It’s a quietly sublime work from a group of musicians who have always insisted--via their straight-up goofy music videos, Budweiser references and substitute teacher-like appearances--they’re just average suburbanites.

It’s another glorious achievement for an artist who has created so much amazing art since arriving into the world fully formed way back in 1982.

The singer has crafted an album that unfolds like a film: it’s brisk, self-contained and a little mysterious, and catchy enough to revisit again and again.

Dedicated to Lieske, English Oceans is a triumph for the Drive-By Truckers, one that capitalizes on Hood and Cooley’s strengths as songwriters and also gives them something to sing for that means more than all those colorful characters put together.

Tomorrow’s Hits, is almost unfairly possessive of a foretelling title, seeing as how vanilla some of the songs can come off sounding. The record, however, is an accurate chronology of a working band’s prolific devotion to feeding the muse.

On Close to the Glass, the results are more fractured and schizophrenic than ever.

Island Intervals marks a giant leap for Thibodeau, while not veering too far from his own trodden trail. Call it future folk, but in 10 years we’ll be calling it timeless.

With the help of producer John Hill (Phantogram, M.I.A., Wavves, Shakira) Cummings and guitarist/co-founder Joshua Hubbard (The Paddingtons, Dirty Pretty Things) weave guitar lines together into a glassy meshwork that sparkles with clarity while retaining the grit and jangle the lyrics call for.

Present Tense marks a further refinement and features a band continuing to keep itself restless and uncomfortable.

It is a beautiful record, and maybe a little over-simplified at its weakest moments, straddling that line between clean and bare.

St. Vincent, instead, entertains and provokes at every turn and is disarmingly self-assured.

It’s a document that is crucial to anyone working to understand the evolution of the UK music scene and a welcome addition to the library of any discerning pop fan.

Each note has a purpose, and every musician playing or singing is doing a magnificent job bringing it to life.

Olsen shares graciously in her music, and if you are willing, Burn a Fire for No Witness will change your world. Or, actually, it will change how you see your world.

The band’s multiple harmonies and call-and-response on “Seventeen” and ”Stop Your Crying” remind listeners that Lake Street Dive is a group effort and that its core is powerfully impressive, even if this collection of songs is wrapped up in an unnecessarily over-produced package.

On Somewhere Else, Lydia Loveless has harnessed the barnstorming energy of her Bloodshot debut and transformed it into something much more.

Voices is one of the most exciting sad albums I’ve encountered in a while. And it triumphs in that space in between.

These 12 tracks encompass a broad swath of a timeless America, like old Carter Family tunes existing in the peaks and troughs of AM radio waves rolling endlessly over the miles.

With The U.S. Albums, we get a cleansed version of the experience, many times utilizing the UK remasters.... Sure, it’s a quibble to harp over better quality, but there is an argument to be made for historical accuracy.

Ellis broadens his musical reach beyond deadly accurate classic country to often austere arrangements that reflect his small etchings of real life without aggressive genre-coding.

Innumerable intricacies layered into the background make for an encompassing wall of notes that pulls you into a unusual dance.

Because even if Acoustic at the Ryman doesn’t flow like one natural performance, the cumulative effect of the record presents Band of Horses as a talented group of musicians who are wholly capable of playing live without sonic camouflage or superfluousness.

Sure, Cheatahs unabashedly emulate their influences--and you’ll hear plenty about that in the coming months--but there’s no doubt they’re doing things their way.

REV is one of Horton Heat’s finest sets, channeling the abandon, fun and rebellion of primal rock ‘n’ roll without a cloying or overly nostalgic moment.

Kozelek’s lack of reservation here is something to be begrudgingly admired, as his willingness to make yet another album that is solely for himself and those obsessive fans who want all the gory details of his past. For the rest of the world, there’s not much here to make any real connection with.

Trouble sounds like Hospitality showing how the addition of a little more edge and disparity to their sound makes them no less inhospitable.

This second Broken Bells album is going to be the Random Access Memories of 2014. Only it’s a way better record, brimming with energy, urgency and something Daft Punk’s pop breakthrough is missing: an appropriately dirty sonic edge and--if you can collect your thoughts amidst all the booming bass and squint your eyes just right past the blinding DJ lights--some damn fine songs.

This new 35-track Legacy Edition’s ample extras--revved-up outtakes, forlorn covers, rare live cuts and, best of all, its strikingly hungry lo-fi demos--provide an intriguing peek behind the curtain at a young band flush with potential.