With Tarpaper Sky, he can clearly claim one of the finest albums of a sterling 40-year career.

With her almost stream of consciousness talk-sing, some melodies on Somewhere Else are better formed than others. Like Patti Smith her songs can be as strong ultimately as the care invested in her hooks.

His vocals are delivered with such breezy casualness, you almost miss the poetry in the words. Pair that with the brilliant musicianship and it’s simply confounding that Bare and his band aren’t as big as groups like Arcade Fire and My Morning Jacket at this point.

Researching the Blues is a goddamn gem, crackling with energy, that totally celebrates the pure bliss and joy that rock 'n' roll can, and should be. In short, it's everything that you were hoping it would be.

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.

Unison chants (“Kaani”) and stray bursts of percussion (“Nouvel”) punctuate the multi-lingual songs, but the dominant timbre is a delicious, delirious clang.

The lift-off and liberation come subtly, bearing the masterful marks of men who've learned the value of compositional patience (it's no coincidence that Cave and Ellis have also forged a successful partnership as film scorers). This, ultimately, makes the emotional devastation you experience once the record has spun all the more remarkable.

He knows exactly how to build and sustain interest in a song, even the ones that don't hit you over the head with obvious hooks.

Pushin’ Against A Stone is an impressive calling card to the rest of the world that this, until now, under heralded artist is both an adept student of American folk music traditions and a modern day practitioner with perhaps preternatural talents.

This is a very enjoyable round-up of shoegaze, shoegaze influenced and vaguely-similar-to-shoegaze bands, including some material you’ll know well and some that will likely be less familiar.

The music is superb, but it’s Mead’s subtle, witty lyrics that really take center stage on this record (like all his previous solo offerings).

This isn't the sound of a once-renowned band trying to cash in on their glory days; it's the sound of a band invigorated.

If your idea of African music is Paul Simon playing out his colonial lord fantasies amid a bunch of syrupy melody and chipper rhythms, well… this note’s for you. And there are some surprises awaiting.

Devour is a completely impressive collection from start to finish.

Buy It’s Her Fault, a 12-pack, then enjoy the ride.

Berkeley To Bakersfield is the perfect shotgun rider for any road trip. With the breadth of its variety no other music passengers need be invited along for the ride.

Manipulator represents a defining statement from a musician that should enjoy a long, healthy career to come.

Why Make Sense revels in ‘80s dance, R&B, hip hop and pop throughout straddles between sheer musical delight and melancholy as the upbeat music balances earnest lyrics.

For a primer in what went right in the ‘70s prior to punk and hip-hop, you won’t find many LPs as successful at recapturing the diversity of those rich sonic playgrounds as Mangy Love.

Like its MCA spiritual predecessors, Modern Country shows what a great musician can do when he decides his skill is the least important part of the package.

Lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar is the all-encapsulating masterpiece we all knew Robert Plant the solo artist had in him the entire time.

Country Funk II is an archivist’s delight.

Sweeping and stirring in its emotional depth, Sing the Delta happily finds DeMent testifying to her beliefs with feeling.

The last song, a sparse electric guitar ballad, identifies another dualism: it's called "Get It Wrong, Get It Right," and like most of the rest of this unsettled album, it gets it right.

It may not carry quite the swagger of Sweet Apple’s first album, but The Golden Age of Glitter still proves to be shiny indeed.

Here’s an album from guys who have been making trouble for more than 20 years, and if they haven’t gotten better behaved with time, at least they’ve gotten better at it.

It’s not as bleak as it may sound, though--there is freedom and catharsis in the acceptance of those human traits, a key element in Eve.

Unseen alludes to The Handsome Family’s darker realms, but the beauty it boasts is so unerringly mesmerizing, it begs repeated hearings simply to soak it all in.

Though not as visceral as previous outings, WIXIW has its charms.

Regardless of the narrative you attribute to the running order of an album after listening to this record, I felt as if I had genuinely experienced something groundbreaking, elemental, and thoroughly thought-provoking.

The music that survived war, immigration and poverty flourishes even among the hipsters, a happy ending for a tale of struggle.

She long ago proved herself worthy of the family legacy, but Carter Girl would be a highlight of her substantial discography regardless of familial stamp.

Dire and descriptive, You Can’t Go Back If There’s Nothing To Go Back To numbing melancholia is uncommonly compelling.

Consolidation more than innovation, The Glowing Man still presents the current incarnation of Swans in its best light, as if this is the record the band has been working toward these past seven years.

Almost by accident, it seems, you can hear memory, skill and poetry converging in a lonely kitchen with a baby sleeping nearby.

Williamson’s voice is arresting, a haunted amalgam of Karen Dalton and Tanya Donnelly, but don’t it distract you from her very fine guitar work.

A sense of quiet triumph pervades: this may be the prettiest Mountain Goats album yet.

That's the modesty and humility typically missing in all those acclaimed geniuses. But it's precisely what allows Henry access to the truths that make his songs unforgettable.

Scholarly stuff this, but also an intriguing reinvention that makes this an ideal marriage of folk and finesse.

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.

Sweet Heart's melancholy tunes are still grand, their orchestras soaring and their choruses rousing, even Phil Spector-orian in the epic kink, but they're more tightly wound than on previous efforts.

Bradley and his band are such great interpreters and expanders of the soul tradition that you don’t mind the nagging feeling that you’ve heard these cuts before.

An unassuming venture, but capable and well executed one regardless.

Votolato’s new album, inexplicably titled Hospital Handshakes, offers yet another example of his considerable skills, a collection of songs that fires up an urgency that extends from first song to last.

There’s no need then to furrow well below the surface; with Waffles Triangles & Jesus, White’s reconciled mischief with melody with exceptional results.

The 14 tracks here rank among some of the best Bird's ever done.

