a nonformulaic, hard to pin down, quirky and danceable album.

That’s maybe what’s so remarkable about Faith in Strangers, its uneasy balance between beauty and menace, calm and roiling intensity.

The Fact Facer is a nuanced, multi-leveled listen that stands with the best things Amos--and anyone covering similarly adventurous terrain--has done.

While there aren’t any revelatory moments of creative growth here, the best songs on Still Life suggest Morby still had plenty left in the NYC tank.

He just hides his eccentricities a little better this time. You have to look for them, but they’re there.

Costello, James, Mumford, Goldsmith and Giddens put their disparate origins aside and pull together as a team. They clearly own these songs, and ply them accordingly. Both credence and comradery play crucial roles here, elevating this effort to that of an essential acquisition.

Prophet can be, by turns, both snarky and sardonic, qualities the aforementioned forebears know all too well. Happily though, he himself is no slacker, especially when it comes to both sentiment and sarcasm.

The first sketches of songs that would later buttress both Dylan and the Band’s songbook--“Tears of Rage,” “Nothing Was Delivered,” “I Shall Be Released,” You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” Don’t Ya Tell Henry,” “Quinn the Eskimo,” “Million Dollar Bash,” “Lo and Behold!” and the like--offer a treasure trove of revelation, making the anticipation for acquisition well worth the wait.

Nobody has ever really sounded like Chrome but Chrome, and that makes Feel It Like a Scientist sound as fresh now as it did back in the bad old days.

One imagines certain purist fans recoiling and dropping out while a host of newcomers discover ‘em.

His ability to arrange is masterful and, on Way Out Weather, he establishes this sort of psychedelic roots sound that exists outside of about any recognizable genre or even sub-genre.

This is My Hand is one big ball of skill, imagination and love of musical creation.

There’s an uncommon depth here that hasn’t been evidenced on Williams records in ages, both in the sonics (an immaculately crafted blend of intimate and widescreen) and the lyrics, which at times are deeply confessional and others downright defiant as the songwriter stares down her demons, the vicissitudes of relationships and the rampant idiocy of the outside world.

The sounds that seem most real and certain disintegrate as you listen to them, while the ones that might be an illusion drift into proximity, obscuring all else.

Taken as a whole, Sukierae is a much different experience, exhibiting a labor of love in the truest sense--a family affair that bridges the generational gap to offer a little something for everyone.

All said and done, thumbs up on Polizze’s songwriting, the trio’s playing, as well as production work on Weirdon.

Ultimately, this is a record full of brilliant Richard Thompson songs given strong readings.

Lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar is the all-encapsulating masterpiece we all knew Robert Plant the solo artist had in him the entire time.

Brooding, menacing, haunting, even elegiac--we feel the Earth move across the emotional spectrum, rumbling through its soundscapes with eyes closed and amps set to stun.

El Pintor is not Antics or Turn on the Bright Lights, there are not as many immediate hooks and riffs that were present on these earlier releases; instead, the solid music on El Pintor unveils a nuanced mellowing that has taken over the last two releases from Interpol.

Despite all odds, Into the Wide is Delta Spirit’s most driven effort yet, a rousing, riveting attempt to create an indelible impression.

Every tune serves the moment, like a series of self-contained filmic miniatures whose character sketches, though brief, are utterly memorable, with those sketches’ accompanying sonics just as resonant.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Apparently Cartwright exorcised his punk rock demons with Desperation, as Shattered is the band’s most accessible record yet.

She long ago proved herself worthy of the family legacy, but Carter Girl would be a highlight of her substantial discography regardless of familial stamp.

Like most prolific artists, Willie can be hit or miss with his offerings. This latest one lands the target dead on.

Lion is certainly king of its own dark and sublime, concrete industrial jungle. It roars strong and, at times, purrs in all the right places.