A great overall effort.

["Windows"] sort of upends the rest of Burn Your Fire, an otherwise intensely focused record that sounds like it was written and sung through clenched teeth.

A few tracks don’t feel lived in, as Glover relies too much on technique instead of feel. On songs like the Mike Will Made It-produced “Passenger,” though, she delivers vivid performances.

There’s nothing as immediately grabbing here as the irresistible “When I’m Small” from “Eyelid,” and dancefloor imperatives are in lesser supply, but it’s a deficit made up for by deceptively sanguine, slowly evolving tracks like “Bill Murray,” which borrows some of the actor’s sage knowingness for its tenor.

The tracks that are fragments lack the weird self-contained logic and momentum that carried earlier song scraps. Still, then as now, GbV chucks out some solidly driving tuneage.

The record is overlong and the arrangements are a bit too familiar. Still, these brooding tracks are compelling as they merge into a coherent whole.

Another beguiling collection that merges New Wave and dance sensibilities with winsome pop melodies.

While their arcadian folk-pop leads toward some bursts of zeal, save for the carousing “Nightingale” and the downright rocking (adjusted for twee-deflation) “I Miss Your Bones,” the balance of the ledger here is reserved for doleful hesitation.

The songs are crisp, uptempo, concise.

Sleek and sophisticated, this third full-length careens from muscular blasts of ’80s guitar rock (“In the Wake of You”) to spectral ballads (“Are You Okay?”).

Appropriately, each track on the debut from this masterful quintet of Irish and American musicians feels like a freshly flipped spade of sod--its ripe turf’s most ancient facets made new just by touching air.

It’s not always clear where these songs go, but coming back to them, you start to appreciate the understatement.

Jones and company sound at the top of their game.

It’s among her finest work in a 35-year career, assured and at ease, and one of 2014’s first great albums.

While several tunes could appear on a Sugarland album, it is a less commercial, contemporary country-sounding release and there is a sense of individuality stamped on the songs.

Despite comparisons to Bon Iver and Sufjan Stevens, Lee creates folky, orchestral, synth-pop soundscapes that are uniquely his own. Where similar music can sound overproduced, Mutual Benefit has an organic, intuitive quality, more like a hearth-side jam session with friends in a woodsy cabin.

He wonders aloud what happens to ageing punk rockers on “Rumble at the Rainbo” and waxes nostalgic on “Lariat.” “Independence Street” summons his reverence for Lou Reed with lyrics so wry and a vocal delivery so laconic that Reed himself would have approved.

In addition to producing the set with an ear for warmth, Grohl plays drums on “Let It Rain” which definitely gives the band some extra snap. And the group’s signature harmonies are lush throughout. Given the title, we look forward to a possible “Vol. 2.”

The album was 33 songs a year ago, and it’s 32 now, yet it unfurls cohesively like a film.

The production is as rich as the raps, spanning pop, underground R&B, club music, and psychedelic experimentation. The project is further heightened by Glover’s knowing irony, his gift for hooks, and his visionary theme.

The culture police might have hemorrhages listening to these uncensored tracks, but anyone with a sense of humor and an appreciation for smartly crafted mainstream R&B will appreciate the singer-songwriter’s return to his wild ways.

The result is a soulful reading that, driven by the sax of the Big Man’s nephew and exhibiting Henry’s characteristic resonant ambiance, ends up on a corner where the Boss and Van Morrison meet.

These “lost” recordings are generally better than anything the band has done since.

If you’re seeking Everlys hits like “Wake Up Little Susie” and “Bye Bye Love,” this ain’t the place, but if you want to hear a cache of lovingly crafted versions of great story songs by two simpatico friends, “Foreverly” is a fine gateway to the Everlys’ catalog. (Then go find the originals.)

Upon first impression, Milosh’s latest solo effort appears somewhat slight, but it deepens and reveals multiple layers with each listen.

The whole set is a treat.

This Welsh singer-songwriter wears her love of the Velvet Underground proudly, particularly on Mug Museum, her third album, which jingles and jangles even when the subject matter turns dark.

When Gaga drops the performance shtick on “ARTPOP,” the album really finds its footing. It throbs with joy and sex and freedom, none of which Gaga has truly embodied since her debut.

A few too many tone-shifting interludes slow down momentum, but “Free Your Mind,” “We Are Explorers,” and “In Memory Capsule” in particular are a welcoming embrace into a sea of moving bodies and blinking lights that extends as far as the eye can see.

The middle of Matangi, including the masochistic grind of “Bad Girls” and the hard dancehall influence of “Double Bubble Trouble,” contains uncommonly straightforward songs that would’ve fit easily on Rihanna’s last two albums. M.I.A. doesn’t stint on the bangers, though.

