From a purely musical standpoint, it’s a pretty good album--even when she’s throwing this many ideas against the wall, Swift is too talented a songwriter to miss her target more than a few times per record.

The Dusk in Us is, then, a 44-minute master class in wielding extreme art toward human ends, using hardcore’s berating heft as a foundation for dirging experimentalism.

Meaning of Life has few weak links, unfolding instead as an album-long emancipation for one of our best female vocalists, released from pesky contractual obligations and channeling her delight at that newfound freedom into songs that, while signaling a new stage in her career, appear to flow directly from both heart and soul.

Aching, vulnerable, and unsparing in detail, her creations invite you to listen with your whole self and feel along.

Decisively unmodern yet not quite retro, The Queen Is Dead sounds every bit as ineffably marvelous now as it must have in 1986, and this reissue is as good an excuse as any to let it charm us all over again.

If Beck is Generation X’s answer to David Bowie, then “Colors” is his “Let’s Dance”: an intentionally lightweight, enjoyable mid-career effort with one eye on the dance floor and one on radio playlists. Whether it returns him to his former hitmaker status remains to be seen, but “Colors” definitely succeeds in putting the spring back in Beck’s step.

It’s a jittering, coruscating sucker punch of an album--and St. Vincent’s first bona fide masterpiece.

At a svelte 10 songs and 47½ minutes, Heaven Upside Down is the shortest Marilyn Manson album yet, avoiding the overstuffed redundancy of past efforts. No one expected this band to be doing some of its best work 20 years after it first shook up the zeitgeist, but here it is, continuing to evolve while toning down its more dated or cartoonish aspects.

Even now, more than four decades after being recorded, it still catches your ear as one of the most wholly original sounds in pop music.

The knock on them has always been that their albums surround great singles with skip-able filler, but this time out they’ve put together a relatively tight, cohesive record. It’s not without its flaws, but Wonderful Wonderful still might be the best Killers album yet.

Deer Tick Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 the rare double helping that doesn’t feel excessive or bloated. They’ve got the tunes; whether they’re acoustic or electric is beside the point.

Deer Tick Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 the rare double helping that doesn’t feel excessive or bloated. They’ve got the tunes; whether they’re acoustic or electric is beside the point.

There may not be any moments of dramatic catharsis to compete with “Sea of Love” or “Mr. November,” but the band’s gift for slow, sad beauties (“Nobody Else Will Be There,” “Carin at the Liquor Store”) remains undiminished. Even as they tinker with their style, The National can’t help but sound like themselves.

Full of irresistible grooves, quotable lyrics, and moments of spine-tingling beauty, American Dream is a worthy addition to the LCD Soundsystem discography.

Put some headphones on, find a good window to stare out of, and let time stretch to the horizon; A Deeper Understanding will reward your patience.

I Can Spin a Rainbow finds her bouncing ideas off of the Legendary Pink Dots’ Edward Ka-Spel, whose aggressively experimental approach to what a song can entail is so specific and unyielding that the album forces her into new modes.

Some of the band’s unique flavor still remains, as in the collaboration between Albarn, Pusha T, and Mavis Staples on “Let Me Out,” an unlikely match that wonderfully locks together. But without a unified sound or story to focus on, the album sometimes falls into the modern sinkhole of too many options presented at once.

The album is a 55-minute blitz of thumping beats and head-spinning rhymes that blur by you before you have a chance to process them.

An album rooted in the low end of the emotional spectrum is a risk, but through fastidious instrumental detailing and lyrics that evince sympathy even when they’re at their most cutting, Mann crafts a melancholic atmosphere that is worth repeated listens, whether as a means for catharsis or as a well-crafted cloud to ease the punishing brightness of a too-sunny day.

Terminology aside, it’s a sprawling, star-studded release, and an impressive achievement--one that signals a new level of ambition for Drake.

The Lips return with a moody, industrial, and hypnotic CD that’s probably what Major Tom would be listening to, sitting in his tin can.

11 Short Stories finds the band serving up pint after pint of a familiar brew--the heady blend of fist-pumping anthems, traditional Irish instrumentation, and scrappy, blue-collar grit that’s made them a household name--while using their distilled strengths to break fresh ground.

The set list for most of these shows was identical, so you get as many as 20 versions of certain songs. For all that, listening through the whole of this box set is an exhilarating experience.

That feeling of perpetual potential is apparent in even the bleakest of Bush’s years-old songs, which are shot through with clear devotion to constant development of her craft.

The Weight of These Wings matches the take-no-prisoners attitude of her lyrics with music that travels unexpected routes but often winds up touching the soul.

By realizing the beauty that can come from chaos, Sleigh Bells have made an album that shines a harsh spotlight on the always-on clamor of 21st-century life--and the end result gleams.

While the glorious noise that band is known for is largely absent from “Under the Hunter,” Ó Cíosóig’s steady hand makes even the superficially tranquil explorations of sound in these songs to seem alive with curiosity and movement.

Chesney isn’t one to rest on his laurels, and his 17th album, Cosmic Hallelujah, bears that out.