Unlike Waits of late, she works hard to not let the songs become just moody soundscapes. She doesn’t always completely achieve this, but does so enough to make this a success.

Chock full of affirmation and illumination, Bright Side of Down is just the perfect pick-me-up for these frequently turbulent times.

This is an essential CD for both the serious and casual fan.

The album’s arrangements and standout musicianship--including pedal-steel and slide guitarist Greg Leisz and Henry’s son Levon on clarinet--is a reminder that Henry’s extraordinary production work is second to none.

With her almost stream of consciousness talk-sing, some melodies on Somewhere Else are better formed than others. Like Patti Smith her songs can be as strong ultimately as the care invested in her hooks.

Sunbathing Animal offers up lucky-13 tracks and nary a stale song.

Overall there’s a principled (but never overbearing) humanism guiding her worldview. And her songs definitely rock, if never in a way that overpowers her words.

Modern Creation may not their best collections of songs--that honor is still held by 2012’s Enjoy the Company--but there’s still some damn fine tunes to be found here.

A free-form lyrical approach leads Vangaalen into phantasmically beautiful byways, with both the music and the words floating up and away.

The result is an album that’s unfailingly engaging, and, unsurprisingly, wholly exceptional at that.

Establishing her forceful new identity from the start, Goodman makes music with an infectious enthusiasm.

Syd Arthur avoids any whiff of trendiness and just gets down to the business of writing and performing timeless music on its second record Sound Mirror.

With this supremely supple and joyous display of early innocence and promise, Aztec Camera showed they already come into their own.

Not flawless, but damn it’s still a fine effort from beginning to end.

On the second album by Minneapolis four-piece Howler, an energy level worthy of forebears the Replacements, Soul Asylum and even, in places, Husker Du is dialed up, making such tracks as the thrumming/thrashy “Indictment” and the hardcore-tilting “Drip” buzz around the listener’s head like so many hornets.

Lack of predictability appears to guide Finn’s pursuits, making for a white knuckled ride all the way.

While this isn’t an earth shattering album, it is a solid one which serves as a reminder of what a talent she can be when she decides to get in touch.

His vocals are delivered with such breezy casualness, you almost miss the poetry in the words. Pair that with the brilliant musicianship and it’s simply confounding that Bare and his band aren’t as big as groups like Arcade Fire and My Morning Jacket at this point.

All of Mess has an enjoyably menacing feel that will prove inviting to Liars fans and new listeners alike.

Albarn has just unveiled quite arguably the best album of his career--solo or otherwise--with Everyday Robots.

Some of the songs here are better than others (even with more than four decades of hanging out with everyone from Willie Nelson to Keith Richards, there is only so much cred you can breathe into a Paul Anka song), but there is hardly any track here that hasn’t earned the right to stay.

Granduciel’s songs envelop you. As soon as you understand the lyrics for one song, another song buries words in hushed reverb.

Rarely do mistakes of one’s youth sound so beautiful.

While this is Hurray For The Riff Raff’s strongest record to date, it’s doubtful this is a peak. Keep Segarra on your radar.

This is the best punk rock record you’ll hear this year--never mind that it’s not wholly or even really a punk rock record.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

It’s as good as anyone had hoped.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

These 12 songs run a mere 33 minutes, but cover a lot of musical and thematic territory.

The strong creative flow guiding this record indicates that the band’s artistic direction wasn’t solely the vision of Smith.

Though occasionally confounding, it inevitably turns out to be time well spent.

This is more, almost more than you can take, and it’s better than less any day.

Sunlight on the Moon is utterly pleasant, slightly off-kilter and melodically memorable, but if you listen to it hard enough, it’s also a bit disturbing.

Devour is a completely impressive collection from start to finish.

The Avett Brothers have established a singular style. And with it, a well-deserved reputation that assures their place among the best of the breed.

From the opening cut of “Earthen Gate” the songs nudge, heave, shove and then finally bulldoze their way to your hearts.

Somewhere along the line, this became an amazing band, and songwriting/arranging this masterful elevates Blur The Line to modern-classic status, fully justifying the 5-star rating applied at the top of this review.

Unison chants (“Kaani”) and stray bursts of percussion (“Nouvel”) punctuate the multi-lingual songs, but the dominant timbre is a delicious, delirious clang.

Pushin’ Against A Stone is an impressive calling card to the rest of the world that this, until now, under heralded artist is both an adept student of American folk music traditions and a modern day practitioner with perhaps preternatural talents.

The compelling 46-minute result shape-shifts with graceful ease, never losing touch with its pop song aesthetic.

It’s a balance of brainy introspection and communal joy--hard to do but easy to listen to.

Ambitious and inviting, Siberia puts Polvo in a more accessible place while remaining faithful to its artistic vision.

Happily, The Ghost of the Mountain succeeds in every respect, an album that sounds like the product of a group rather than simply a collaboration between like-minded associates.

Nature Noir feels like it’s got a bit more substance and structure, a natural foundation under the otherworldly sheen.