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.