Maybe it's not surprising that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is so seamlessly his personal best.

It’s a tour de force. The work’s relentless, odd-accented, propulsive rhythms are a perfect fit for this band.

It's untamed, topsy-turvy, elliptical - and one of the most exciting albums I've heard all year.

Heard in its complete, unruly, sometimes crazed glory, Miles at the Fillmore shows just how furious the evolutionary pace of his music was at this point.

Not quite of this world and not quite over the edge, these earthy, epic songs aren't meant to save us, only to supply some monumental crescendos and a wide-screen view on the way down.

The Hope Six Demolition Project might derive its title from a Housing and Urban Development program designed to “transform public housing,” but the bleak picture Harvey portrays on this stunning album gives that title a second, and more ominous, meaning.

Add in a clutch of terrific songs that perfectly balance leader Grohl's gift for pairing earworm melodies with both chunky power-pop guitars and thrashy screamers and you've got the most vital, stem-to-stern enjoyable Foo Fighters album in quite some time.

The album that resulted is Simon’s richest, most instantly appealing collection since “Graceland.”

While outstanding songs ("The Catastrophe") stand on their own, this is a song cycle that demands to be absorbed whole.

What results is an album to live with, and to live inside: engrossing and necessary.

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

A sublime, succinct overview of the composer’s sprawling catalog.

Trouble Will Find Me is the Brooklyn, N.Y., indie-rock band’s sixth and most deft album yet, a haunted and lugubrious meditation on loss and despair.

Solo is Iyer's grand statement, and with it he has fulfilled his promise.

Tomorrow’s Harvest is as strong a return to form as it is stunning an update, with the Scottish duo refining their blend of nostalgic sonics and futuristic sheen.

The Guitar Song comes grouped in two parts, a "Black Album" and a "White Album," structured, according to Johnson, as a progressive movement from a dark and sordid beginning to a reassuring and redemptive end. That structure isn't always discernable in listening. What is immediately evident, though, is that this is a phenomenal collection of country music.

The result is the best, most cogent album of her career.

Slavishly downbeat, it burrows even deeper into Del Rey’s torchy sensibility and rarely breaks its spell.

A set of 12 songs overflowing with bile and sonic invention.

This is industrial-strength Beach House with its hallmarks intact, just bigger and better. With co-producer Chris Coady, Legrand and Scally lift some of the haze that has often enveloped their music...now the band has given us this year’s first classic album.

Where In Rainbows was mellow but brisk - an album that felt on its way somewhere - these songs are eerie and insidious, creeping like shadows - and, often because of the haunting voice of Thom Yorke, the occasional chill.

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

Haunting, jarring, and oddly beautiful, Soused defies the idea of “easy listening,” but its singular vision and harnessing of the avant-garde makes it one of the year’s most compelling artistic statements.

“Western Stars” finds Springsteen in character study mode with finely detailed storytelling about broken (sometimes literally) men on a quest to find meaning, renewal, or maybe just a bit of love. At their core and stripped of their orchestral flourishes and diverse musical dynamic, most of the songs here would not be out of place on his dark, acoustic efforts, “Nebraska,” “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” or “Devils and Dust.”

Suffice to say that if you have enjoyed Griffin's repertoire of considered and emotionally precise songs -- as fans from the Dixie Chicks to Solomon Burke to Jessica Simpson have -- you will find your life enriched by "Children Running Through."

This album is not just a revival, but a complete rejuvenation for John Fogerty. It's easily his best solo record, and what makes it so special is that he embraces his swamp-rocking Creedence Clearwater Revival days.

The album bubbles over with insidious grooves, inventive samples, and lissome rhyming about things frivolous and fraught.

Ten exuberant, tender, casually elegant tracks later you realize - much to your surprise, if you're like me--that the pairing of the grizzled country star and the suave jazz master is an unmitigated, ear-tickling success.