It is no mere rehash. If anything, the sequel is more intense than the original.

They aren’t bad songs, but Tin Star is more interesting when Ortega turns her lyrical glance elsewhere.

The lulling confusion of NYC uncannily enacts the unstable identity of the city itself. Ferraro paints it as aggressive, oppressive, and unknowable; then offers an audio tour of its darker depths, rats and all.

Wrapped in Red should prove a welcome gift to fans of the powerful pop star as Kelly Clarkson mixes classic carols and hymns with several originals co-written by the singer.

The follow-up to Robert Glasper’s Grammy-winning breakthrough builds on its predecessor by reframing the sound of contemporary urban music.

Samson & Delilah casts the English singer and songwriter even further afield, a mesmerizing right turn into the murky waters of throbbing R&B and ambient dance pop.

Wenu Wenu lacks touches that give a Souleyman show its full charisma--the shouts to and from the audience, the presence of poet Mahmoud Harbi, who whispers to Souleyman the next line to sing, and Souleyman’s hipster-pleasing visual identity — a wiry chain-smoker in red keffiyeh and shades. But the production by Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) is smart and clean, and the songs offer range.

It is Perry 101: heart-on-sleeve ballads, bouncy party anthems, and brawny odes to respecting yourself.

While nothing here bests the original tracks--and it is strictly for Summer diehards and remix fans--it’s heartening that artists are still drawing inspiration from a woman who loved it when the music moved people.

That’s It! is no radical departure, sonically speaking. Will these songs stand the test of time? Maybe, maybe not; but they sound pretty good right now.

The Boys still sound like nobody but themselves, and to hear them making music again is an unexpected delight.

It’s the love-struck youth of their typical songs striking out against the disappointment, and, like the album itself, coming out on top.

Pearl Jam’s not just still alive, it’s kicki

While there are a few silly love songs in the batch, some of us still haven’t had enough.

It’s hard to say what is more ferocious on Anna Calvi’s new album: her voice, her guitar, or the interplay between the two of them. Together they launch a formidable assault on One Breath.

Pusha T is at the top of his game with sharply defined autobiographical tales and defiant, self-aware verses. He often dazzles with his smooth, cold-blooded flow and connects on virtually every song.

Although he still goes on a bit long in places, with help from producer buddies like Timbaland, Timberlake--channeling his usual suspects from Michael Jackson to Prince--nails a more cohesive vibe on this follow-up.

What unifies the album is the superb production, which marries indie-rock values to street-rap style.

This is the rare debut that’s smart and disarming and instantly catchy.

On tracks like “Americans” and “Along,” this reverence for the synthetic is almost indistinguishable from his zeal for the real, and it’s a tension that gives all of R Plus Seven a unique sheen--and some potent fumes.

Desolation becomes part of the landscape, the canvas on which Drake puts his words front and center. Guests appear on occasion (Jay Z drops by on “Pound Cake/Paris Morton Music 2”), but no one draws focus quite like Drake.

The three brothers and a cousin reconnect the dots of their career and interrelationships in an impressively catchy set of 11 songs.

It’s prime Mazzy Star, the work of a band that knows what it does well. And then does it beautifully

The Diving Board succeeds where the others did not. It does so by putting John’s piano and voice front and center, offering memorable melodies, and scraping off the production glop to reveal again the musician, the vocalist, the emotional artist still alive under John’s shiny shell of professional fabulousness.

With eight songs that unfurl to 40 minutes, it’s impeccably crafted and plays off a mercurial tension between Callahan’s voice--a parched yet resonant baritone--and the lush arrangements that envelop it.

The album has a movie score feel, but this time every track is its own short film.

While a few of the experiments feel a little arid, the best songs balance menace and buoyancy, melody and groove.

He continues to deliver enough melodic flair to support his earnest reflections on life’s little epiphanies.

She’s the star of her own movie--and that’s very much what this album feels like--and she’s in charge.

So much of Feels Like Home indeed feels natural. When it doesn’t, it’s tough going, as on the obvious bids for radio play like formulaic first single “Easy” and “We Oughta Be Drinkin’.”

2 Chainz’s fixations are the same: money, women , clothes, drugs, and lots of trap beats. Still, things come off more polished.

There is nothing hesitant about this collection of songs which manage to be fraught with heated emotions while simultaneously composed of chilly, fidgety grooves.

This is the unusual album that’s beautiful and ugly, tender but tough, and that much more rewarding because of it.

Maybe too spirited at times; without the madcap intensity of Hanna’s best work, too much is simply frenzied.

All of Legend’s strengths are present: keen melodies, smooth vocal understatement, and artful arrangements.

Although it meanders in places, the mood remains high-spirited.

