An instant classic. Few records contemplate such grandeur and fewer still achieve it.

Wonderful Rainbow is a brilliant record and has upped the ante tremendously for Lightning Bolt. They managed to take every single aspect that made Ride the Skies such a great record and intensify it severely, all the while showcasing incredibly tight and complex musicianship – knowing when to hold in the reins and when to set them on fire.

Summer Sun is a stunner, a subtle but substantial collection of non-sequiturs that displays the scope of Yo La Tengo’s tweaked-out serenity.

It is perhaps Oldham’s best work yet, and somewhat ironically, his most accessible as well.

With Neon Golden, the Notwist have created a daring album full of different sounds and textures. While this might sound like a textbook post-rock album, it is without a doubt a record firmly anchored by its pop sensibilities.

Occasionally, it feels like there’s a manipulation going on somewhere, a cloud of hype that obscures both the band’s actual virtues and its shortcomings.

Beulah have somehow blended the sounds their last three albums, each a significant achievement on its own, into one career-spanning epic, completely worthy of their reputation; any small ways in which their past work has seemed lacking, superficial, or scatterbrained is gone, and only the best points remain.

On Chutes, Mercer’s voice is singing right next to you, and the change works wonders.

While every Ivy League dog kennel worker with a paycheck from Blender or Revolver may write dissertations about how Outkast re-invented pop music (and if we follow that logic) then Madvillain simply destroys the boundaries.

Against all expectations, Brian Wilson has achieved what should have been impossible, and has produced what may be the year's most thrilling album.

School of the Flower easily ranks as Ben Chasny's best work thus far.

A silky, bright, singing-in-the-shower masterstroke of joy and elation.

One of the most important anthologies to come along in quite a while.

Ys is one of those rare sophomore albums that shatters exceedingly high expectations.

For the first time in his career he has made an album that is clearly not a product of “Beck”, the single-syllabled entertainer, but rather that of “Beck Hansen”, the person.

It wildly exceeds the expectations generated by Malkmus’s first solo shot.

So when I say that Yours, Mine & Ours sounds too good to be true, I'm resolved after much deliberation that this is an entirely positive thing: it is impeccably conceived, executed, and produced.

Last Exit is a truly excellent album, one of the best of 2004 so far. But what is truly exciting is the promise Last Exit holds for the future – for that of the Junior Boys themselves and the countless others it is sure to inspire.

[A] seemingly out-of-nowhere collection of quiet masterpieces.

Now, rather than trying to replay his roots and influences, he’s incorporating them as threads in the in the tapestry of his own rich, distinctly beautiful sound.

The interplay of Gibbard's shyly introspective vocals with Tamborello's dense and meticulous backdrops works surprisingly well, at times better than anything to date from Death Cab or DNTEL.

5 is Town and Country's most beautiful, flawless actualization of the goals they’ve been working towards since 1998, and paradoxically, a near-complete rethinking of them, as well.

Blacklisted rings with lost voices and strange journeys, and does a better job of balancing hope, innocence, and darkness than just about anything I’ve heard in a while.

It’s an old trick: happy music, sad words. But Quasi has elevated the strategy to an art form, and it’s nearly impossible to resist the sugar rush of the band’s sound in collision with Coomes’ black musings.

A lot of what's contained on this disc reaches for the transcendent and often attains that lofty goal. Even when it doesn't, though, it's still very much worth the listen.

An intense fifty minute ride through the minds of one of the best new bands to emerge in recent memory.

While most of Slow Riot and at least parts of Skinny Fists shine through from a distance, much of what makes this album great is its painstaking detail.

Sometimes it seems almost sleight-of-hand that any music could have so much going on and yet be so spacious.