It’s an infectious album that blooms repeatedly throughout, unfolding in muted, endearing aural hues; simultaneously sad and celebratory, and always charming.

It takes a special kind of artist to create a sound both familiar and groundbreaking. Thundercat continues his upward trajectory in that regard here.

At times The Snake sounds like a drum solo with vocals, but they make their limited line-up sound endlessly malleable, which is no small feat.

Some of Brad Albetta's production veers toward generic pop and threatens to bury both Wainwright's distinctive voice and her lyrics. [Apr/May 2005, p.131]

Nothing on Appaloosa Bones will blow your mind or stop you in your tracks, but it’s reliably beautiful and starkly self-possessed throughout, simultaneously free of forced erudition and mass-produced pandering. It is, perhaps, not music for everyone, but fans of Isakov’s stylings will be thrilled to introduce his latest venture into their daintily-plucked campfire song repertoires.

It's a welcome surprise that such a young, albeit already well-received, talent can further the analog-digital love affair, minus excessive pretension or mimicry. [Apr/May 2005, p.141]

Most of Songs balances caustic lyrics with beautiful power-pop interludes. [Jun/Jul 2006, p.119]

Kline’s lyrics, underscored by offbeat, Phil Elverum-like vocal delivery, teeter on an exquisite line between goofiness and sharp honesty, mundanity and magic. In the end, it comes down hard on the side of magic.

Stay Gold features lush arrangements created by Nate Walcott and performed by members of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra. These layered sounds, so intricately woven to complement the sisters’ voices, create a completeness that realizes First Aid Kit’s musical maturity.

This sonic diversity isn't a new thing for Ty Segall, but the way that Goodbye Bread reveals itself shows a marked increase in thoughtfulness when compared to the San Francisco psychedelic songwriter's previous five albums.

Hypnotic and immersive, Modern Mirror pulls the listener deep into its lore while keeping it fresh and contemporary. While the record is not necessarily groundbreaking, it doesn’t need to be. It’s everything we want from Drab Majesty.

As elegant as it is addictive. [Jun/Jul 2006, p.131]

Like their music, No Age piles on meaning in incongruous layers.

Reflektor is very well an intellectual triumph, but--in a first for this band--it’s almost never an emotional one.

This performance with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis feels like a long-overdue summit meeting. These renditions of classics--including some of Willie’s own--sound completely natural.

Musically, this is not a Low album that will catch anyone by surprise.

Hell Can Wait is a dense and rewarding EP from a rapper who is refreshingly serious about his craft.

Crumb leads you deeper into the woods only to make you yearn for more, more, more. It’s easy to imagine that this might lead to some listeners to feel underwhelmed by the end of their first listen or two, but it also might be what lures listeners back for repeat spins of Jinx.

While the more unhinged moments tend to overshadow sugary, buttery pop songs like "No Destruction" (even with the delicious jab: "There's no need to be an asshole / You're not in Brooklyn anymore"), the softer moments balance out the record's tidy nine tracks.

Unfortunately, Marshall's own authenticity is too frequently obscured by the album's "authentic" arrangements. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.92]

Put in context, White Chalk serves her purposes, much as Bruce Springsteen’s "Nebraska" served his. On initial listen, the album is not a step forward, nor is it a step back, but rather a lateral move intended to leave breathing room for her next attack.

“Everybody Wants to Rule The World” and “Life On Mars” both receive willful and gorgeous deconstruction here, but the real essence of things lies in two original compositions, “Physical Cities” and “Giant,” in which the band deviously expands the possibilities of what jazz is and will become.

The Big Freeze trades the raucous guitars and bold hooks of her earlier work for subtler musical textures on songs that open into more expansive interior worlds. She relies more on her voice, which has both warmth and clarity in proportions that vary with the volume of she utilizes.

With Mr. M, the countrypolitan grits-glam continues.

If all of its parts can’t stand up to scrutiny, however, there’s conviction in the whole, enough to take Lamontagne one step deeper into the mystic.

