Produced by Tassa and Greenwood and mixed by Nigel Godrich, Jarak Qaribak (translating from Arabic as “Your Neighbor Is Your Friend”) constantly and refreshingly brings together a variety of styles – not just in terms of country of origin but also eras and genres.

Their sunny melodies and sincerity go a long way to making their music compelling, and that is the case whether they are playing in their comfort zone or expanding their craft incrementally. Poetry is another stellar effort in Dehd’s development; one can envision greater things for them yet to come.

There are a number of high points on this record, many of which consist of Steen repeating a line over and over, on the verge of strangling you for attention. There's also something refreshing about this level of antagonism to a dated idea of a rock star.

There’s simply not enough sonic variation going on here to make Soused nearly as compelling as its respective creators’ past efforts.

The new Idiology takes the acoustic experiments of Niun Niggung even further, and it's this combination of electronic and "traditional" music -- melding keyboards and synthesizers with french horns and guitars and trumpets into a seamless whole -- that points the way through the dead-ends of most electronica.

¡Ay! tugs the music and language of Colombia out of its natural space, allowing Dalt to beckon traditions across oceans and, along the way, provide established melodies and rhythms new spaces to inhabit.

Age Of reflects the odd, toxic, backward-looking culture we've created online back at us, encapsulating both the fleeting serenity and unrelenting terror contained within.

This is the weakest of Lambert's four big solo records, and overall it lacks the lively charm of Hell on Heels, her excellent August album with the supergroup Pistol Annies.

Even as only the first half of a delayed double album, A Brief Inquiry already feels like a classically bloated example of the form.

Farm to Table is a record to dwell within, not one to merely be impressed by, making it a fitting and remarkable sophomore effort for an artist whose debut turned so many heads.

Wall of Eyes comes across as a more cohesive project than its older, wilder sibling. Its pace is unhurried, and its songs favor compositional restraint over sheer energy.

The Cohen here is not all that different than on the excellent two-CD set Live in London. In fact both live shows feature several of the same songs in similar order.... Despite the three hour length of the complete box set, the time moves briskly due to the variety of the songs and musical configurations.

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.

Forevher is a highly refined album of surprising variety. Catchy hooks abound on its dance tracks, playful instrumentation more in line with psychedelic pop soak through its summer jams, and starkly sincere lyricism uphold its mellow ballads. Its more vibrant tracks are certainly the album's strong point, but even its more languid songs have an enjoyable authenticity.

Miracle-Level by Deerhoof is as vitalizing as it is soft-hearted. The studio sound has fully revealed accomplished players interested in exploring the humanitarian capabilities of music, expressing, however vaguely or explicitly, a longing for the miraculous and a rejection of the mundane.

Loom is an outstanding collection of sharp, smart pop-rock songs that also sweep over us in an involving way that can in the process wash away the feeling that I need to analyze or concretely pin down everything that’s going on.

Even if King isn’t destined to become the next Destiny’s Child, they still offer a response worth considering. “Whatever happened to R&B groups?” This record reminds us that they were always with us.

Futurology can just about stand toe-to-toe with any of their past albums. Even if it doesn’t surpass any of their “classics” (pick one), it’s comes close enough that you won’t really care.

It's immediate. It's powerful. It's political. This time the giant has bared its teeth.

Spare Ribs is perhaps the band's high watermark, a searing masterpiece of social commentary, childhood memories and recovered trauma, scathing wit, punk energy, funk, and hip-hop influences, and much more. This is a record with no fat and no filler.

This is an accomplished and valiant album, a more-than-worthy heir to its sensational predecessor.

M displays gift for balancing atmosphere and songcraft that will reward numerous listens.

Carpenter has been so consistent that calling Between the Dirt and the Stars her best album in however many years isn't particularly meaningful. Let's call it her best album since her last one.

"Bittersweet" sets the theme of the album. The lyrics are matched by the music: sophisticated, stylish, and intimate. Even when La Havas raises her voice, she restrains herself from taking things to extremes. There is something smooth, soft, and refined about the material. It's tasteful without being slick.

