The word "cinematic" gets thrown around a lot in describing densely orchestrated music these days, but "Smile" was among the first albums to achieve that distinction in the rock era, conjuring movie-like images in the listener's mind with its vivid blend of instruments and sound effects (the crunch of vegetables, the tapping of nails, the riotous conversation of barnyard animals).

Much of the album has that feel, a collision of grandeur and emptiness, a meditation on the disconnect between the artist's intent and the public's perception.

Channel Orange creates a state of mind with words and sound.

["Compton" has] one of the few predictable moments on an album that otherwise brims with comedy, complexity and the many voices in Kendrick Lamar's head.

Its sweep across genres and eras is exactly the point. The time-traveling heroine of "The ArchAndroid" aims to uncover previously hidden points of harmony amid chaos. In this case, it's a big risk that brings big reward.

Hunt's refusal to be pigeonholed killed his major-label career, but without bean-counters looking over his shoulder, he sounds frisky and playful.

It makes for a raw, unsettling listen, tempered by shots of dark humor.

If an album can be both chilling and beautiful at once, Undun is it.

All We Love We Leave Behind occupies the unruly intersection of metal, punk and progressive music, weeding out the weaknesses the band perceives in each genre and saving the good stuff for its rigorously constructed songs.

Even more so than its two predecessors, The Suburbs is an Arcade Fire album designed to be heard as a whole in a specific sequence.

Gish remains among the more sensual hard-rock albums of the decade.

For all its eccentric details and occasionally fractured flow, the songs brim with ecstatic blasts of saxophone and undulating waves of rhythm that suggest Afro-pop's endless groove.

The first half of the Roots' ninth studio album, How I Got Over, sounds like a hangover, a brooding meditation on a world teetering toward anarchy.

The singer with the feathery falsetto creates a fluid, dreamscape environment that floats across eras with a connoisseur's discerning feel for the telling detail.

The legendary pianist sounds reinvigorated on "Locked Down" (Nonesuch), in part because he's not plugging into a formula, but animating it with some feisty new sidemen.

In "Turn the Season," "Ship of Fools" and "Life in Paper," the guitars suggest a torrent busting through a dam, sweeping away all in its path. It's an exhilarating, engulfing sound that might've been better served by a more concise album. But then F Up never has been much for holding itself back.

It's free of gimmicks (Hey, an R&B record without Auto-Tuned vocals!) or trendy producers (No Kanye, no Timbaland; instead, guitarist Hod David does most of the work). No wonder BLACKsummers'night walks its own confident path down the artier fringe of R&B.

In striving for more self-less version of self, Pecknold and his excellent band have made an album that embraces modesty.

Still feisty after all these years, his entanglements with love and aging [are]documented with wicked wit and an attitude that is anything but sentimental.

Strange Mercy resonates as a strangely moving album about resilience. It's as messy as life often can be, ugly and beautiful all at once.

With R.A.P. Music he's added a must-hear chapter to the hip-hop bible.

She conveys toughness, tenderness and humor with off-handed conviction.

Few artists create a tougher, colder world as convincingly.

It in many ways is the most danceable LCD album yet, a celebration of losing yourself in semi-darkness and a sea of undulating bodies between the speaker cabinets.

Together they create absorbingly terse songs, and prove that the indie-rock trend of minimalist, two-person bands still has some kick in it.

Slaughterhouse is the fourth album the ultra-prolific Ty Segall has released in the last 18 months, and it's the best of the bunch.

What makes this album so powerful and moving is the way that innocence erodes in its second half.

New Jersey trio Screaming Females plays with more ferocity and confidence then ever.