With both immediate appeal and density that demands long-term digestion, it’s one of those rare debuts that manifests a fully-grown, deeply engaging sound.

The magic moments found on Untouchable speak to Kelly’s swaggering confidence--as if that weren’t perhaps alluded to enough in the album’s very title. As a result, the ambitiousness of his work seems increasingly more destined to join the canon of timeless pop from which The Cairo Gang’s songs find their roots.

Rausch is something to get lost in, a long stroll free of the noise of modernity where the little details can draw near and take your breath away with their simple beauty.

Whether exposing light or dark, or some blank hue in the middle, Barnes has all but bulls-eyed his status as a brilliantly daring artist on Lousy.

With Fire on Corridor X, All the Saints seem less interested in renovating the house that noise built than burning the whole thing to the ground.

Feels Like is a debut of the same melodic stripes as Weezer’s Blue Album, and it comes as a package deal with all the emotional honesty and intensity of their Pinkerton.

This is an album that is custom-built to be experienced in one 41-minute sitting, either with a pair of headphones on marveling at every sonic swan dive or laid in the background to guide you through a task. In either setting, Vision Fortune is your ideal soundtrack.

Throughout her multi-decade-long career, Grammy-winning Lynne has combined eras, influences and genres to create a sound familiar, yet unique. Imagine continues in that tradition.

Even with booming guitars, pounding drums and soaring instrumentals, Little Oblivions feels just as intimate as Baker’s more, well, intimate albums. It’s an impossible task to make a massive capital-R Rock album sound just as home in an arena as it would in a living room, but somehow, some way, Baker has managed to crack the code.

They are beautifully and simply arranged, but it is not an entertaining album to listen to in any conventional sense, nor can it be shaken off easily. It is, however, the kind of album that makes all others seem frivolous while you’re hearing it.

For an album that’s 15 tracks to be this consistently good is a rarity, an anomaly, and an artistic triumph that should place it on every Best Of list at the end of the year.

Aside from a sterling, unobtrusive remastering job—kudos to mastering engineers Andy Pearce and Matt Wortham for opting not to artificially magnify anything about the mix—the real selling point with this new edition is the inclusion of a complete live show recorded a week after the album’s release. ... The newly brushed-up live recording—which significantly improves on the sound of the bootleg—takes the cake for the most accurate and well-rounded live document of Black Sabbath in the ‘70s.

Browne has always led a double life: sensitive singer/songwriter and committed activist. During his 40-year career, there’s been a tug of war between the romantic poet and the surging outcry. On Standing In The Breach, his first album since 2008’s Time The Conqueror, the Southern California soft rock icon seamlessly reconciles the two.

Homegrown establishes itself as its own rightful—perhaps even required—chapter in that legacy, yet another bold statement from one of the musical giants of the last half-century.

This is a marching band that’s veered way out of formation, and is making utterly original music.

Despite his quiet voice and instrumentation, his music refuses to recede into the background. It commands your attention in every conceivable way.

The proof is in a finished product where nothing feels out of place or approached half-heartedly. It’s as perfect a pop album as you’re going to get this year. Savor every last bit of it.

The authenticity that appeared in patches throughout his last record, The Sun Is Always Brighter, steers his latest.

Working with Lukas Nelson’s Promise of the Real, Young’s urgency is infused with youthful intensity.

It’s his most ambitious undertaking to date, and while it presents no obvious singles or easy entry points, he pulls it off without it feeling pretentious or ponderous.

Sprinter crackles and explodes, with a dynamic range that’d make Steve Albini blush.

Spanning 22 tracks and the great sprawl of a nation, Big Wheel and Others compiles more of these vital impressions than any of McCombs’ previous releases, documenting something so damned beautifully alive--so restless and sensual and swinging and true--the album accrues power by virtue of its breadth.

Arctic Monkeys arrive at the end of AM a lot wiser than they may have appeared from the slow opening stomp of the LP.

The result is a nearly flawless, organic LP.

The joy of The Promise: The Lost Sessions of Darkness on the Edge of Town for any serious Boss employee is the notable twinkle of notions that would later grow into classic rock staples.

Each track is an excellent pop song and a complete sound environment, the sonic equivalent of a sensually immersive art installation.

Like "The Pirate's Gospel," her cruelly unheralded 2006 debut, To Be Still is a staggering meditation on the idea of home in its many forms, and shares its predecessor's knowing heart--young, but already familiar with the tugging weights of time, family and love.

If you don’t like country music, don’t bother. But if you do have an ear for Waylon and Willie and the boys, then you’ll find plenty to love.