It's a rare thing for an album to have such a strong sense of what it wants to be. Bon Iver is about flow, from one scene and arrangement and song and memory and word into the next-- each distinct but connected-- all leading to "Beth/Rest".

What makes How I Got Over work is its sense of purpose. After the jaw-clenching stress rap of their last two excellent Def Jam releases, Game Theory and Rising Down, this record operates as a slow-build mission statement on how to overcome.

If ever an album rewarded repeated listening, it's this one.

Masta Killa has delivered one the most urgent, straightforward Wu releases since the group's debut over a decade ago.

Simply put, this album sounds absolutely huge, its relentless attention to detail eclipsed only by the stunning emotional power it conveys.

However convoluted things get, you still wanna pump fist and bang head, even if you're not always sure when you should be doing so.

Lush, melancholic, gregarious, generous, both precise and a little bit unhinged--this is the most original American dance album in a long while.

Young Man in America, is just as ambitious [as her last release, Hadestown], but it's more intimate and accessible than its predecessor, focused on the textures of everyday life and the odd, stirring power of Mitchell's voice.

At the risk of overstating the case, Life Is People--the work of a 69-year-old family man, and the work of a lifetime--confirms its maker's own thesis.

Estudando o Pagode is an impressive album, musically, conceptually, and lyrically, and the cast of musicians and singers Zé assembled delivers on his singular vision.

Her pop fun is a bit knowing-- she's 26 after all. But trust the Swedes. They know what they're doing with this sort of thing.

This stuff would sound great behind just about any garage-rock hack, but it turns Finn's dirtbag chronicles into something epic and huge and molten and beautiful.

The songs, interludes, pacing and sequencing are all as they should be, helping to make Quicksand/Cradlesnakes Califone's best record.

BSP's performance art antics and throwback posturing come with a distinct set of innovations and surprises, and The Decline of British Sea Power proves that BSP have the song-power to back up their bullshit.

Their best album to date-- a bold claim to the upper echelon of rock.

This record explodes with song after song of endlessly replayable, perfect pop.

As a career overview Minimum-Maximum far surpasses The Mix. This record's "importance" in the Kraftwerk story is up for debate, but there's no question it's a hell of a lot of fun.

It's respectful of tradition, quietly ambitious, and deeply personal, a wonderfully considered album from an artist who was starting to seem a lot like a forgotten gem in the wake of mishandled promotion.

Though they certainly do their fair share of sampling, they tend to use fragments as a means of fleshing out the battling, overdriven guitars, triumphant trumpet lines, and drum assaults that seem to break through walls with the barreling force of a thousand Kool-Aid men.

As when the biggest guy in the bar has your back, Vee Vee is filled with extra spittle and bottomless bravado.

We'll never be able to parse every lyric or tease out every technical intricacy - though somebody will probably try - but that is what Halcyon Digest is all about: nostalgia not for an era, not for antiquated technology, but for a feeling of excitement, of connection, of that dumb obsession that makes life worth living no matter how horrible it gets.

Despite its obviously short shelf-life, Welcome Interstate Managers is delicious power-pop, unpretentious, loose and perfect for teenagers driving down to Ocean City for the weekend.

With its subtly joyous tones and lustrous songwriting, 'Sno Angel Like You turns out to be a labor of love with endless rewards.

This teetering restraint masks the true weirdness of Space Is Only Noise. I could understand someone finding the intensely self-contained Space a bit claustrophobic, but the album is most rewarding when you just grab a seat at the table.

I can attest that the music really does move forward similarly to my own metabolism, gradually building, holding a modest climax in the middle, and ending on a long, fluffy comedown. [Review of UK release]

Despite the cries about careerism, they rarely settled into one spot for long, and even when they were correctly perceived to have done so--about one half of The Great Escape really is a Parklife retread--they were still spreading their collective wings on album tracks and B-sides.

Plenty of good-not-great stuff, and a tad unfocused.

Bakesale add-ons will mostly be of value to those who loved Sebadoh's first few years of all-over-the-place wildness, but it's not as if their second-disc inclusion can dull the parent album's punch.