This is not just music that I believe, in the sense that it is credible, but this is music to believe in.

It’s a sophisticated work, delicately and meticulously crafted, and its effete pleasantness lends itself as well to "Late Night" performances as "New Yorker" coverage.

The real nuggets of the album, however, lie in the moments when the inherent melancholy behind Hart’s doe-eyed mysticism comes out.

It is the best Swans live record in that it distills the essential loss of agency one is meant to endure as best as two little discs can manage.

It feels self-contained, wholly its own, and this is what allows it to hold up such a pristine and vast mirror to the scenes that surround it.

Channel Orange is going to be the standard to beat for some time. And it might very well be the best R&B album of our young decade.

Om certainly absorb religious images from every corner of the Old World with a certain reckless abandon, but despite a wandering path that would find most lost in appropriative disrespect, it all seems to melt effortlessly together into the band's unique tapestry of the void.

The melodies are entrancing, made even more intriguing by their submergence within the reverb, together resulting in an album whose scope and sound are impossible to ignore.

One of his strongest and most focused albums to date.

Everything that makes Shackleton's sound a singular one is on proud display through this extensive compilation of new material.

All of its tracks are kila kila killer.

Tender Buttons feels more urgent and alive than anything Broadcast has ever recorded.

Easily the most cohesive and consistent album of his career, and one of the first great albums of 2005.

Funny, relevant, incisive, compassionate, and even profound-this is the stuff a Great album [is] made of.

Frankie's doesn't bear the weight of an obviously solo effort and at once succeeds in creating music that rivals any full-band effort from any of her peers.

It's a staid achievement-a soundtrack to unwillingly letting go of the unsustainable, both figurative and literal.

Bon Iver, Bon Iver is wrought using a dazzling pointillism. Producer Vernon has carefully studded his album with thousands of cul-de-sacs of grace and poise and lavishly attended precision.

So to those bored to tears by Sumday, take notice: though it fails to break any new ground, Just Like the Fambly Cat is as good a parting shot from these guys as we could have expected.

A quietly brilliant album.

What is clear, though, is that this is a finely drawn, funny, animated, and gumdrop authentic record, never less than fascinating in its endless and disburdening involutions.

This is one of the best albums of the year, from a verifiable talent and one of the scene’s most exciting young songwriters.

Might not be as mature as [Rejoicing] but manages to reach greater, more varied heights as a result.

This, then, is the future fashioned out of the stuffs of past and present, out of maintaining a firm aesthetic while employing a staggering array of techniques, out of reaching for the proverbial stars. Tronic hits with the intrinsic revelation and self-evident relevance of new truth.

It’s downright exciting for a band like the Thermals to emerge with something so simple and unflustered, so bereft of unnecessary baggage, a shining light of a record that delivers on its early promise.

She is what we say we want. The ArchAndroid is not my favorite album of the year so far, but it is undoubtedly the best.

Wong is at the apex of his songwriting. This is not to be missed.

It works, but it doesn't make sense, and can't be explained. It can only be heard.

Animal Collective keep getting better.