There's a dose of the otherworldly in these evocative tracks, but laced, in all but a few cases, with recognizable bits of ordinary life.

This is one of the best albums of the year.

Both revealing and resilient, Spring and Fall could be deservedly called an album for all seasons.

They’ve been in the long-form, drone-and-drift mode for a while now. It’s nice to hear them rock out a little, too.

The overall mood, however, is thoughtful and somber: unlike You Are Not Alone, this is a contemplative late-night album rather than a celebratory Sunday morning one. It’s wonderful.

The sounds that seem most real and certain disintegrate as you listen to them, while the ones that might be an illusion drift into proximity, obscuring all else.

Though he avoids dissonance for its own sake, Bleckmann amazingly never descends into treacle, nor does he indulge in the usual nonsense syllables of typical scat singing. Instead he forges his own distinctive path on Elegy, taking the concept of the human voice as instrument to new and shimmering places.

These 12 songs run a mere 33 minutes, but cover a lot of musical and thematic territory.

In Between takes more spins to reveal its charms than is usual for the Feelies, but the effort pays off handsomely.

One of the strongest debut albums in recent memory.

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.

He just hides his eccentricities a little better this time. You have to look for them, but they’re there.

No surprises, but impeccably predictable.

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.

This Ain't Chicago does exactly what it's supposed to do: make you wish you were there.

From the heads down deliberation of Alligator, Mississippi to the teasing double entendre of Sweet Tooth, White’s music captures a particular time and place when pop and pretense weren’t necessarily intertwined.

Outside Society serves as an excellent primer for the young person looking to delve into the genius of Patti Smith for the first time as well as an essential addition to the record shelf of any seasoned fan well versed in the catalog of this high priestess of rock 'n' roll.

True to its title, Believers does indeed have the potential to make faithful advocates of all.

An exciting and distinct new spin on the dreampop revival.

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.

A musical journey through spiritual and physical emotions, Electric Word will stir and soothe the soul.

Brooding, menacing, haunting, even elegiac--we feel the Earth move across the emotional spectrum, rumbling through its soundscapes with eyes closed and amps set to stun.

The Fact Facer is a nuanced, multi-leveled listen that stands with the best things Amos--and anyone covering similarly adventurous terrain--has done.

The musicianship is so uniformly good that you forget about it and allow yourself to be swept onward by the songs.

Above the Prairie unfolds as a series of shimmering, seductive soundscapes that effectively convey the other-worldly imagery asserted in its title. Within this beguiling set of songs, a dream-like scenario with a nocturnal gaze unfolds.

This Is Glue is several orders of magnitude better than the already quite enjoyable Metalmania. Without changing the formula much, Sampson has somehow increased the impact of his ramshackle, ear-wormy songs and made them matter more.

Recorded live on the floor with his band, ChesnuTT's second album cuts the fat away for a lean, no-bullshit sweet soul program that hearkens back to the heyday of the O'Jays and Al Green.

Nothing is Wrong is a terrific follow-up for a band that delivers beautiful, powerful music straight from their own hearts and right to yours. Believe.

What you end up with on End Times Undone, is a trance-y, pop-psych, hypno-rhythmic romp that showcases a group of players that have magically meshed into a single hive-mind, behind the very talented Mr. K., at the top of his game.

You're Nothing is an album full of power--power which makes you think and react viscerally.

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.

Both rocking and reflective, Small Town Dreams is chock full of the kind of ready for prime time anthems that effectively assert both his acumen and authority.

Don’t look for fireworks here, but rather smaller, quieter revelations that take time to unveil themselves.

The disc turns more experimental as it progresses.

Surprisingly sedate for a final blow-out, Throw It to the Universe sends The Soundtrack of Our Lives down the road to retirement with beauty, class and grace.

It's an A-list of contributors for sure, but what's most impressive is how Hogan makes each offering her own.

Mudhoney’s new live set, L.i.E. (Sub Pop), collected from a 2016 tour, is bluntly, ferociously coherent, though it spans three decades, seven albums and one Roxy Music cover.

There’s nary a moment missed by the band to demonstrate that Sharon Jones is one of the greatest female vocalist currently operating.

While this is Hurray For The Riff Raff’s strongest record to date, it’s doubtful this is a peak. Keep Segarra on your radar.

GOB is heavyweight hip-hop from one of urban England's brightest new talents of microphone mastery.

For the Glory Fires, it's all about "Righteous, Ragged Songs," and Bains and the band deliver that in spades on There is a Bomb in Gilead.

It's the sound of songwriter matched to band that makes this record so deliriously good.

It's the sound of three guys blasting their way out of suburban torpor.

This record isn’t just Worthy--it’s essential.

The way the group interweaves its strengths on its take on Miles Davis’ “Nardis” shows the pure pleasure that comes from listening to experts who love their jobs doing them well.

Life Is Fine boasts some of Kelly’s best lyrics in years.

It’s a combination of old and new, letting Liddiard play to his strengths as a writer while letting a new band paint his compositions in different colors. That blend of comfort and risk makes A Laughing Death in Meatspace one of the best rock records of 2018.

Silver Age is another peak in a career full of them, and it's due to the quality of the material Mould uses to construct the suit, rather than the classic cut of the design.

The Take Off and Landing of Everything is another fine release from a band that has yet to steer wrong.

Going Down In History is pretty much what you’d expect from the genre veterans; catchy three-chord country with some distorted guitars and plenty of punk rock attitude and smart ass lyrics.

More than any previous Timber Timbre record, Hot Dreams simmers sonically with the chaos lurking just below these surfaces. Rarely does such calm feel so utterly foreboding.

Overall, This is Lone Justice: The Vaught Tapes, 1983 may just be the definitive Lone Justice recorded experience.