Needless to say, The Wall's Immersion Edition is a visual thing of beauty, ...The undeniable black eye on this Immersion Edition, however, is the way by which they handled the inclusion of Roger Waters' solo demos... the majority of this coveted cache of rarities is whittled down to a series of poorly edited snippets that barely last a minute or even a few seconds in some instances.

Power pop may not be as ubiquitous or even as relevant as it was in the Raspberries’ prime, but it still can be done well... just ask Mikal Cronin.

Burn Your Fire For No Witness is a mutual journey in every sense of the term, the signpost of a brave new artist right on the cusp of greatness.

An artist of ample prowess, Salim Nourallah can take pride in yet another in a line of outstanding efforts.

The well crafted moments within Our Love outshines the weaker numbers and makes the album a fun and danceable listen.

The Gloaming is different because it gets at the lovely essence of the Irish tradition without sentimentality or dumbing down--and also isn’t afraid to make it modern.

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.

The combination of hardcore punk songwriting and a pop tunesmith's sense of melody and composition gives the latest venture for this DC scene giant an appeal entirely unique to its branch on the family tree.

The problem is the album starts to wear thin about halfway in and never really gets back the strength of those first few songs.

El Camino offers, like they say in Spinal Tap, something none more black, lean mean T-Rex-ish blues party pop (because the melodies are audaciously and apologetically catchy) that spirals nearly out of control yet is reigned in (really?!?) by producer Danger Mouse at his most spare and frame making.

Segall has been slowly but surely expanding out in various directions, exploring the possibilities of sounds and approaches to his songs and songwriting craft. Freedom’s Goblin makes the dividends of his exploration that have paid off all too evident.

COIN COIN is not an album made for casual listening (that's probably the idea) nor is it entirely successful, but it has an absorbing quality that warrants further listens.

Wussy reaches for transcendence and finds it. You wish it would go on forever.

The Pearl Sessions with newly found studio outtakes, live performances and chatter rarities, the tumult of its original 1971 (three months after her passing) comes through loud and clear.

With its near-perfect balance of power and tunefulness, Carved Into Stone rumbles with tracks that practically define heavy metal.

Seven songs long, it offers the impression of one continuous tirade, despite the moments of sublime tenderness that illuminate tender courting tunes like “Heaven Is Here” and “The Enemy,” each of which bring to mind such heartfelt Harper ballads as “Commune” and “Another Day.”

Clearly, Boz is back, and at age 70, he’s never sounded so assured.

Closing entries, “Oh Dolores” and “The Walls Have Drunken Ears,” provide the album with its most emphatic impressions, leaving no bridge untethered.

It’s a wonderful soul inspiring, mournfully imbued compendium of her songs that will hopefully continue to inspire an even younger crop of musicians on into the future.

Promised Land Sound are clearly onto something special, and it’s going to be a fun ride to watch ‘em develop.

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

As incisive a crime story as ever committed to a groove, Juarez is striking and surreal, a torrid and twisted pastiche stirred from decadence and desire.

It’s a tour de force performance that never revolves around technique--instead Chesley channels her rage, sorrow and acceptance into sometimes soothing, sometimes serrated devotions of pure, unadulterated feeling.

On Big Bad Luv, his fourth solo effort, Moreland continues his knack for writing impeccably perfect lyrics (“They got silver spoons for American gods/I wanna be stoned, thrown American rods”) on some of the best heartbreak songs since John Prine.

It’s a good sign that Jones is open to anything on Super Natural, and that he can easily enhance his usual firebreathing rock & roll passion without diluting it.

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.”

Four albums in and Turnpike Troubadours show no signs of writer’s block.

With One Drop of Truth, The Wood brothers have put out a career-defining album. But they’ve been just as brilliant from the beginning; now it’s time for the rest of the world to finally realize that.

Hoop’s experimental tack often requires repeated listens, but it’s creativity and not mere quirkiness that ultimately leaves alingering afterglow.

Segall pushes things towards 11.

Japandroids sophomore effort is loaded end to end with great songwriting and the joy they've found in their influences.