It looks effortless, and possibly insignificant in comparison to the much more obvious greatness of his closest peer... until you check the stat sheet and realize it adds up to something pretty amazing in its own right.

Many of the best records manage the trick of making the listener feel like they are hearing nothing less than a satisfyingly total and complete sound-world, that for its length no other music could or need exist. The stoned-lava flows and driving inertia of Circumambulation make that trick seem like the easiest one in the world.

Love Behind the Melody may not get the commercial love that those artists get (DeVaughn’s image isn’t as flashy), but this is an album that certainly deserves to be mentioned alongside the best work of those artists.

Soulful. Just fine. Tight. Smooth. You know, what you'd expect from these soul-soaked funksters.

Wrongtom has created a fitting soundtrack, celebrating both the city and the Jamaican music culture that has done so much for black music in England.

Wild! Wild! Wild! offers an inspired pairing of two creative individuals whose lives may have followed different paths but whose Southern hearts and souls are bound together in music. Their strong love for their shared culture comes through loud and clear.

A lively record that snaps like a pair of hipster’s digits. The arrangements are tight. The main players (guitarist Danny Caron, bassist Ruth Davies, and drummer Leon Joyce) capture the cool vibe of the originals.

What Lana Del Rey did last year for the 1970s singer-songwriter genre on Norman Fucking Rockwell, Boniface has managed to do for 1980s pop on this stunning, multifaceted debut album: embrace a genre while effortlessly elevating it.

Just as Carpenter does on her best material, Jarosz imbues this music with assured confidence, the kind of confidence that's easy for an artist to summon when she is in command of her voice. World on the Ground is a portrait of one such artist.

By stripping away their sound and for the most part, getting in and out of a song in about three minutes, Wilco has embraced their punkier roots.

Goths is full of surprises, places where the music shifts direction in a way that changes a song’s emotional trajectory in a stunning way.

The more you listen to it, the more powerful it becomes.

Do Make Say Think is an excellent band, and they’ve returned with a very good album that not only reestablishes the work they’ve done in the past, but, in its looser and more frenzied moments, also points to places that they might still go.

She continues to be nothing short of magnificent as a performer, and her generosity in bringing newer artists with her into the spotlight is wholly gratifying. And, while the sentiments here may not be wholly novel, they are well-timed, and they soar when Kidjo sings them.

An eminently powerful work of rock ‘n’ roll from start to finish, Slave Vows hasn’t saved the soul of rock music, but it sure as hell has revitalized it.

Something in the Room She Moves as a whole seems safe, like coffee table art. One can admire the contents yet not be absorbed by the material.

Whilst his voice is nothing spectacular, its cracked but caring harmonics match the song material to a T, and when he strains for some of the notes, you feel the intensity of his need to convey the emotion in his lyrics rather than any irritation at his limitations.

As amazing as Florine is, an entire LP or even another EP of exactly the same thing would probably become tiresome. The fact that she has carved out a rather unique niche is a rare feat, but expanding her sound will only make her more formidable.

One of the best releases of 2013, so far.

Perhaps an elitist view is that Cole is too high-brow for the masses, but six hundred pre-purchasers say differently, and fifty million Elvis fans can’t be wrong. Oh yes, oh no, Standards is one for the ages.

The result is an album filled to the brim with barely contained, charging pop-punk songs replete with fizzing melodies that snake their way under your skin.

Their sophisticated arrangements don’t waste a note or make a false step.

Despite the craft in this music--no, because of the craft in this music--most younger fans will run from Morph like it carried the very plague. No question, this album sounds uniform and rather overpleasant--engineered to a sheen of perfection.

We Iowans may not be family farmers anymore, but we'd still like to think we share their values and that these are true American ideals. Whitmore connects us to that in an inspiring and stimulating way.

23 is one of Blonde Redhead’s strongest efforts to date, containing far more in the way of memorable melodies and songwriting subtleties than the band has previously exhibited.

