Like any Books album, The Way Out is best embraced as a headphones record, but it could also work at a party, on a morning commute, over dinner, under a squeaking bedframe--it's the poppiest ambient album I've heard in some time, surprisingly accessible given the band's track record.

It feels both classic and surprisingly new; this is Real Estate, and this is all Real Estate will ever be.

So yeah, the cheese gets awfully thick, but unlike most other groups purposely pushing the boundaries of bad taste in the past few years, Dan Bejar remembers to at least bring along some great songs.

No shocking directions or paroxysmal about-faces, but Lie Down In The Light is still some glorious stuff, expectations met and mettle once again tested.

It's true the band has made a radical decision to turn down the volume on the wall of sound they've been building up since their debut, but in doing so they've turned up something else they've been fond of for so long: measured nuance.

What will always make The Be Good Tanyas stand out, in a roots/folk genre replete with superstar solo artists, is that they’re capable of juxtaposing their own songs next to the classics of the genre and tricking listeners into playing name-that-era throughout an entire album.

Every song on this album is outstanding.

It’s not often that music truly sounds effortless.

Loving Body Talk means finding pleasure in the perfect execution of pop conventions; it means recognizing the click.

There is little else more gratifying in being a fan of music than watching a musician, with every successive album, build upon his or her potential in such an exquisite, dedicated way that everything about their music is now a magnificent improvement over what came before. Roommate's third album is all that.

Evil Urges furthers the reveal with confident and imaginative strides, now with 100% less burning kitten jokes.

All Eternals Deck, the band's first album for North Carolina superindie Merge, effectively picks up from where the apocalyptic finale of The Life of the World To Come (2009) left off.

All in all, Teenager stands as both a distillation of the band’s strengths and an impressive step forward, and perhaps more importantly, an irony-free, immensely relatable look at the heady emotional extremes of youth.

Regardless of his collaborators or how he chooses to approach his songs, The Life of the World to Come is further proof of Darnielle's ability, evident since long before he traded a boombox for a studio, to imbue his imagery, his sentiments, and his many characters with astounding weight and power.

M83’s latest, given careful attention, is a rather impressive and blissful experience.

Hissing Fauna might be Barnes’ finest work yet, an opus built entirely of sugar.

It’s his most focused album in over a decade, and ought to absolutely kill onstage.

Newman’s work here demands high praise, especially with his resume.

Find, here, Gorillaz’ third record, some sort of masterpiece within the band’s canon, and undoubtedly the best chillwave record ever recorded.

The Magic Numbers is one of the best pop albums of the year.

Although The Mysterious Production of Eggs lacks the gleeful variety of Swimming Hour, it is obvious that Bird has created his most cohesive statement to date.

Well-constructed, thoughtful, emotionally provocative and cathartic.

The imprint scores its hat-trick with Ouliposaliva: the entree of Angil and the Hiddentracks, one of the most bizarre/bankable records to air outside of its creators’ Parisian side-streets.

Laced is more than a real step-up for Psychedelic Horseshit, it's the best album of its kind I've heard this year.

Weighty and authoritative, the gospel backings help convert Gelb’s often world-weary musings into straight-talking wisdom, the kind of stuff you want to listen to on a bad day.

Lost and Safe removes much of the chaotic elements of its predecessors, substituting a more focused, and therefore cohesive approach to their cut-and-paste style.

As a pure, balls-out rock n' roll record, Half Smiles of the Decomposed is certianly on par with the likes of Isolation Drills and Universal Truths and Cycles.

Outside Closer seems to have mined an infinitesimal point on the musical map, something near the intersection of RJD2, Sigur Rós and Iron & Wine. It’s the detail and obsession with which Hood has excavated this minute point that makes the album so warmly, hopelessly riveting.

They've rapidly become the standard bearers for the funkiest of instrumental soul, and III suggests they could keep doing this thing for several albums before it even begins to approach boring. We should all be as similarly stoked.

Beautiful, thematic, meticulous, revelatory, and challenging.

House of Balloons is an album suspended in contradiction--a collection of sex jams tired of sex, or a paean to coke addled irretrievably by the same. It lacks dynamism because it has to; the Weeknd know nothing else, just that in every solid groove lurks the metronomic pulse of something waiting to die.

If "Woke On A Whaleheart" (2007) was the cuckoo clock, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle‘s Callahan’s triumphant Renaissance.

It isn’t the street rap of Ironman, it isn’t an exercise in abstract lyricism akin to Supreme Clientele, or the partially-focused and repeatedly disappointing Bulletproof Wallets. Regardless of that, the album captures exactly that Ghostface Killah is and has been over his past four records.

Even by SFA’s lofty standards, the production on Love Kraft is little short of incredible.

