The album, impressive in its scope and sense of adventure, is a further reinvention in Björk's already massive discography.

There's nothing Herren can't and won't do on this record.

For pure intensity and soul, Damage is now THE album in the Blues Explosion catalog, and essential listening at that.

On A Grand, everything Skinner does is in service to an infinitely satisfying and resonant whole.

Summer in Abaddon delivers an all-inclusive perfection that sets it apart from any other record this year.

Your Blues is some kind of masterpiece, the work of a truly original and iconoclastic talent.

An exceptional testament to James Murphy, both as a musician and producer.

Love Songs for Patriots picks up exactly where American Music Club last left us: producing uniformly excellent music filled with heartbreak, loneliness, and - yes - politics.

There have been releases that have excited me so far, but none that have completely recharged my faith in intelligent rock music. This is the first essential album of the year.

When layers of choir-boy vocals are added to the group's singing ("Hun Joro"), when feeble, naturalistic sounds are used in questing improvisations ("Sigur Ros"), or when acoustic instruments coalesce with a swath of electronics ("Dogun"), you'll find your jaw on the floor, too, stunned as ever.

Worthy of any superlative you can throw its way.

Corner's gutter low ends, amphetamine drum programming, and Dizzee's cockney slang-spitting place this record among rap's paradigmatic moments.

A true supergroup -- a set of songs that might be superior to either group's work separately.

All eleven songs on Gimme Fiction are immaculately crafted, concise pop gems.

A luminously lovely solo album.

Coomes' blatant, almost hilarious, display of his guitar mastery is fun to hear. His solos and fills ride front-and-center, perfect and expansive and insane.

It is every bit the equal of recent pop classics like the Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin, Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, or The Shins' Oh, Inverted World.

Although Lost and Safe would be a crowning achievement for any band, The Books show no sign of running out of beautiful musical ideas to convey.

Particularly striking is the group's ability to mix vast instrumental soundscapes with subtle electronic manipulations, creating a synthesis of analog and digital elements that is visionary in its sonic impact.

Their best album since 1996's brilliant Under the Bushes, Under the Stars.

LaValle demonstrates that he is one of post-rock's strongest artists.

These are songs about horrible times in horrible lives; hearts are rotten long before they break and the sounds they make are awful and haunting and beautiful.

No Wow is pure sex, pulsating blues-based rock and roll from start to finish.

Achieves that rare supernova of artistic vision that dares to reconcile palpable, unapologetic ambience with unpretentious soulful simplicity.

When Pause came out in 2001, that sounded like an artist at his peak. But get this: He's still at his peak, and the view is no less scintillating, crisp, and sweet, rolling with drums and shaded by clouds of horn reverb and file-sharing swish.

A record of remarkable beauty.

It's every bit as good, if not better, than their first.

This is the natural and logical epiphany of three musicians who have been getting to know one another for some time. It's also a damn good album.

Lidell has created an album of flawless, imaginative, and radical funk grooves.

Unlike Rogue Wave's timid debut, Vultures blazes forward with the kind of assured bravado not usually seen this side of U2.

There's just a little more space on this record for the songs to build and breathe. Twin Cinema is the first New Pornographers record you'll want to sit through from beginning to end.

Happy Songs is epic and subtle, technically savvy and emotionally charged and visceral all at once -- in short, it's a summary of everything that is great about Mogwai's music.

Like The Fiery Furnaces' Gallowsbird Park, or Interpol's Turn On The Bright Lights, Funeral is a debut record that simply refuses to be ignored.

Halfway through the album, it's clear that this is a glimpse into the future of pop music.

De-Loused in the Comatorium is a musical gem that captures the soul of Mars Volta in a way that soundly delivers on the hype.

Monday at the Hug & Pint is Arab Strap's best record, and should land on every critic's 2003 top 10 list.

You really don't know what you're dealing with until you sit down and take in the freewheeling beauty of one of the year's best.

All told, it's another triumph for a band whose creative peak seems to defy gravity with each passing year.

If you're an Old 97's fan you've been waiting for this. If you're not, you just might be when it's all said and done.

The 10 tracks are hands down the most irresistible pop music you'll hear this year.

Better than anything they've recorded to date, Hypermagic Mountain approximates the swelling energy of Lightning Bolt's live havoc.

A stunning bit of psychedelic folk-rock.

Malkmus' songwriting is back from blandland, the backing Jicks rock, and the production got it all on tape without screwing it up.

A near perfect record that will have The Rapture,!!!, and every other dance punk band looking over their collective shoulders.

An album that's both effortlessly confident of its sound and monumentally fearless of introducing cohesive surprises.

Although an extreme statement, it is a major stylistic step forward for the band and pays off great dividends to those so inclined to follow them into The Woods.

Slice Thrills up into its individual pieces, and Ellen Allien's third studio record is flawless.

While all of the sounds that made their debut so compelling are in place here, Broadcast has also branched out, employing a looser approach to strong structure.

The band sounds filthy and scorching.

It's an outstanding piece of work -- literate, catchy, and emotional.

Room on Fire is a passionate, 32-minute burning effigy of the seemingly insurmountable expectations fans and critics had for the record.

The smart pop hook chops displayed on So Much For the City make it clear that this is one retro-minded band that may just make it to the future.