A headphone trip for the ages, Primrose Green is a diaphanous tapestry that envelopes our collective musical history.

There's a confessional quality to these songs that feels real, regardless of whether Parks is telling these stories exactly as they happened or embellishing them for narrative impact. She also keeps the music engaging throughout, using a lot of guitar and piano for melodies and riffs and a rock-solid rhythm section to create strong grooves. It's early in 2021, but this is already a candidate for one of the year's better debuts.

Drift is a fabulous introduction to a burgeoning beat-making talent, one of the finest since edIT’s Crying Over Pros For No Reason, but Thing’s next record will likely be his One Word Extinguisher.

With ten tracks and roughly 35 minutes, Heaven Is a Junkyard is beautifully executed from a musical standpoint, with Powers’ piano and synthesizer often providing a bright and cheerful counterpoint to the dark lyrics at hand.

Letter to Yu can be abrasive, like the buzzsaw lead on “Kowloon”, but mostly it gently persuades one to get in the groove. Something is inviting about the Chinese touches on Western dance floor beats. Bolis Pupul belongs to both worlds and invites one to appreciate the connections and juxtapositions between them.

Life Will See You Now makes no secret about exposing its tender heart, but luckily it has enough substance to rescue it from a Lifetime movie level of sentimentality.

Infinite Dissolution keeps the thoughtful onslaught going steadily.

This is an album with a brilliant sound, one that is as arresting to listen to as it is to puzzle over.

Toumani & Sidiki is neither a reinvention nor a encapsulation of the griot tradition, but rather a timely statement of the importance and endurance of tradition.

Whole & Cloven draws the listener in with each tune, but the shift to the next song is always a jarring one. That jarring works, though, shaking you back to attention, only to lead you down a new musical alley.

On The Window, Ratboys reach their fullest potential, expanding and stretching their collaboration, continuing to explore their multi-faceted musical face. They have produced one of their best and most rewarding efforts thus far, and the catchiness of their songs will make listeners return gleefully if the tracks don’t stick to them during intermission.

It's not much more than easy-listening funk, but it's freshly played, and the band sounds great together.

Pop formatting can be a tightrope, but Snaith walks it gracefully. The only component missing are notable lyrics, the words here just another sound in the mix--but that's hardly unusual for Snaith's writing, or even for a lot of music from the era he is referencing.

Unreasonable Behaviour is far from an easy listen. While Garnier is usually highly accessible, here he deviates in favor of a record much more tempestuous, menacing and genre-pushing -- all of which, though foreboding, is wholly more gratifying.

Delicate slices of low heart-rate brilliance.

Beyond its confrontational veneer lies a 19 track collection of a good number of 2011's hardest, freshest, most concrete bars imaginable.

A few dips and peaks throughout, but the elements seem to fall into place for a consistent and cohesive experience.

B’lieve I’m Goin’ Down is a quietly unexpected album. It feels very much like another Kurt Vile album, but close listening--or even not that close--will reveal some serious blues and some complicated dealing with it.

[The music is] touching and abrasive all at once. Quite an accomplishment for her “pop album”.

This is refreshing if not always easy or fun listening. E.S.T. could have continued making contemplative or gospel-tinged acoustic jazz in the Jarrett/ECM mode (the brief “Ajar” here is a fine example), but Svensson and his group have been frying bigger fish from the start.

Throughout That's What I Heard, Cray's voice is unstoppable. It knows no age and can hit the rafters with the most gut-wrenching testifying imaginable, then drag you through the gutter - or take you to church or the bedroom - with a menacing, sensual growl. That's what I heard, anyway.

Lindé is a well-polished triumph of musicianship and craft.

Mandatory Enjoyment may not break new ground, but if someone doesn’t continue to traverse this ground, there’s a danger of it sealing over. And that would be an unconscionable loss for avant-garde and pop music alike, especially when acts such as Dummy unify the two with such adroitness.

