Feels takes the Collective in an exciting new direction, creating the kind of record that expands on the group's less esoteric strengths while also pushing their sound forward.

I think Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is the album of this year and maybe of the next.

Well-constructed, thoughtful, emotionally provocative and cathartic.

It sounds exactly like Eluvium, only with an organ and not a guitar, and with more overt classical aspirations than before.

The Worse Things Get is powerful and assured, and in making true of its promise--to fight harder, and to love one’s self in the face of adversity--it pulls off one of the hardest feats there is.

Simply put, in 2006, My Life is a timeless evaluation of Assimilation, sometimes harmless, sometimes bleak, but consistently absorbing.

Burn Your Fire stands against records that damage and internalise by sticking to their convictions, instead of meta-analysing and working out where the lines are drawn.

The thing that stands out for me this time around is how little Tinariwen are confrontational about their experiences. Instead, it just naturally permeates their music--love songs with a thousand-yard stare.

Meloy’s ever-multiplying prog-rock ambitions are well on their way to swallowing him whole, but for now he seems to be comfortable enough as a guy writing sweet folk pop songs alongside ever-shifting song suites and polite hard rock.

At the risk of sounding redundant, this being Super Furry Animals, there just isn’t that much to dislike.

The album still holds together with a surprising cohesiveness, which is essential when crafting a debut that relies far more on the effect of its ambitious whole than any specific genre-bending tracks.

I don’t think it’s too harsh to suggest that each Iron & Wine album is not a step forward so much as a more sophisticated look at the same paces.

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.

There’s nothing knee-jerk about it; just the inexorable sounds of ideas beautiful and terrible unfurling. It’s a careful, masterful record.

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.

Modern Vampires of the City’s songs rarely feel overstuffed or overwritten, with simple kick-snare drumming, plaintive piano chords, and astoundingly well-recorded vocals at their centers.

CYHSY’s songs ring of The Bends-era songwriting, but loungier, more playful, more comfortable in their own skin.

With El Camino, the Black Keys have essentially twenty minutes of worthwhile music, at least as far as partying is concerned.

It’s subtly more adventurous, and certainly scarier, in the way that even mundane things are always scarier in dreams, filtered through a disordered mind, revealing painful truths in unexpected places.

Though wrong and stupid kinda work (in a good way!), Tha Carter III is more a balanced, self-conscious synthesis of everything viably great about Lil Wayne, hyperbolic or not, than the penultimate statement of the MC’s “legendary” status.

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.

It’s nowhere near as inviting as his previous works, even with the excellent production and introduction of strings. But give it a few weeks; it’ll grow.

UGK 4 Life leaves listeners wondering where they might go next, and even if sated with one last release still lamenting that those further steps—gargantuan or tiny, toward greatness or overreach, whichever—will necessarily be solo, uncontrasted by that inimitable, nimble, lascivious whine we’ve lost.

Thorpe and co. can still sound as if they play against rather than off one another. But Two Dancers, a huge improvement that comes only one year after their debut, is certainly the sounds of Wild Beasts becoming a band to keep tabs on.

A well-crafted doorway into Thee Oh Sees' lovely DIY funhouse, and leave your rock 'n' roll expectations at the giant lips-shaped entrance.

A gorgeous little nightmare.

With Julia Holter, with this profound and inexhaustibly gorgeous album, we can transcend our own transcendence and find the greatest bliss in the joyful renunciation of what makes us us.

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