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.

Raw in places, expansive in others, and rife with Williams’ patented street-corner-talking, pimp-swagger style, I Wanna Go Back to Detroit City is as good a postcard for the Motor City as you’ll likely find all year.

In terms of pure triumph, Port of Morrow provides its listeners with safe harbor regardless.

The steady driving "Mulholland Drive" and the Roy Orbison-worthy "Here Comes My Man" are among the band's best and could have easily come off their breakthrough 2008 release The '59 Sound.

As its title suggests, Use Me offers a lesson in how to stay true to one's muse.

The combination of the two disparate methods of performance made for quite an extraordinary menagerie of styles that will definitely appeal to hip-hop, art pop and world music fans alike.

Waiting for Something To Happen is an excellent record.

Garage Sale is mostly devoid of throwaways, and yet chock full of hidden treasures instead.

Looks can be deceiving, especially when you have an album's worth of decent songs to back you up. And despite a so-so start on their debut full length, they do.

Their often-dark songs have a triumphant dimension.

This band stirs a noisy pot of rock sounds, but vapors that escape smell delicious.

Tom Jones is almost 73 years old, is singing as well as he ever has while refusing to conform to his stereotypes, is artistically and perhaps spiritually searching and restless, and is recording perhaps the finest music of his long career.

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.

All together, this is a very classy compilation, and an essential piece of the global puzzle of 20th century music.

These songs are like pearls, lustrous, unknowable and happiest next to bare skin.

Hellfire is a brilliant album with no weak cuts.

What James Brooks has accomplished as Land Observations should easily make Roman Roads IV - XI a record anyone in tune with the works of such new school guitar giants as Christian Fennesz and Dustin Wong must hear now.

This is a collection of songs that sparkles in its own excellence.

Some of his best work, however, comes under the guise of his own name, as is the case with Crow's new album, He Thinks He's People.

Like its celebrated, quarter-century old predecessor, Array 1 is the culmination of the group’s furious fusion of psychedelic crunch, ambient moan and motorik vroom, and a reminder of just how brilliant Loop is and always was.

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.

Buddy & Jim in tandem is twice as nice and two of a kind.

With nearly each track including a mesmerizing hook or chorus that slowly permeates your subconscious - "Clone" and "Breathing Underwater" leap out from the pack in this regard - Synthetica is a solid album.

An 18-track adventure into the joyous heart of classic African funk as colorful as the jacket it is dressed in.

Unassuming and uncluttered, Television of Saints is intimate yet expressive, as if birthed on a breeze.

Simply put, Tracer is a lovely, melodious, engaging work of electronic music that will play just as well in the bedroom as it will on the dance floor.

Optimism hasn't always been a hallmark of Doe's endeavors, but it ought to be said that this less-dour Doe is easy to enjoy.

They exit the proverbial time warp tunnel with a sophisticated release that beckons recollections of classic rock groups while forging their own sound. Influences from Buddy Holly to Beach Boys to even The Beatles are felt on Uncle, Duke & the Chief and Born Ruffians rightfully stand in good company.