It can be, and often is, dizzying to unpack the poetry, but it’s probably exactly the point from a brilliant, grieving mind full of verses, desperate to release them.

It all combines to form a truly sublime album of heart-wrenching, heart-warming beauty.

Although it perhaps lacks the wasted acrobatics and distracting volume that populates today’s popscape, Give The People What They Want nevertheless reminds us that it’s both range and heart that helps compelling soul music survive both a century of cynics and existential close calls.

This solo outing from Gang Gang Dance’s Brian DeGraw strips away some of the darkness that inhabited his band’s previous records and creates a more blissful, pop-driven place to play.

Slipping into a pleasant indolence, out-of-focus piano ballads and back-masked tape loops populate this miniscule album.

With Harlem River, Morby shuffles forthright, his sanguine tone assuredly focused on the cathartic inertia of travel.

The heavy chords of the album-opening title track are a surprising jolt, yet maintain the same breezy Laurel Canyon harmonies for which the band later became known.

It’s fun, it’s derivative, it’s about 30 years too late, but it’s also rock solid.

The duo of Pete Nolan and Elisa Ambrogio are back with John Shaw (enlisted as permanent member) and holy flaming feedback does this album take off--simultaneously into deep space and murky waters.

The band members’ talents rise to the top, making Nothing Is Real a serious mark for Crystal Antlers, if it’s not their high-water.

It would all be a bit of cosmic chicanery if it weren’t for Fulvimar’s cool-ass melodies, which might seem detached on first listen, but he’s got a rock-and-roll heart that makes the songs pulsate and bleed.

Even if it’s not McCartney’s most engaging record outright, New is a breath of fresh air for what could’ve been a frustrating sigh.

Turner is clearly a sensitive, thoughtful and probably pleasant man whose musicianship is way less pretentious than is being advertised.

It’s a love odyssey, it’s psychedelic free-jazz, it’s whatever Mockasin wants it to be.

In addition to Hadreas’s wavering vocals, Le Bon also received instrumental contributions from Nick Murray (White Fence), Sweet Baboo and H. Hawkline to help create her most experimental and impressive album to date.

Aheym is a moving work but it is also challenging: The quartet saw and slide with impeccable skill with Dessner as their captain.

The Argentinian electro-folkie has kept her sense of play and lusty experimentation intact while mulling over time (“Eras”) and tides (the title track), in both English and Spanish, with a rusty (not as in unpracticed, but of the oxidation process), organic vibe brushing against its wheezy, clean sequencers.

Fade Away reminds us of how infectious Best Coast can be, and its short length ensures that we hold on. While Cosentino is still learning, listening to her music doesn’t get old.

Groundbreaking, this ain’t. But then again, are you trying to raze a barn or get your groove on? Album-specific flourishes don’t surprise.

Capped with a couple of covers of songs by San Francisco punk jokesters Pop-O-Pies, Tres Cabrones finds the three stooges keeping the ghost of Mr. Bungle alive.

The overall affect is to transport us back to that pre-9/11 decade when “alternative music” really was an apt descriptor. Thankfully, it’s OK to give in to a bit of nostalgia on occasion.

While the album title may aptly describe the plight, this is easily Deer Tick’s most complete album to date, proving that sometimes a bit of good comes from even the most dire of circumstances.

Matangi can feel a little trippy-dippy--we miss the “give war a chance” Maya. Still, this is musically monumentally freako.

For the most part Threace careens joyfully through a series of angular, happy-to-be-alive polyrhythms that are primal in their appeal.

Many songs here warrant praise, but those spontaneous wild riffs have sadly been sacrificed, along with a bit of singer James Petralli’s gnarled, impassioned bite.

Tender Madness is raw, yet alluring; it is unapologetically punk, with a better work ethic.

The torrid, languid, gritty tones of Tuscon—as a lyrical set piece as well as an active, ire-filled ambient swell--so overwhelm Gelb’s every spiritual and physical inch, it’s as if sand and silt oozes from his pores on moments.

Wenu Wenu is a jubilant seven-track song suite that showcases the genre’s rhythmic and lyrical versatility.