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.

Listening to this stunning album will provide you with your own moment of clarity. Don’t let it slip away.

Skeleton Tree is a testament to his art, his flaying honesty and his persistence in the wake of devastating loss.

Twenty-five years in, how well these two sides of a sung coin fit together and complement each other remains remarkable.

Stuart cut a slew of tracks at their studio, handed the results to J.D. Foster for mixing duties, and wound up with one helluva platter that’s even better than The Deliverance of… and, as fans will realize upon the first spin, slots perfectly into his Green On Red oeuvre.

The bold artistic statement that is this record will have people talking about it for years to come.

With Adore Life, Savages have built on the visceral, gut-shock impact of their first album with stronger songs and more varied writing. It’s an impressive step up for an already promising band.

[An] excellent record that anyone who wants to hear the graceful way by which hip-hop should age should add to their collections right away.

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

Another Splash of Colour: New Psychedelia in Britain 1980-1995, has plenty of meat on the bone for the uninitiated as well as the seasoned psychedelic music listener.

Something so well crafted by a group of individuals that bleeds music and emotions makes me thinks/hopes this is just the beginning for The World Is A Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid To Die.

Deep, brooding and magical, The Starless Room is simply one of the finest artistic statements of 2016.

Gold Panda seems most interested in the former on his DJ-Kicks mix, keeping the dynamics understated, but the results are consistently interesting, melodic, and effective.

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.

I Abused Animal is a real shocker and definitely an album you won’t easily forget.

Sometimes older and wiser just makes you harder and meaner. I Used to Be Pretty is the grungy, gangly, glorious result of hard-won maturity.

While this faithful tribute doesn’t lessen the sadness, it does remind us that genius is timeless and that the memories of those triumphs will linger long enough to inspire us forever. The fact that these performances serve to remind us of that fact is reason enough to rejoice.

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.

Copper Blue is essential.

Americana is damn near as excellent an album as Davies has delivered since the ‘70s, a set of songs that will someday be seen as among his best.

This is a portrait of a band firing creatively on all cylinders. Their time is now. Don’t miss out.

This album is a triumph, and with it, Protomartyr has pulled off the unlikely feat of making the rock record of the year, twice in a row.

Workbook 25 is his masterpiece.

The new album's a stunning return to, and expansion from, seminal Ubu form.

There are plenty more excellent guitar janglers like The Pooh Sticks doing my favorite tune “On Tape” plus Pale Saints doing the dreamier “Colours and Shapes” and Choo Choo Train (Ric and Paul from Velvet Crush) doing the righteous “High,” all of which is one disc one. Moving right over to disc two The House of Love start things off with “The Hill.”

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.

It lacks consistency, but it works well often enough to make this a reasonably satisfying exercise in both 19th and 21st Century Americana.

It’s neither time capsule nor curio, but rather a valid projection into the collector-archival ether that should hold up for future generations.

He's a modern master.

It’s obvious that a trip up to Memphis was just what the doctor ordered, as it most certainly has injected a new, creative energy into the band. Of course, the chemistry imbued by the helping hands and producer were significant to the end product.

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.

They blast their way through what will be one of the best punk records you’ll hear this year, and their best album to date.

It is chock-a-block with everything you have ever loved about the Boards over the last 15-some-odd years.

Steven Wilson has remixed the entire original album for this “Elevated Edition,” so Tull trainspotters will no doubt thrill to the opportunity to debate, anew, the myriad sonic nuances, nooks, hooks, hobbit-holes and crannies afforded by contemporary studio technology compared to a decade and a half ago. In one sense, the Swedish show is the main draw here--it’s been bootlegged extensively, but never with sound quality this superior.

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.

Somehow It’s Great To Be Alive seems like the essential set, given that it boasts some 35 tracks spanning all phases of their collective career. It shows them in their true element--raucous, raw and unapologetic, a combination certain to appeal to diehard devotees and practically anyone else whose taste in music is generally affirmed by frequenting sweaty beer joints and any local roadhouse bar.

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.

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

Examining the duality of our motivations and emotions elevates Parquet Courts above most of their peers. Not only do they avoid the Vinyl-style embalming of their source material, but the songs transcend the romanticized hipster baggage that the city--and Brooklyn in particular--currently carries with it.

For those of you not so enamoured of the lo-fi, early ‘90s garage/punk crud the Memphis trio so brazenly and brilliantly pioneered, feel free to plug in your own “1” or “0” stars.

He’s cut a broad range of material to date, everything from Delta blues to free jazz to blazing psychedelia. All that and more surfaces at various points on Eyes On the Lines, ultimately making the album a culmination and a celebration.

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.

Patty Griffin has clearly been saving the best of her own material for a long time, making this perhaps her finest hour.

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.

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.

Non-Believers slips masterfully between vantage points and emotions.

Since that time in 1991, U2 has had other weighty tracks, sensualist personal soliloquies and dense production - but nothing better than this truly real thing.

He may not be looking to “kill Saturday night” anymore but, with Upland Stories, Fulks has composed songs that are richer and more rewarding.

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.