There's a stunning balance between fluid variations and deviations that in total feel like improvisation and the strictly confined, loping-in-circles gait of traditional hip-hop-a process which then lends itself to being described as simultaneously dynamic and hypnotic, loose and hard, jam and the jam.

While Showtime has one or two more duds than its shock-assault of a predecessor, its continued siege is of essentially comparable caliber.

This one sees him expanding outward in any number of directions, and succeeding in nearly all of them.

Yan and Hamilton manage to capture old clichés in new ways and that, filtered through their weirdness and idiosyncrasies, the sentiments seems new (or at least more original).

Los Lobos sound fresher, more invigorated, and weirder than they have in years.

Anyone expecting the nocturnal looping he usually cooks up is in for a shock-Passed Me By is a jagged little tangent designed to make that warehouse seem spookier.

Witching Hour could stand to be about two tracks shorter, but its quality comes as an unexpected, and highly welcome, surprise.

While This is Goodbye does suffer, like Last Exit, from being a little too consistent (there’s very little variation in tempo or arrangement, or theme for that matter), it's as cohesive a listening experience as almost any album I’ve heard this year.

The best songs on Music Tapes For Clouds And Tornados feature just Julian and banjo.

Vile has slyly written pop that enters one's head without leaving much of a permanent mark; instead of a distraction from one's deeper woes, it's chameleonic accompaniment.

In short, this is not only more like it--this is possibly Deerhoof’s best album, lingering nostalgia issues with Reveille aside.

On the surface, Replica's focus on the measured emergence of harmony seems to capture a bit of the modern struggle to find some sense amidst a constant bombardment of careless repetitions, to uncover a beautiful pattern in the digital noise of the everyday.

Whatever these songs lack in immediacy, they rebound with an artistry.

"Murder," "skimask," and "gangsta," all appended with the word "shit," are the terms in which Gibbs characterizes his oeuvre. Str8 Killa is all of those things. It is also breathtaking in its execution.

Mothertongue oscillates between the comfort/terror of singularities and excitement/terror of potentialities, but the possibilities this duality affords for Muhly’s future work are frankly exhilarating.

It’s like listening to a strong feeling that yearns to be vented, but instead is left inside its confining limits, echoing on itself.

Together is paced excellently at a little over 44 minutes, feels like half of that, and not a single song warrants a skip.

With Black Sheep Boy, Okkervil River have made the kind of minor classic that will inspire obsessive-compulsive love affairs with the lucky people who stumble upon it.

Once the shock of the new dissipates, what’s left is an impeccably assembled record worth indulging with the vigor that any of Lindstrom’s Christabelle-less work deserves.

Black Sands is an album so fully realized that comprehending the places he still so obviously has yet to reach is staggering.

Panic Prevention is no classic, but a wonderful testament to intuition, which boisterously, and rightfully, posits Jamie T in that rare class of pioneering artist, one who has created a piece of work to stand with any of the other notable records released so far this year.

If for no other reason than that VanGaalen is perfectly content to be an intuitive outsider to this “outsider” genre of music that he unplies, his Black Mold tastes fresh and new and, ultimately, life-giving to the likes of us.

We, The Vehicles is a fine collection of songs by a band running on all cylinders.

Comfort of Strangers isn’t only Orton’s best album to date, it’s her most daring.

It makes for a remarkable debut full-length-just don't expect to see any of it scoring some slow-motion spinning or pastel unicorns when those Pure Moods commercials make their inevitable comeback.

Outside the charismatic skill of Lidell's shapeshifting vocals and his forward-looking arrangements, the actual songs of Multiply aren't of as indelible an essence as the classics that they imitate.

It begins to sink in that this band has performed a theoretical feat of Hawking proportions: it has devised a fool-proof formula for the unformulaic.

If nothing else, Stars of the Lid have achieved Adam's goal of making music "to really relax to," abjectly defying intent listening, laying waste to the established vocabulary of music production and appreciation.

The style of songwriting is remarkably similar to that found on Teen Dream. Yet neither suffers much for it.

Celestial Lineage deserves every bit of attention it's garnered this year. I can personally put it on a shortlist of 2011 records that reinvigorated my confidence in metal in ways that I haven't felt in a long, long time.

Tigers cannot compete with an actual Case show, of course, and after Blacklisted we don't really need to be reminded of her talent, but, hell, why not?

What makes In Evening Air a great break-up album is the same thing that makes Teen Dream (2010) a great break-up album: it's not exactly that the lyrics espouse these profound, poetic truths about relationships so much as they use sonic patterns and pretty mundane language to create a sad and disorienting sense of something very familiar disappearing.

Aesop Rock’s terrifically brooding new record.

The album’s accompanying trappings do little to dull its impressiveness or the band’s command of its lineage.

