This is a work that blends a preoccupation with both the maudlin and mundane with the musical sensibility of the Factory Records collection.

A top-notch set chronicling one of the most important phases of Coltrane's career.

A soulful, sad, yet ultimately hopeful document largely about putting a brave face in the midst of a dissolving relationship, indulging influences from Bill Fay to Charles Wright to Steve Miller, Sky Blue Sky is the rare, mature album where said maturity is seldom compromised by banality.

Singer Theo Hutchcraft's voice is dramatic but elegant and carries each melody with a sense of purpose. His delivery is calm and composed, but he lets the words he has written speak for themselves; there's no ambiguity in these words.

never has he put together something as perfectly formed and structured as this. It’s a journey from the inside out; it slowly unravels its form until the pieces are mere threads, floating in the breeze.

Concept albums can often be difficult affairs, more geared towards scratching their creators self indulgent itch than providing listeners with an enjoyable experience. While Mount Eerie is not on the same level as The Wall or Tommy, it is a remarkable effort by a brilliantly talented band.

Clearly the product of a great deal of work and expressive of a fascinating atmosphere of weight and tension, Acrobats is one of the finest returns of the year.

The album is the natural progression and refining of everything the band has done prior to it; it encapsulates and exemplifies all at once.

Telephantasm is a potent reminder that heavy music can be brutal yet intelligent, that music that's dissonant and gnarly can achieve mainstream acceptance, and that it's been far, far too long since most alternative/indie rock has rocked this hard so well.

Loyalty is an exceptionally affecting masterpiece, at once timeless and very much of its time, highly personal in its specificity and universal in its emotional accessibility and resonance.

The final number is “All Creatures of Our God and King”, a traditional hymn sung with piano only, and it showcases Griffin’s voice at its most pure, a fitting and mesmerizing end to an album that, regardless of one’s belief, is an uplifting, moving, and exquisite listening experience.

The true appeal of 1989, in its perfect evocation of our hugest, most teenage feelings, isn’t the socio-political purity so many critics seem to begrudge Swift for failing to embody, its an aesthetic purity--the purity of feeling, the life-affirming way pop music like hers can force us to drop our pretenses of sophistication for the length of an album and feel on a visceral, unfiltered level

There is a dedication and an ardor in play that cannot be denied.

Her experimental approach to club and ambient music complements the progressive choreographic mind of McGregor. The score's staggered rhythms are easily tangled to abstract legs, and its disjointed melodies are naturally entwined to twisted arms, making Jlin's soundtrack perfectly malleable for McGregor's Autobiography.

Kourtesis pieces together all the samples, sounds, and roots she has brought us before in a tighter and more incandescent package than past EPs. Certainly, it’s a debut worth the wait.

The lyrics might not make much sense, and there's nothing groundbreaking here, but with songs as ridiculously catchy and fun as these, who cares?

It is simply a stunning accomplishment.

That level of "realness", the way that the songs ring true whether he's bragging or self-criticizing, joking or praying, is what makes The College Dropout more than worthy of all of the attention that it's getting.

You could spend weeks with COW/Chill Out, World! and still feel the thrill of discovery with each new listen.

Ultimately, Elitism for the People 1975-1978 functions as a veritable primer for not only those interested in the band, but also those looking to explore the possibilities of popular music.

Everything works on Tomorrow Is My Turn, an album that heralds the arrival of a major American artist.

It’s as difficult as black metal gets, often so difficult that the ”you” of the title seems leveled at the listener as much as at the rest of the world, but it’s also as perfect as black metal gets and the logical end goal of everything the Body and Thou have been working towards, separately and together, since they began.

It’s a confident, balanced work of mass art with only extremely minor flaws.

Icky Mettle might have a reputation for containing a one-trick pony and the band's singular best known moment in the form of "Web in Front," but there's a wealth of material to really dig into and enjoy.

Chiu and Honer’s interpretations of this space build a sense of place at the intersection of their lived experience and the unique geography of the archipelago, and it’s this sense that they share with us on this new release.

It reveals Lekman as a maturing songwriter and human being who’s able to roll with the life’s uncertainty and continue to make beautiful art about it.

This is music for uncontrollable giggle fits, playing fetch with over excited border collies, and sledding down steep, snowy hills with your kids; this is music that makes you feel intensely alive.

There simply isn't another singer working in pop music now that holds a candle to Jones.

The truly impressive thing about Piñata is that when the album is at its top level, it’s nearly untouchable.

With a mix of analogue synths, warped acoustic instruments and an unmatched passion for effects pedals, West has produced easily one of the most vivid and soul-stirring electronic albums of the year.

Heaven and Earth is a lengthy album, and one that refuses to shortchange the listener. There is a wealth of ideas on the table here. It takes a musician, composer, and arranger of Washington's caliber to take these ideas and form them into a brilliant collection of performances.

It is a masterful effort, taking the most memorable elements of their past work and alchemically changing it to something completely new but no less great for the difference.