Northern Passages shines as yet another jewel in their crowning achievements, setting hope against hope, that it’s follow-up won’t take as long to arrive next time.

Mick Harvey deserves every accolade that will certainly be festooned upon this album for not only showing us Gainsbourg’s brilliance but his own as well.

1970-1975 You Can Make Me Dance, Sing or Anything is as inspiring as its title implies and absolutely essential to boot.

Ork Records: New York, New York opens a window to the past that you can’t go through or even really see through, but it is just wide enough to let the music in and that is a very good thing indeed.

The Prodigal Son lives up to its title, a return to his earliest archival sounds.

They’re as vital, fresh and relevant as they’ve ever been in 31 years.

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.

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.

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

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.

Man, is this ever drenched in heart and soul. The first time I heard it, several months ago, I muttered to myself, “Think this gonna be in my top 10 of 2019.” ‘deed it is, folks.

For beautiful execution of a beautiful idea for a tribute/concept album, try The Beautiful Old: Turn-of-the-Century Songs.

Ultimately American Ride resounds like a victory cry--urgent, enduring and unfailingly affecting.

Needing to prove nothing, Goat have created one of the most definitive musical statements of 2016.

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.

The label unearthed a stellar collection of songs the band recorded over two night in 1968.... The CD set capturing all four shows is where you should spend your money.

This is a dazzling album, steeped in soul and brimming with an uncommon musicality, all rhythmic urgency and compelling melodies and anthemic choruses.

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).

They represent such a cool transitional period in Davis's career, as radical a creative juxtaposition to the jazz community as Bob Dylan blowing the minds of the folkies with the crackle of a guitar amplifier.

Leonard Cohen has made the best full album of his career (song for song, sound for sound, lyrical point for point; yes, this is true) and most certainly the best album of 2012.

What Thundercat has created with The Golden Age of Apocalypse is the sonic equivalent to a power-packed issue of Wax Poetics, bringing together several disparate elements of one nation under a groove to build a challenging and soulful playground for his indelible skills on the bass.

This current incarnation of Swans swim across the salty sea of the group's three-decade strong catalog, executing a balance of grind and grace that casts a new light on old classics.

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.

This is fun music, gut music, music you can freak out to or just nod your head, depending on your mood.

Women & Work finds the Memphis band at complete ease with their mix of '70s outlaw country and plenty of punk rock attitude and swagger, making it easily the most consistently solid release in their already enviable cannon of music.

On the group's third full-length Love Will Prevail, Ragon earns his rightful place alongside the works of the underground icons he flips for profit.

While none of the songs are deeply political or poetic like the wartime bands that predated Tame Impala, they are no less poignant and often delve into a reflective sadness of longing to belong.

This follow-up is even better & louder, on par with the dizzying heights of her old band.

Once again, The War on Drugs have crafted an album of the year, built not upon flash or novelty, but a new take on traditional rock and roll that is always pushing forward.

Another exquisite solo performance entitled Rio.

Yin & Yang is an earth shattering 45 minutes of street urchin dub punk that not only reveals This Is PiL for the anti-climactic milquetoast sham that it was, but re-establishes the true soul of Public Image as it was originally intended by the vast sum of its initial parts.

Cancer4Cure is very much a window shattering Brooklyn rap record in every sense... [Meline is] busting loose some of the sharpest darts of his life.

Weird, raw and beautiful all at once.

The finished product is a beautifully fluid fusion of dub, jazz and micro-house zone-outs that continues to exemplify Oswald's two-decade strong aptitude as one of the great masters of repetitive groove theory.

On Wonder/Wander Koone transcends such dippy, blog-generated catch-phrasing, displaying a sense of genuine dominion within the art of experimental laptop pop.

Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down (Nonesuch/Perro Verde) ranks not only among his very best releases, but among the best socio-political albums ever made.

[The Cherry Thing] serves as a reminder that Neneh Cherry is a certifiable musical treasure.

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.

Co-written and produced by his missus Kathleen Brennan, Waits' songs--Bad as Me included--find their center immediately and stick like a record's skip.

This scorching set of amplified electro-acoustic spiritualism between the pair and the mighty Mats is an effective snapshot of the potential for what could have been.

A most welcome return.

There's a warmth and life in these songs that goes beyond tribute or reenactment.

This album is just a few hairs (a couple of tracks and/or segues) short of being a transcendent gem, or masterpiece.

Isidore doesn't really feel like a "side" anything. It's a main event.

Sweetheart of the Sun is something special, easily the second best album of their career.

There were many musical spirits in the room when White and his Spacebomb band went to recording the seven farmhouse-soul spirituals found on Big Inner, but what ultimately renders this record truly special is the band's ability to synthesize all these elements into something that is uniquely their own.

While it has been out in their native land since January and only recently been made available in this country through tiny New York-based What's Your Rupture?, this 12-track typhoon is exactly the kick in the ass our sorry punk community needs in the wake of Jay Reatard's untimely death.

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.

The textures of this material will transport its listener in ways that few albums of its ilk have achieved in recent memory, implementing the hallowed harmonies embedded in the Sunday mornings of Coldwell's Catholic upbringing to a new level of impassioned cohesion.