Arriving toward the end of summer, Another Self Portrait feels perfectly suited for the type of reflection that accompanies autumn.

It’s the work of a talented rapper who takes palpable pleasure in the possibilities of language.

This is the album for people who used to be Franz Ferdinand fans but strayed. It gives them a reason to come back.

Nobody else is doing what Holter is doing, and it’s well worth following her lead.

Ferg reaches beyond the boroughs and borrows from various regional musical and linguistic influences to create a set of songs laced with introspection, menace, and smartly conceived verses.

While they may stretch out for improvisational flights in concert, Made Up Mind is concise and compelling.

This isn’t complicated, just tasty, and performed with wit and expertise.

As debuts go, this is a marvel by a singer and songwriter who has no desire to fit snugly into one category. Her talent isn’t that easily contained.

The results in no way surpass those towering originals--how could they, when songs such as “Wichita Lineman” and “Galveston” are towering peaks on the map of popular music? These new takes do offer some worthy alternative perspectives.

She jumps around genres like a Bowie-esque chameleon, but this new effort is a staunch improvement from some of her musical wanderlust.

The songs drift between familiar buoys of Echo & the Bunnymen and Simple Minds (with producer Mark Verbos lending more electronic thump than was heard on 2011’s “By the Hedge”), but it’s a tenuous comfort, a listlessness that feels endangered.

The tension that fills The Civil Wars, giv[es] the songs a sense of weight and purpose that wasn’t apparent on their 2011 debut, “Barton Hollow.”

This elegant, elegiac disc is filled with emotionally direct, expressive songs confronting loss and mortality.

The whirring Stars Dance is a confident but not aggressively blatant move to a more grown-up pop playing field.

Bakersfield gives us two current masters paying homage, not through note-for-note reproduction, but by putting their own reverential take on the music of two country music titans.

Whether it’s literally providing oxygen like some kind of romantic scuba mask on “Breathe” or helping get the party started on Euro-disco throbbers like “Permanent Stain,” it is taking care of business.

Moving from urgent dance-pop (“Bad Idea”), to minimalist pillow talk (“Friends to Lovers”), to bassy underground undertows (“Lost and Found”), Body Music is the sound of AlunaGeorge just getting started--and they could go anywhere from here.

Befitting someone who has worked with artists as varied as Dre, Duncan Sheik, and Linkin Park offshoot Fort Minor, Don’t Look Down suits varied moods.

Drenched with joy in its own noisiness, the album is nonetheless easier listening than some of the group’s earlier work.

In other words, classic Guy Clark.

It’s a brave account of how you can fall out of love just as easily as you fell in. Like the first blush of a new romance, it is intoxicating.

Pratt’s home-recorded songs are quiet gems cradled in the rudimentary but delicate fingerpicking of her acoustic guitar.

Nothing Can Hurt Me consists of rejiggered mixes of performances released on the band’s original albums. That makes it unessential, but it somehow reveals more new angles on the power-pop standard bearers’ perfect songs than 2009’s “Keep an Eye on the Sky” box set managed over four discs.

[Producer] Stuart Price coaxes the best out of the Boys here for some of their finest dancefloor work since 1993's limited edition "Relentless."

Despite his place among metal royalty, Anselmo remains a convincing outsider, partially because he doesn’t exclude himself from his own rants.

Despite dipping into hip-hop and reggae, there are footnotes to ’70s pop throughout. That doesn’t diminish the sheer pleasure of the tunes’ playful intentions, but Hawthorne’s DJ crate-digging tendencies seem to be bleeding into his songwriting.

It’s a vastly superior record, drawing you in with its electronic, murky ambience and the impression that these songs are coming to you from a singer submerged in water.

The multi-instrumentalists expertly weave the country flavors of their fiddles, dobros, and banjos into a beguiling folk-pop-singer-songwriter sound that could appeal equally to fans of their main gig and of artists such as Indigo Girls or James Taylor.

There are 19 songs here, and at some point one feels replete, but they are concise--some in the manner of a sketch that leaves options open, others more decisive, like the sharp coastline vista once the morning fog has cleared.

On his debut for Sub Pop Records, Gibson comes off as a sound collage artist feverishly darting from one idea to the next.

This new record is a return to his trademark jazz-and-funk Afro-beat grooves but is solid throughout if you appreciate energetic big-band arrangements, a theatrical backup chorus, and Femi out front wailing from the heart and giving hope to the voiceless.

Both the pleasure and frustration of Lightning Dust’s first two albums derived from how scattershot the songs were. Brooding and despondent one moment, they would suddenly spike in tempo and mood the next. Maybe that’s why Fantasy, the third release from the Vancouver indie-rock duo of Amber Webber and Josh Wells, is so satisfying as a whole