Albeit brief, with Crystal Nuns Cathedral, Pollard and co. have struck gold once again, delivering a hi-fi record that proves itself to be just as virtuosic and inventive as any indie rock album of recent memory.

The Whole Love proves the band is still moving forward, still changing, even if it's not in the lofty ways we expect it to.

We may want to make Grace a symbol of something, take her struggle with identity and expression and render it a simplified abstraction, but this rollicking, excellent rock record wants none of that. It’s a physical sound, a visceral set of emotions, a complicated set of fears and hopes to grapple with.

Even by Isbell’s lofty standards, Weathervanes is a big swing, and the band hits a home run.

With Blood Mountain, Mastodon have completed a three-album arc that most young bands can only dream of, culminating in a record that’s as thrilling as it is multifaceted, as melodic as it is bludgeoning.

The vast creativity and breadth of this project are impressive. Along with the great music, a suite of short films operates as a gorgeous visual interpretation of the music. Though, Röyksopp have sworn off releasing “traditional studio albums”, judging from Profound Mysteries, this new stage in their career is exciting and captivating.

The album might be a one-off or a warm-up for a (hopefully) strong album of new material. Regardless, it’s a peak moment in the storied career of rock’s most enduring band.

At the Party With My Brown Friends is another exquisite installation.

The album sounds more elaborate, but never fussily so. Legrand’s voice retains its place atop the organ beats, keys, guitars and acoustic drums.

The Foundling is certainly Gauthier's least showy album, which is saying something. It's also a notch or two down from her best, due to a handful of songs (mostly in the album's latter third) that aim for Gauthier's typically hard, simple honesty and instead land in the territory of gloomy repetition of aches and pains one would expect from this type of project.

So maybe there's nothing here more interesting or deep or significant than what it is on the surface: a very beautiful record that means nothing more than what it is...

Although it doesn't pack any real surprises, this album marks a fascinating turning point for the band. Option Paralysis is a very good album, by no means a failure, but because the band had set the bar so high for themselves with their previous three albums, it still feels like a slight step below.

Even with these toe-dips in fuzzier, darker grooves, there's still a sanguine blanket that covers Nine Types of Light -- and, astonishingly, it doesn't come off as a wallow in overdone pathos.

Daniel lives by his music and his ideas, without any arbitrary distinctions between the two. If nothing else, Why Do the Heathen Rage? is massively refreshing for that reason.

One could easily imagine Mirah being just another songwriter, singing turgid ballads about loneliness over an acoustic guitar (and indeed there is the occasional disturbing flash of this in her work), but through the intelligent production of Elvrum, and indeed, some of the other producers on (a)spera, she is able to set her thoughts upon soaring mountains of musical genius.

It ain't a perfect, cohesive statement, but Major/Minor packs too much power to be ignored.

This is perhaps her most fun album, with a sense of humor even within tragic material. At the same time, it’s one of her prettiest, and not lacking for strange pleasures even within a seemingly more conventional setting.

Rejoice is a posthumous reminder of what Hugh Masekela at his best could deliver and of the now 80-year-old Allen's amazing vitality.

Yes, theirs is a sound similar to a lot of the names jaded hipsters and criterati will spew on auto-fire disdain, but no-one else really sounds like them, and very few people indeed are writing taut rockin' pop songs under three minutes long that are simultaneously as smart and as unpretentious as those proffered here.

When folks start calling you the greatest country artist of your generation, you'd better deliver. This Is Country Music does.

Kano's album is ridiculously good.

With this brilliant turn they take it a step further. They prove you don’t need to deconstruct genre to make it new. You just need to write great songs, know where they came from, and play the hell out of them.

STATE’S END! is another wonderful chapter in a book we hope will continue to be writ for years.

Undeniably one of my favorite albums of the year, METZ shines brightly, like a Molotov cocktail at the moment of impact.

This record expects -- nay, demands -- multiple exposures. Its hidden delights and traps are equally patient.

He and his producers have constructed a monument to this New New New South. And you don't really have to believe in it in order to appreciate what a great record this is.