Her writing, which here often expresses personal sorrow and fear about separated or lost love (“1923,” “Nothing in My Heart”), is alive to the senses and nature but doesn’t get lost in abstractions about feelings.

Given the complex menagerie of moods and movements interpolated amongst the din of this septet of songs, it seems like the man has indeed accomplished his mission.

The Odds show that Fugazi doesn't need to reunite in order to make music that still very much matters.

They direct their efforts with a determined forward thrust that spills over the melodic parameters with a celebratory display of rock ‘n’ roll revelry.

Intended as the follow-up to Griffin’s sophomore set Flaming Red, Silver Bell finds a young artist still determining her direction. Griffin’s furtive vocals dominate the album overall, but the settings shift dramatically throughout.

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.

That’s maybe what’s so remarkable about Faith in Strangers, its uneasy balance between beauty and menace, calm and roiling intensity.

With its live wet vocal production, bleaker-than-black lyrical mien and varied musical layers, the album could be one of the Minnesotan folk singer's finest ever, a richly diverse and dire epic revolving around the burning suns of love, death, truths and lies with only two weak songs in the bunch.

Blunderbuss is good, damn good, and its' few missteps unthinking.

No one could have predicted that they'd get to Attack on Memory's savage impact so quickly, or indeed, at all. No telling where they'll go from here.

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

Skying proves a maturing for the band and unveils a new realm of sonic possibilities.

It’s hardly an easy listen, but it’s a compelling one just the same. And if it’s not exactly a conclusive journey, it’s still one worth traveling all the same.

Ultimately, Wine Dark Sea is all about the mystique, making it nothing less than a fascinating ethereal excursion.

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

Big Star was more than the sum of its parts, and as evidenced here, Chilton was only just beginning to mine his.

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.

The band’s Miami mix of Folk, Rockabilly, Jazz and Blues-based Holiday music is simply divine.

A nourishing collation, Fear Fun has more rock (than the work of Fleet Foxes, or on Tillman's previous solo work), masterfully nuanced production (by Jonathan Wilson), and some exemplary compositions.

Yet aside from that one cut, Megafaun's self-titled album seamlessly integrates an easy-going tuneful-ness with a nearly mystical devotion to tone and texture.

Mountains composes the soundtrack to dreams you didn't know you had.

It's Apocalypse a-go-go for the Georgia gentlemen. Go with them.

Stokes lacks Barnett’s songwriting diversity, worldliness and clever wordplay; too many of the songs on Future Me Hates Me are interchangeable, built on quiet, jangly verses and fuzz-button sing-along choruses that lament the usual litany of “I” and “me” woes.

The result is a fantastic record, powerful in its calmness.

While the kick of recognition of the distinctive styles and contributions of each member is part of the pleasure, the album sounds like the product of a group, of a powerful force of equals. And it's all the better for it.

The combination of energies is so seamless that it’s hard to say where Oneida leaves off and Rhys Chatham begins, and yet, both artists seem to benefit from a push outside their regular territory.

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.

To drag out a well worn cliché, The Best of Quantic is the proverbial embarrassment of riches, but boy is that true. This is just a feast of plenty for anyone interested at all in smart, sophisticated, well conceived and recorded global music in the 21st century.

Twenty-five for the Rest of Our Lives, their latest, is by far their best to date.

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.

The fact this lost treasure is once again widely available in any capacity is reason to celebrate.

Woodland Echoes, his latest solo album, is cohesive and strong and despite being a little more mellow than some of his earlier offerings, would fits nicely alongside his work from the ‘80s and ‘90s.

An album flush with both vicissitudes and vitality, What a Time to be Alive resonates with its resolve.

Once again breathing new life into an old form, The Sugarman Three are back to show us all How It's Supposed To Be Done.

Opening the door of your mind’s eye to the psychedelic sludge and acid punk hooks of Slave Vows will gain you a lot of decadent pleasure, little insight and even less mercy.

Whitmore may not have the same potential to fill the nation's arenas, but his rugged determination finds him undeterred regardless.