Lanegan began speaking of this collaboration before a note had been recorded, and it plays out perfectly.

Fans of Auerbach’s previous material may miss Patrick Carney’s percussion, but Keep It Hid is something else entirely, an opportunity for Auerbach to flex all his musical muscles without confining Carney’s own strength.

A confident album from an artist who isn’t afraid to merge the past and present, Sam Beam continues to audibly demonstrate why he’s one of the most gifted songwriters of his time.

Camp Cope’s third album, Running with the Hurricane, trades that thundering punk for lighter fare. It’s brimming with just as much emotion, but the band this time focus more on personal triumphs and tribulations for inspiration, making their characteristically electrifying songs feel raw in a different way.

A ferocious solo debut. It’s jagged, chaotic and mesmerizing in a way that pulls you inevitably into the thick of it, as if the songs were exerting their own inescapable gravity.

The dawn has broken and we all know the myriad “oopsies” that led us to where we are now. Dark in Here isn’t a solution to the problem. It’s just a damn good soundtrack.

Displaying more of her raucous side, Warp and Weft is filled with tracks that easily find themselves among the best of her impressive catalog and manage to exceed expectations.

Ultimately, Sea of Noise is a powerful testament to the unflagging power of music borne from faith and conviction.

The combination of her voice, her ever-deepening talent as a songwriter and musical arrangements that are well thought out but not fussed over makes We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong a potent addition to Van Etten’s catalog. Whatever else the album title refers to, she’s been going about her music exactly right.

The album is singularly focused yet emotionally visceral, refining and sharpening the band’s rousing sprawl.

Cruise Your Illusion is a record that will likely be spinning on turntables well into the future.

The best compliment it can be given is that it doesn’t sound like the band took a decade-long hiatus: Rainer Maria’s songs feel as natural as anything else in the band’s catalog.

The songs illustrate a wise-beyond-years songwriting style, with none of the self-importance and indulgence that can come with more experience. Nothing feels trite or contrived. She’s a natural, with an impressive sense of restraint, placing points of tension and release right where they need to be.

While their symbiosis has helped make the Drive-By Truckers one of the most solid and successful indie-rock acts of the past 25 years or so, the band’s fans are the real beneficiaries. Even when the subject matter is as bleak as it can be on The Unraveling, the Truckers always have something to say that’s worth listening to.

She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She finds Chelsea Wolfe at her most creative while reviving her particular, audacious and revered brand of dark storytelling. Every piece of the record finds a way to tie into the themes at its core while still pushing Wolfe’s own sound forward in earnest.

The songs here are cohesive but never awkwardly uniform.

On their twelfth full-length studio album, Twelfth, the Old 97’s dish up another dozen cuts of jagged roots-rock that further cement them as masters of the tunefully twangy.

Nootropics, the latest record from Baltimore quintet Lower Dens, connects layered loops and trippy chants with catchy rock 'n' roll arrangements, delivering a pure punch of sonic bliss.

If Myrkur is a black metal artist, “Crown” is the sound of her pushing and pulling hard on the genre’s boundaries. The strongest stretch of Mareridt, however, is three songs on its back end. First up is “Funeral,” a swirl of blackened sludge that moves at the pace of, well, a funeral procession.

AURORA’s release packs a moody, but unexpectedly positive punch, throwing her amidst a sea of artists who do the same.

On the whole, Tetsuo and Youth is a shaky album by a newly energized Lupe Fiasco who is newly energized. This energy isn’t always wielded coherently or even interestingly, but he seems to have found comfort in his murals and dots and lines.

Musically and lyrically, each track on Fresh Blood feels like a micro-journey in itself; White never lets the listener stay sonically or emotionally in one place. And that sense of perpetual motion will likely sustain Fresh Blood’s longevity, too.

Everything combines to enrich, enliven and add texture to the band's wild aesthetic, which is unlike anything else you're going to experience this year.

I Like to Keep Myself in Pain is a passionate, yet refined record, the culmination of all the years Hogan has spent quietly honing her craft, snug in the shadows of her more well-known peers.