This is Bianchi’s tour de force, emotive but clever enough to avoid seeming self-centered or pathetic, and satisfying in its candid complexity.

The group's cohesion is the cornerstone of the album; no one instrument stands out, while each contributes equally to the whole. And it's the trio's loose arrangements and subtle interplay that leave center stage to the thoughtful and provocative lyrics.

It has an appealing gentle earnestness that most pop music lost somewhere in the past few decades.

Ima Robot mines the dark recesses of metal, glam, new wave and electro, meshing its findings without a stitch to produce memorable choruses that stick in your head long after they're gone.

Soft Spot is a winningly cohesive album -- both thematically and musically -- and shows Barzelay's songwriting talent growing exponentially.

A lucid and diverse record.

Rendezvous is among the group's finest works.

A buzzing, raw jewel of a record that hints at seemingly limitless possibilities for Beckett's songwriting.

Stripped down and folky... there's no denying Oberst's presence as a major artist who continues to evolve and explore his craft with each release.

The Sunset Tree may just be The Mountain Goats's most poetic, coherent work.

Nothing's Lost is heavier, denser and in its best moments, verges on pop nirvana.

An invigorating mix of spacey dub, seventies funk, eighties big-beat electro, old school hip-hop and even early Prince, Father Divine is Ladd's most lyrically accessible and sonically enjoyable album to date.

This turn for the yee-haw is a bit mystifying but hardly a mistake; Howl is exactly the cry the BRMC needed to make.

The krang of album’s past seems more an afterthought as the band explores the natural textures of layered guitar and lumbering bass tracks.

Aside from the added guitar riffs and post-punk tones, Stars stick with a lush string section and neatly placed horns throughout, and their romantic appeal stays largely intact.

The music is as soothing as a lullaby and as challenging as a modern art exhibit.

This is the kind of album that grabs you on the first listen and doesn´t let go until you drive yourself crazy from playing it over and over again.

While there are programmed beats, ambient synths and samples aplenty to be found here, the overall vibe of this recording is one of a classic swinging session.

The album cherry-picks the best songs from Farrrar's last few releases, and presents them in often superior form.

Lookaftering sees her trading the overly twee vibe of her debut for a darker, more mysterious and mature sound.

Part of the problem with Alligator is that it echoes so many other records, but part of its satisfaction is that it sets itself apart so well.

I Sold Gold is the rare record that can poke fun at itself, the world, and its fans yet transcend simple entertainment.

The Wedding is a worthwhile gamble and a record like no other in the Oneida catalogue. Which, come to think of it, makes it a lot like every other Oneida record.

It's on the sonic departures, though, that Feels strikes its most resonant chord.

The main funk base of E's sound remains consistent but is augmented with harder rock and blues elements, showing he is able to hold onto his signature sound while simultaneously twisting a piece of rose-colored glass into it.

Their sturdy, inventive debut, Apologies to the Queen Mary, draws further, fresh blood from the indie rock stone.

Despite its slowcore pedigree, Fall Back manages to stand solidly on its own haunted ground, forging a yet-to-be-realized level of tender creativity.

Despite the fact that Prekop isn't really pushing himself on this album, it's a near perfect distillation of his art.

May very well be Dirty Three's greatest accomplishment to date.

Suspended Animation, on the whole, is a technical marvel; a kaleidoscopic foray into death metal, Looney Tunes sound effects, and an alarming balance of slapstick and pathos.

By album's end, two coming-of-age stories are complete: the boy has grown into a black sheep man, and the literate musicians have become a hell of a rock band.

Repeated listens... reveal the album's complexity and highlight how far the band has come in the four years since their last release.

But despite its flaws, or perhaps because of them, this remains organic folk-pop at its bewildering best.

The New Year here occasionally let loose with a decidedly unreserved frenzy that is a joy to hear.

Cave proves himself to be a continually fascinating and vital songwriter.

An almost uniformly excellent outing.

Quicksand/Cradlesnake establishes Califone as an ambitious band with the songwriting chops to back up its penchant for studio strangeness.

Arular is what The Coup’s second record set out to be but wasn’t: Party Music, both for the warehouse hedonists and the basement dissidents.

Boards of Canada seems to be able to release albums pre-aged, so that all the things that might have bugged you a couple years ago now sounds like another part of why it's a classic.

Sometimes evocative of Joy Division on PCP, sometimes of Arab on Radar on codeine, Ian MacKaye's production maintains the right balance of tin-can sounds with bullfrog disco stylings.

While the music is as delicious and diverse as ever, the Decemberists' meal ticket is Meloy's unmatched lyrical prowess, which borders at times on mod-Shakespearean.

A more savage, flawless and impressive sound could not have emanated from these Austrian-born, Chicago-fed composers of laptop jazz.

A debut album so confident and flawlessly developed it seems more like the work of a band hitting its mid-career creative peak.

A beguiling blend of astute social commentary and first-rate music that rocks, weeps and testifies.

While In The Reins bears the unmistakable imprint of both Calexico and Iron and Wine, these collaborators donâ??t seem to be interested in playing it all that safe.

Sounding like a lost classic from Britain's 1979 art-punk scene, the Futureheads' debut is an assured masterpiece of twitchy, nervous pop.