Blonde is the sound of an artist urging his listener to be patient, and in this age of instant gratification, it is a refreshing, rewarding triumph.

If Black City represents the dark night of Dear's soul, Beams is the neon-lit dawn of an accomplished artist at the height of his creative powers.

Both "Meek Warrior" and "Love Is Simple" are strong albums, but there’s a sense of unfulfillment in them--Akron/Family seems to be testing itself in new areas rather than completing a task. On new album Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free, though, that changes, as the band delivers a masterpiece.

In Our Heads could be the best thing we've heard from them.

It's an album that gets better with every play, with every peeling back of its more obvious, glossy layers. It especially repays headphone use, where each stutter, bend, warp, and pitchshift can be discovered and new subtleties can become apparent.

This box set will hold up well as time continues to tick forward, with plenty of fresh meat on its comfortable old bones.

This album is undeniable proof that creating something with resounding beauty is the ultimate defiance of death.

There are outstanding performances throughout Sundial. Rapper billy woods in “Gospel?” spews magma, and Chicago legend Common drops a verse on the song “Oblivion” that could have easily fit into his great album Be from 2005. The singer Ayoni adds her voice on two tracks to make Sundial feel like a momentous occasion.

It's heartfelt. It's dark. It's intricate but immediate, rocking but lush. It does all those things at once, and it does them better than most artists could hope to do any one of them.

It would be easy to think this might be the final great outing from such an important reggae music figure, but part of Rebirth's lore is that it sounds so fresh.

The disregard for conventional structure and instrumentation, combined with the adroit, sincere lyrics, makes Ants From Up There one of the richest and most emotionally-honest albums released by a young British band for quite some time.

Consistently excellent, Okkervil River's Black Sheep Boy is a record that stuns on first listen, then manages the elusive -- it sinks deep into your soul.

Skillful, rootsy, and laying bare the group's strong interpretations of environs and emotions, this is an album that lends itself well to sensitive audiences of all sorts and is well worth listening to, feeling, and loving.

T.I. is the whole package: gritty, smooth, smart, dangerous, introspective, and wise.

Electricity thrills from start to finish, yet another well-crafted work from a band that continually shows itself to be unbound by categories of space, time, and genre. This is past, present, and future funk all rolled into one and ready for a fantastic time.

So much of Homo Anxietatem is about using guitar-driven music to excavate deep feelings of hurt, fear, and anxiety and to process those feelings through the music. Those who listened to Shamir’s previous record won’t be surprised and just how fantastic Homo Anxietatem is.

The thing is, it’s brand new music. But it sounds like it wasn’t recorded within 100 miles of a laptop.

All That Must Be is that rare electronic album that matches musical accomplishment with an emotional pull. There are real depth and soul to the record with the head and heart working in perfect harmony. Musically assured, it sees FitzGerald draw on his various influences to create something reflective, distinctive and downright stunning.

Eye Contact solidifies the group's heavyweight majesty. Gang Gang Dance injects pop music with new life, leading the quest for newer sounds from ageless sources and mixing it all together in a critically irresistible way.

As the 12 songs pass by in 31 minutes, the overall effect is nothing short of exhilarating. While their musical antecedents are clearly apparent, at no stage does Nouns feel in any way derivative or familiar.

With their third album, the War on Drugs continue to recreate classic rock in their own image and in doing so they created a classic album of their own.

This is an album of controlled kinetics and clockwork alignments, of bonding repetition and mindful invention; where words poke and play, bubble and pop, echo and disturbingly hang.

Chesnutt has rarely sounded better... expressing a full array of vivid and contrasting emotional states.

Pain remains a fertile ground for compelling art, but the brilliance of Rat Saw God lies in how the band also captures the resistant luminance within that pain. The characters in these songs suffer, but Hartzman draws them from places of empathy and honesty.

Imperfect and ambitious, sometimes startling and always smart.

These are deeply personal songs that chart the different kinds of emotions he’s working through, whether it’s to do with the affairs of the heart or the turmoil of the outside world; it’s also a wildly ambitious record that takes its musical cutes from Black American popular music. The sum of all these great parts makes for a thrilling listen.

Married improves even on Wainwright’s excellent 2005 debut. It’s a more subtle, diverse, self-assured affair.

Combine the above average writing with the production skills of longtime Cleaves collaborator Gurf Morlix (who also contributes his legendary guitar on Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away) and you’ve got yourself a frontrunner for Americana album of the year.

After Robots exudes an energy and a lack of self-consciousness that is exciting and refreshing.

Instrumentals balances simplicity and depth, abrasiveness and beauty, with rare skill, reminding anyone who does not already know that Flying Saucer Attack are masters of this type of music.

Sung Tongs is an inch more sublime than anything they've done previously, with more phenomenal use of their manic choir of Motown vocals, less scattered, clique-ish dissonance, and more sideshow bubblegum-pop freaking out on god-knows-what powerful substance.