Working with a cast of Chicago jazz, improv and experimental luminaries and newcomers, Walker casts a most enchanting spell on Primrose Green, and while it may reflect his influences more than spell out his vision, the love he bears for those influences comes through in every plucked and sung note.

Any adventurous soul with both Drake and Sun Ra back to back on his or her iPod will most certainly be able to get down with this truly unique hip-hop experience.

However carefully crafted the words or melodies may be, there’s an air of anything-can-happen to Frog Eyes songs. They are certainly always haring off in unexpected directions.

Unlike Waits of late, she works hard to not let the songs become just moody soundscapes. She doesn’t always completely achieve this, but does so enough to make this a success.

The Whole Love should make long-running Wilco-ites ecstatic since this is the best and most adventurous set of Wilco songs in nearly a decade.

With Major/Minor Thrice have stripped away unnecessary studio production, added instrumentation and pretention to offer simply a great rock album.

Despite the variety, this is a decidedly marginal set of songs, one that’s well out of sync with even the most archival Americana.

Apparently Cartwright exorcised his punk rock demons with Desperation, as Shattered is the band’s most accessible record yet.

Shook’s unerring insurgence and commitment to the cause are admirable traits, proof that edge and attitude never go out of style.

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).

Weird Little Birthday is one of those albums that sounds like nothing much the first couple times you hear it, before you begin to lock onto the war between musical ease and lyrical dislocation.

Yellow & Green documents the evolution of Baroness from great metal band to great band.

With U feels fresh, new and mysterious.

If Hit Parade doesn't get Nourallah on more folk's radar well, their radar is done busted.

Far from nailing down who he is or what he’s attempting in this second self-titled album, Ty Segall seems to be trying all different things. Good for him.

Temple Beautiful is the product you expect from this highly original and creative artist.

As always, Russell's articulate arrangements embolden the material and give them the grit it deserves.

America, is the most fully formed and thought-out of his albums, perfectly joining his concept of a free-form punk mentality with classically influenced structure and arrangement.

The album is not flawless; there are one or two songs that don’t quite hit the high bar Atkins set for herself with this outing. But songs like the drinks-in-the-air sing-along “It’s Only Chemistry” and the instant classic “Sin Song” more than make up for what you pay for this album.

Eric’s new album Construction Time & Demolition is all the title implies, an erratic set of songs that’s decidedly left of center but boasting the ebullience and energy that’s so critical to his motif.

Immunity pounds and pulses with pneumatic energy, its rhythmic tracks (“Collider” but also “Open Eye Signal”) gleaming with machine-precise hedonism.

With Grief’s Infernal Flower, Windhand goes from strength to even more strength, taking doom to the next level by refining tradition, rather than radically altering it.

The Lookout doesn’t make any waves or upset any expectations. If you want to be surprised, look elsewhere, but if you like beautifully turned melodies, set in soft, enveloping arrangements that keep every instrument clear, this is another good one.

Wide Awake will have to respectfully play 3rd place behind Sunbathing Animal and Light Up Gold, as those are the ones to beat.

Here in his first solo full-length, he sands down the edges of the jazz-man’s axe, denaturing the sound until it evokes rather than presents itself. Almost all these songs have the drifting, half-heard, hard-to-pin-down sense-memory quality of music drifting in from other rooms, long ago.

What he has done here is more than a lark. He really loves what he’s singing, and it shows. And he has a lot still to teach us about the joys of music.

With Animals reminds me of Lanegan’s work with Isobel Campbell, more acoustic, less bombastic, less ready to take you by the throat than his solo albums, but nonetheless quietly revelatory. It’s hard to tell, really, where he leaves off and Garwood steps in, but that’s because they’re so well matched and equally focused on a singular, spooky vibe.

There are new elements here, but they've been brought into a foundation so strong they cannot help but fit in on only on Yo La Tengo's terms.

While some of the beats seem recycled from Thursday or House of Balloons they still sound good and don't detract from the songs [here].

Beautiful stuff, strange and arresting.

Gentle introspection--instead of the outright melancholy he often exudes--paired with sway-worthy melodies make Parallax the most listenable Atlas Sound album to date.