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.