With this balanced collection of solid rockers, more airy, toned-down tracks and far less self-indulgent noodling, Oasis prove they can learn from their mistakes.

Over lush, sprawling production, Longstreth meticulously crafts a starkly honest account of a fall from grace and a rise back into it that embraces growth and forgiveness.

Old Ideas feels like you're hearing Cohen performing live at a small club with a top-notch band of veteran players, and this new level of intimacy suits him perfectly.

The shoegaze genre usually plays better in a live context, yet Ghost Blonde is a relatively immersive record. You need to crank the volume to hear the vocals, but it's the guitars that provide the hooks anyway.

While a layer of fuzz covered most of that debut, here the production is sharper and highlights Dee Dee's voice and twangy guitar lines, and her vocals are more confident and evocative.

You'd be hard pressed to find an album as varied as Elvis Costello's National Ransom (his 26th, give or take).

Her pipes stand out most on Wait For A Minute: interestingly enough, it’s when she sounds softest (surrounded by cool R&B-inspired synth lines) that she’s most commanding.

It opens with the aggressive, heady breakbeats of Gosh, and segues into songs heavy on his signature steel pans and clean productions that are sometimes dull in their tidy minimalism but ultimately contribute to a wistful atmosphere that's Smith's own.

It’s relatable while remaining singular, and unsurprisingly it’s also (mostly) bangin’.

All of the more modern accents are refreshingly unobtrusive. The minimalist arrangements give each instrument room to breath so the richness of the tones and the relaxed confidence of the playing stand out in sharp relief.

Those who’ve come to associate him with theme songs to bad car commercials should check his reawakening on this late-career turnaround.

There's an underlying complexity here, but ultimately these are bare, potent rhythms created to, in global parlance, make you "werq."

Psychedelic Pill is exactly the kind of noisy, joyfully loose and oddly hypnotizing guitar album we love Crazy Horse for.

The intimate collection of low-key art pop is gloriously weird and deeply human.

While Orton has a tendency to mimic her own melodies, she explores jazz structures here in engaging, exciting ways, and the indigent heartland iconography of her lyrics is beautiful without being cloying.

Drake is increasingly astute at reframing hip-hop braggadocio about wealth and competition as a kind of existential crisis through telling--but now familiar--details about his life (“I got two mortgages $30 million in total”) and subtle uses of melody and atmosphere.

Considering Zeffira's vocal training and Badwan's ability to project, they could have made a boisterous entrance. Instead, hushed tones and sweet melodies lure you in and keep you listening.

It’s more polished than most S-K albums, but it’s still a flurry of frenetic chords, caustic drum beats and yelps and hisses from Carrie Brownstein and Tucker. Clark gave The Center Won’t Hold a very modern filter and sheen, but Sleater-Kinney still set the tone.

The xx have always been concise pop songwriters, but now they seem interested in approaching the gates of pop nirvana.

Sincerely, Future Pollution still sounds distinctly like Timber Timbre, and stands up easily against their other albums.

There’s something romantic and relatable in the simplicity, showcased best on the lively, poppy folk song in his native Spanish, Escucho Mucho.

Calling in favours from Neurosis’s Scott Kelly and Mudhoney’s Mark Arm makes Everybody Loves Sausages feel like a loose party record.

It's a remarkably controlled album that reveals layers of texture with every listen.

One of the best hip-hop records of 2013.

From start to finish, Researching The Blues satisfies. It's too bad there's no ballad, but the energy that crackles from these rockers makes it easy to forget about the lack of love songs.

They still show no interest in doing things the easy way, and we couldn't be happier about that.

This debut is mostly a collection of re-recorded singles so there aren’t any filler tracks. Excellent find, McGee.

The songwriting is outstanding: striking and smart, concise and full, and James Bagshaw sings superbly throughout.