Pop elements ensure that Musostics works pleasantly enough as background music, but it is also complicated enough to reward more concentrated listening.

They eventually return to their swampy shuffles and bottleneck guitars but not before establishing themselves as revisionists and revivalists equally content to also mine their own muse.

It's nearly impossible for Hiatt to put out a bad record. You may not love every song, but there's bound to be a few on there to make the album well worth the price you paid.

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

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

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.

Fantastic Plastic might just be their finest effort. This is the music that stirs your loins and flies in your face like the sweet bird of youth come home to roost. Fingers crossed that this isn’t their Final Vinyl.

Still Living has its share of baroque pop moments, but its strongest songs are the ones that rock the hardest.

The preponderance of the material here creates its own world, on its own terms, and beckons you to go inside. And you will.

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.

Voyageur resonates with the kind of drama and daring that Edwards has been perfecting all along.

All nine of these slow-moving cuts are built on actual melodies, simple enough to stick right away, radiant enough to hang like this album's overtones, well after they are finished.

Earle has proven that he can embrace the past, look forward to the future and find peace through his music.

Clear Shot, the Brighton, UK band’s third LP, brims with catchy melodies and straightforward performances--only the richly layered production really betrays any overt psychedelic influence.

In the last ten or fifteen years, only 2005's Magic Time has delivered more consistently enjoyable songs than this thoroughly captivating collection of rants, loves, and dreams.

Hurricane is her first new album since 1989, and it's her best ever.

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.

Thanks to this well-constructed compilation CD (including a very informative booklet), his legacy will be exposed to a new generation of musicians, and music fans.

She is better than you would expect, flexing a style that exists between Woody Guthrie and Def Jux as she calls out hypocritical hippies, turtle burning oil companies and the overdose that nearly killed her with effortless wit and grace.

All things considered, Stars and Satellites is easily this band's best effort yet.

There is not a single track on this record that doesn’t belong, each nearly flawless in their own way.

High Bias is the best Purling Hiss album yet, channeling a tidal wave of noise into songs that you can remember almost immediately and even hum to yourself later when the album’s out of ear shot.

They come back hard and a bit more focused on this terrific sophomore effort.

The EP is the perfect cherry on that sweet cake that is Light Up Gold.

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.

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.

Those two bumps aside ["Cruel Intentions" and "I Should Have Stayed in Bed"], it's overall a solid album from a band that's honestly been missed.

For those a bit put off by the overt club friendliness of The Field but intrigued by Willner's affinity for glitch, Loops is definitely your conduit into the abstract nature of this BPM bard's state of mind.