Citrus is the crossroads where My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth mingle. [Aug 2006, p.88]

Manic is a rich and often confounding listen, an expansive album filled to the brim with the imagined worlds Halsey’s built for herself in the real one. It’s also sincerely, indefatigably Halsey: She puts her loves and ambitions on wholly earnest display, even if it doesn’t always make for the most consistent listen.

It's on solo turns like "High Days"... that the elder statesman resounds much like... Bob Dylan recently did, stymieing a new generation with his continued craftsmanship. [Dec 2006, p.93]

Toxic City Music still leaves its mark, if only by reinforcing on listeners how sharp Caminiti’s musical mind is and how he applies it judiciously to work that heaves and menaces like grey storm clouds.

The mellower arrangements are impeccable and classy. [Apr/May 2006, p.101]

Even with a sprawling lineage that weaves The Wipers in with the output of labels like Slumberland and K, the Vivian Girls’ vintage aesthetic is employed here not as a crutch, but a compelling battle-cry for the disappearing art of rock ‘n' roll pith.

As usual, the people in Finn’s songs are vivid and compelling.

This album rocks harder than 2003's The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, and it's more sinister, too. [Mar 2007, p.67]

It’s Jones’ powerful, perfectly vibrato-laden voice that creates just the right of emotion for every break-up, hook-up, fed up and uplifting track on the barely 30-minute record.

On the heels of 2011’s critically hailed D, Corsicana Lemonade is a plain, uninspiring disappointment.

The intensity of his voice never completely gels with the bright instrumentation. [Apr/May 2005, p.138]

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.

VanGaalen stuffs these frequently breathtaking songs with death and paranoid visions of dystopias and bad dreams. [Oct/Nov 2005, p.125]

Hitchcock returns to his trademark: arpeggiated guitars swirling around hyperactive basslines with whimsical lyrics cloaked in harmony that turn dark without warning. [Oct 2006, p.76]

Lead Lover Stuart McLamb has made a tremendous leap in terms of accessibility, scope and arrangement on Libraries

Ages and Ages have undergone lineup changes and lots of peripheral personal battles and have somehow managed to internalize and later deduce how to navigate the avenues of their own lives in triumphant--and insanely memorable--song. In the process, they’ve come out with one of this year’s best all-around albums.

The discontinuity gives Jura a sense of spontaneity and pays homage to an old musical community, but also makes the album feel more like the one-off, just-for-fun, conceptual project that it is.

Ultimately, Black Friday is a constantly modulating love song to the very human experience of clinging to other people, but through her sharp writing, Kempner offers insight on how to rely on ourselves when everyone else leaves: “Nothing worth loving ever sticks around / But you.”

There's always something innervating about Mould in this punk setting, when the songs seem to propel themselves and he somehow finds a home in the maelstrom.

She doesn’t experiment much throughout her debut, but Pilbeam knows what she does best and sticks to it throughout. Her dream pop niche in the indie rock world is sure to win her loads of new fans going forward, and with her debut, she establishes herself as not only one of its rising stars, but also one of its best songwriters.

“Take It Back” aside, Dinosaur Jr. tend to get by on a fairly limited sonic palette. Yet the trio continues to find compelling ways to fuse their core musical elements into songs that resonate, on albums that almost never misfire. Sweep It Into Space is merely the latest example.

Every Acre is a profound listen, one that reveals more wisdom the more you surrender to it. McEntire has discovered painful truths in the process, without ever letting herself or our history off the hook.

It’s that refusal to paint in a single shade that makes The Take Off... such a fully formed listen from front to back.

Charli is a more-than-worthy follow-up to arguably the decade’s best pop release.

Night Thoughts is still a good album, but it lacks the vitality of its predecessor. Even if this works a bit more as a full statement, the songs on Bloodsports were better.

