With Twin Cinema, The New Pornographers have elevated themselves from a band I really like to a band that I can't live without.

Hospice sits squarely in this camp, a heartbreaking aural experience that hits us on a deeper level.

One of the rare cases of a best-of being an artist's definitive statement, it's not hard to explain that Fela's other albums simply couldn't have fit enough of them to qualify.

there's nothing else like this band right now and possibly ever. The volume and power of late 90s rap metal without all the stupidity and endless chugalug. Vocals that not only sing sweet melodies but support them with harmonies that push and pull against the current of noise, only sassy and canny, like a My Bloody Valentine that's being marketed to pre-teens.

Sounds are given room to breathe and interact, room to develop detailed relationships with each other, and therein lies Abandoned Language's most compelling facet.

Diehards will lob all the complaints about sequencing and omissions, but if we're being honest here, what this compilation isn't leaves no blemish on the quality of what it actually is.

The only thing the tracks have in common is the uncommon musicianship on display and the high-flying atmospherics that keep most of the album's mood adrift in the stratosphere.

One of the finest pieces of pop music to drop this decade.

Thunder, Lightning, Strike is simply amazing. It is filled with boundless, glorious noise, sewing together flamboyance, quirkiness, sturdy sampling, and a well-traveled feel that can take you anywhere you want to go.

It’s weird, (but not annoyingly so), it’s catchy (but not annoyingly so), and it’s fresh (but not annoyingly so). Face the Truth is the work of a songwriter at his finest hour.

Interesting, unique, weird and inviting.

One of the best albums of 2006.

Dr. Octagon has once again put hip-hop under the knife and performed surgery on it.

The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter finds namesake and frontman Ritter boldly claiming musical territory with a reinvented sound, turning from the meticulous arrangements and somber ruminations of his previous album to a more daring, moxie-charged approach that yields some of the freshest, most captivating songs of his career.

They have blended the sensitivity of classical and the sensibility of rock into something far greater than post-rock.

Brighter Than Creation's Dark is a tour de force that easily earns its praise and rings out as classically as any classic rock album.

Whether or not you choose to accept it, the FACT is that Scotland's own Hutchinson brothers have created a sweet and powerful collection of tunes with The Midnight Organ Fight.

The album is a classic from start to finish, and only adds to the already monumentally impressive discography the band has produced in the past decade.

I'll Sleep When You're Dead is too smart, too relevant, and too dangerous.

Every one of the eleven songs attached to Blacklight is a stunner in purely musical terms.

This is one for the ages, an album that you will covet, listen to, and live by.

Throughout Merriweather Post Pavilion the band mixes instrumentation and samples and voices in a way that seems to be an advanced or accelerated development of past triumphs.

This album's brilliance comes from the titanium-larynxed Tom Gabel's juxtaposition of the listener's jaded expectations of punk with too-direct-to-be-dishonest sentiments.

Imperial Teen have again made one of the best records of the year.

In far fewer listens than you'd expect, BiRd-BrAiNs sheds its outer shell of defensive harshness and becomes an easy, enjoyable and addictive listen.

Neon Bible may be a bold departure from the beloved Funeral, but the divergence is as inspired as the music itself.

I can't remember the last time a popular punk album sounded this simple, lean and ready to conquer anything in its path.

Liars is an ingenuous reflection of a band in total control of their wild creativity.