These salad days have been solid days for the Salad Boys, no matter how you toss it, making them a sterling addition to their musically rich NZ heritage. Pleasurable neural sensations are guaranteed.

Smith matches oddball narratives with clever, catchy tunes; he’s a really good songwriter. If he were a little happier or a little less prone to baroque eccentricity, he’s probably have a bigger following--but he wouldn’t be Sonny Smith, and that would be a shame.

It’s as if the quartet decided to pay tribute to one of O’Malley’s chief inspirations: Earth. That sounds dull, but there’s something hypnotic about these songs.

Lovesick Blues is simply a beauty.

The words are as smart as they come, full of sudden puzzle-twists and casual apercus, the showy part of this musical enterprise. Yet the music is just as polished and fine, even if it takes a supporting role.

Some listeners might run screaming but the band's tenacity is admirable, which keeps it exciting.

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

Returns to Valley of Rain, then, is a start-to-finish delight. It’s technically a re-do of the original UK cassette version of Valley of Rain, which had 11 tunes compared to the 10-song US LP.

Hospitality's debut is a sugar-rush of an album, albeit one given acerbic snap by Papini's delivery.

The one thing missing from Dude, The Obscure, are a few more raucous, upbeat tracks, but that can easily be rectified with a new Diamond Rugs record.

The change-up [writing exclusively on the keyboard] proved to be the best thing to happen for the duo, especially for Boeckner, a guitarist by trade whose embrace of the analog synth helped open a whole new world of expression for him as a songwriter.

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.

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.

A Wasteland Companion belies its foreboding title, largely eschewing the hushed introspection that's cast a pall over previous efforts in favor of, well, a sound that's at least marginally more hopeful.

Meat and Bone stands as quite possibly the band's best album to date. The Explosion breaks everything down to its root and reconstructs it all in a perfect way; it should show a generation of cool kids that may have missed him the first time around that Jon Spencer is among garage rock's main guitar slingers.

He's a modern master.

File Provider with the best of Damien Jurado and Mark Kozelek, fellow travelers in the world of darkly compelling, unassumingly poetic acoustic ballads that are quiet but never soft.

The ferocity in their delivery and the sheer sweep of their eager entreaties create an anthemic exposition, resulting in a series of songs that make it impossible to sit still.

Among the Grey is still mired in... well... several shades of gray, so that when certain songs dissipate as a casual drift, it becomes all the more difficult to glean a more emphatic impression.

You won’t be able to resist this delightful album’s charms, either. Don’t even try. Gabba gabba hey.

Shadow of the Sun sounds like Moon Duo is still working its way out of a corner, trying to find a way to expand its limited-palette sound without leaving it behind entirely.

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 fifteen tracks that make up the record are soul shaking, dark, emotive and moving in a way that would have Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits sipping their whiskeys in agreement.

This is not a return to form, or a wild new approach, just another Steve Forbert album, which means a very good thing to have in the world.

Like a reincarnated Big Star, complete with sweet melodies that last for days and hooks sharp enough to piece flesh, the band's latest Foolish Blood (their seventh if you loop in EPs), is one of their strongest efforts to date.

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

Carolina is a gorgeous record, enticing and attractive, giving you its heart to hold and trusting you to treasure the experience.

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