Andrew Bird has thrown down his gauntlet brimming with post-structural imagery, swirling entropy, a truly floral arrangement of genre pieces and genre mixing.

Flockaveli is delivery-driven, then, in the best possible sense: it is a chorus of proficient, varied flows, avoiding the pitfalls of impotent swag music and pugnacious garishness.

What’s clear, however, is that Heartland is a huge leap for Pallett on every level. These are the most accomplished songs he has written, and he makes up for the ground he cedes--predominantly his willingness to present conventional, immediate song structures--by making everything else so uniquely his own.

Like an unsettling dream, Actor will stay with you for quite a while, but it isn’t listeners or critics that will be discomfited by the eccentric sophistication here.

Clinging to a Scheme feels more haphazard, more Revolver (1965) than Abbey Road (1969) as it goes from searing ambience (“A Token of Gratitude”) to the thicker-figured dance tracks. The album leaves you wanting more--whether this is for better or worse is one question you’ll have to answer for yourself.

LIVELOVEA$AP absolutely scorches from front-to-back; its author's ability to command a variety of sounds allows it to sound unified without drifting into monochrome territory.

They are doing the same thing they always do, which entails gorgeous and gracefully surprising variations on a deeply resonant motif.

Everything's Getting Older proving that, despite his wrinkles and back ache, Moffat's never going to shave his head/convert to Buddhism, and is still the scowling, contemptuous, but eloquent philanderer he was when he was tearing up the '90s--except now, he's a little more comfortable, and attacks using serene piano accompaniments.

It is true that many may balk at the lack of outright pop or that some of the songs are too sparse or that Steve Albini’s production is bottom-heavy, muddy, and lo-fi but there’s just too much to love on this album for any of that to get in the way.

Worth mentioning about Rook, as something of a corollary to its ostensible punch-in-the-gut dynamics, is how creatively put together it all is.

His flow is, as always, commanding, effortless, and unrelenting, making it hard to grab individual lines when each is intricately related to the next.

This album creates that space, where both that source of fear and joy are simultaneous, inevitable, and sublime.

His delivery is exhilarating, but it made me nervous, jittery. It’s kind of like Miles Davis scatting, but instead of a trumpet he’s playing the entire writing staff of The Simpsons.

The album ups the ante on everything that made Up in Flames so astounding, and adds more pop structure to the chaotic bliss-outs, resulting in what is probably his biggest achievement to date.

I believe in the Vivian Girls. In every gorgeous harmony that coats bitterness, in every ambition subjugated to truncated song structure and muffled production, in every bouncy beat beneath a baleful drawl somehow made of equally bouncy elements.

They’ve managed to produce the best American rock record of the year so far.

Prejudices be damned, this is the best hip-hop record this year, and if that doesn’t satiate your hype-riddled appetite, then you would be well-served to shut off your computer, removing yourself from the power of the web, and throw this in your car stereo.

Teenage Hate is the kind of record best heard straight through, as it's hard to pick out and pick apart particular songs.

The disc tends to coast now and then, though it’s hard to say if that’s due to chinks in the songwriting armor or the band’s straightforwardness. Still, rock for rock’s sake is not without meaning.

It’s rather difficult to describe the feelings and aural excitements wrought by Blood, Looms and Blooms, but suffice to say it’s the work of a powerfully brilliant and individual artist.

On Silent Shout, The Knife have shaken off their more tangential musical inclinations and produced an intensely cohesive album, a monochrome rainbow that has emerged from the unfocused torrential rainstorm of before.

Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach deliver a much more consistent and musically varied album with Rubber Factory, yet don’t sacrifice the guitar rock that made their previous two albums so much fun.

It may just be his best record. I’m New Here manages to pack a lifetime’s worth of artistic growth in one completely unobtrusive half-hour.

Real Gone... is Waits’ grittiest work to date and is an excellent introduction, for those unacquainted, to his hard-boiled thirty-year run.

These Arms Are Snakes have clearly created a distinct sound and are doing something only the Blood Brothers can come close to right now in terms being interesting, inventive and still rocking hard.

Some Cities is easily their best since Lost Souls, and while repeated listens won't likely reveal it better than their debut, it's often equally as hypnotizing.

We have Father, Son, Holy Ghost: honest, occasionally crushing, often stunning, and all the better for the fact that Owens seems to be incapable of being anyone but himself.

Though not perfect, it's unlikely 2005 will see many records eclipsing The Sunlandic Twins.

This is more than a diary set to music; it’s an interactive map. It is a scrapbook of love gone wrong, including ripped photos, amateur pencil sketches, tear-stained poems, and ticket stubs.

He for sure knows enough that this sound lives and dies by its honesty, and that Childish Prodigy is just that, just an honest album, the best he could have made now, the best of its kind for a long long time. More please!