You’ll get more out of the album if you have a minor grasp on Welsh, the same way you’ll get more from certain arcs in Chris Onstad’s Achewood if you know a bit about Wales and Welsh culture. Any little bit helps. But Rhys is such a good songwriter that an audience hailing from anywhere on the globe can tune into Pang!’s curious frequencies and find their own meaning in his sound.

The band’s got a steady, comfortable grip on what’s make them sound great together, and Give A Glimpse of What Yer Not is, so far, perhaps the best distillation of this loud, glossy sound.

Rather than make a staid, serious statement album, the foursome keeps things loose and low-key, content to sound like postmillennial Traveling Wilburys but generally just being themselves.

This is still Phosphorescent. It’s just that the man behind the wheel is older and a little bit wiser these days. C’est La Vie is bookended by instrumental tracks. ... In between, Houck’s songs are are consistently wide-eyed and wondrous.

It is both quintessentially Sleater-Kinney and entirely unlike any record they’ve made before—which makes it a thrilling listen even during the rare moments that don’t quite gel.

Heaven is a testament to The Walkmen's triumph.

The King of Limbs demands some deep immersion for comprehension, just as a traveler from a foreign land must lose himself in the culture to understand where they are.

It's Ronson's dash of throwback style topped with the band's signature wild-child tendencies that make this album an impeccable partnership. It's so perfect of a fit, in fact, that Arabia Mountain not only emerges as the Lips' best-sounding record, but arguably their finest album to date.

Life Under the Gun is an absurdly strong debut, jumping between anchoring drum beats, jangly guitars and explosive choruses with ease. After playing straight hardcore, directing music videos and a plethora of other creative outlets, Shelton sounds firmly at home in Militarie Gun.

With this typically solid effort, Blackalicious seems torn between “saving” the game and playing it, and if the trend continues on future efforts, it seems as if assimilation will trump revolution yet again.

While it’s absolutely and unapologetically meant as an addition to the discourse on inequality and lack of diversity that’s been ruling Nashville and country music (country radio in particular) for decades now, it’s also a country classic, no matter which way you spin it. The genre’s best talents, both men and women, have gathered, and they succeeded in creating a multi-generational, monumental music event.

What's new is the sense of glory that pervades the madness. [Aug 2006, p.94]

Twins shows Segall again tapping into our musical pleasure centers with its spotless hooks, grimy guitars and unhinged sing-alongs--it's primal and timeless, and it's as Neanderthal as it is sophisticated.

The baton has been passed to these fine young women, and they are running far and away beyond their forebears.

Decidedly a pop record. [Apr/May 2005, p.150]

Already the best hip-hop release of 2007, and it ain't even close. [Mar 2007, p.68]

Stripped-down and intimate, Other People’s Songs is a gorgeous collection of punk favorites that, when paired with Kinsella’s relaxed tone and restrained strums, take on a fresh and organic feel.

Robyn Hitchcock will never unlock the mysteries of being and nothingness, but his never ending quest for existential satisfaction is supremely fulfilling in its own bracing way.

Less socially conscious and significantly less dynamic than its peers (e.g. Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, Donny Hathaway’s Everything Is Everything), Arthur Alexander doesn’t rise to their level of greatness. Nevertheless, a handful of very good performances, a half dozen excellent extra songs and above all, the strength of Alexander’s writing make this reissue an instructive reminder of the man’s terrific talent.

The Universal Want is about learning to live with desires we can never fully satisfy, accepting the highs and lows of a cyclical existence. Doves transcend time on The Universal Want, a graceful rebirth that not only justifies their reformation, but also serves as a reminder of the ability they had all along.

Invisible Hour is poetic singer/songwriter fare at its best, and this is Joe Henry’s masterpiece.

The songs are exciting, effortlessly creative and full of risk-taking, but White taps into the vein of classic rock just enough to filter all of his weird extrapolations so that they’re comprehensible for his audience.

The record is consciously straightforward and unapologetically so. And there ain’t nothing wrong with that.

No longer fumbling through novice flubs, Bright Sunny South features the most accomplished musicianship of Amidon’s career.