RTJ2 is filled with such thoughtful, penetrating moments, tightly wound up in 11 bona fide bangers.

Pom Poko is a band that refuses to make predictable choices. Their music contains no clean lines or pat conclusions. Birthday is an audacious debut album that is as messy and comforting as an unmade bed.

The Age of Immunology is the rare album that arrives full of what might topple over under the weight of its (potentially pretentious) baggage, but which instead delivers a new world of experience beyond any category, musical or otherwise. Music like this may not change your life, but it would be most surprising if it did not seriously alter your perspective.

One of the year's best pop albums.

Supreme musicianship cuts through a production job that is neither minimal nor ornate.

Her most spiritually and musically fulfilling work yet. ... Eno Axis is that rare album that feels timeless. One could imagine these songs emanating from the grooves of newly-discovered dusty 78s with McEntire's hypnotic, ghostly vocals cutting through the surface noise.

While you'll wait in vain for Nelson's own songs, which have gotten increasingly rare as the years go by, this is easily the new millennium's most effective showcase of the gifts that Nelson's reputation rests upon.

It is the best of what Ashcroft does best: thoughtful incantations teeming with emotion, clarity, and vision.

Hills End is so good that in 20 years the discussion about the hot new indie guitar band might well focus on how much they look and sound like DMA’s. It’s an outstanding debut.

The outward textures here are not raw rock but processed pop, more maximalist than anything the band has put forth since. Still, the bones are the same; this is as sincere a face of the group as on any of their international commercial releases, no matter how surprising its sounds. Tinariwen, it turns out, fares well in a number of different aesthetic frameworks, and Kel Tinariwen serves as a testament to their artistic strength.

It’s dirty as hell, and you’re gonna laugh your ass off.

The Cherry Thing is a marvellous album.

As a singer, Morrissey has never sounded better than this.

70 minutes to savor, to let the words run through you, to let the melodies wrap around you.

On the Water sounds as fresh and exciting as anything you're likely to hear all year.

Pure, unadulterated aural pleasure.

The Dirty South is an absolute gem, and The Complete Dirty South is an upgrade over the original version. However, it may be that this edition only appeals to Drive-By Truckers’ hardcore fans. The physical two-CD set is wonderful and the best available version of the record.

Each passage on Sound and Color feels organic, like it pushed its way out of southern soil or floated into someone’s mind on a back porch breeze.

Black Tambourine is indispensable listening for anyone with even a passing interest in indie pop's past or current renaissance and a wholly welcome reminder of the unwavering greatness of one of the genre's truly seminal bands.

Cee-Lo is one of those rare artists who may indeed embody the fullest range of the black aesthetic (Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Thomas Dorsey, Meshell Ndegeocello, and Prince, are a few of the musical performers who come to mind).

The effect is one of musical theater.

Donuts is hip-hop, then, like “Howl” is poetry or Guernica is painting: the best aspects of a particular style, developed to their fullest and executed masterfully.

It's a fitting conclusion to a near perfect album that finds an artist expanding his musical palate without sacrificing an ounce of himself in the process.

Certainly the most absorbing rock album of 2002, if not the best.

The album's electrifying, hypnotic songs are hard to shake.

It's an accessible album, but one containing challenging contrasts. In the end, what's most impressive is how Arulpragasam powerfully weaves a consistent theme of rootlessness throughout the record, drawing on her experiences in both the third world and modern London, from civil war to Western urban culture, and her own, highly unique, bastardized form of pop music is the extraordinary end result.

The real wonder and power of Dead Magic, taken as a whole, is not how von Hausswolff taps into themes associated with darkness and decay, nor even that she pauses over them for long periods--and certainly in this vein a partial musical lineage may be traced back to experimental rock and post-rock like Swans and to doom metal like Skepticism and Earth--but it is that she is equally adept at finding beauty where beauty is rare.

It's a gigantic leap forward for this "outsider" artist who already seemed to be several steps ahead of the norm. Granted, the primitive folk sound for which he's been known over the past few years has never really come close to any kind of mainstream, cookie-cutter sound, but here he sounds more like he's blazing his own trail that any other time before.

This one should give the uninitiated a fair idea of the delights on offer.

'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! sells itself.

By tapping into the limitless well of America’s musical traditions, Trucks has brought forth one of 2009’s first true gems and his best effort to date.

Taken as a whole, Old Ramon is a brilliant mopey stroll through San Francisco's slate gray streets.

The resulting product is not only the best album of the band's career, but an album that very well may shape the future of the genre, influencing an entirely new generation of bands just as they did nearly a decade ago.

This is music for meditating, for thinking, for relaxing, for dreaming. Each note sounds painstakingly placed and rehearsed but also deeply felt. Toumani Diabaté’s star, in particular, shines in new ways, and the continuities of past and present for him and his compatriots are constantly evident, speaking volumes about each player’s skill and love of performance in Kôrôlén.