Man Man's music will irritate you, make you laugh, put you off and then bring you back for more.

Like all Gogol Bordello albums, Trans-Continental Hustle is instantly enjoyable, but even more lyrical and musical layers emerge on repeat listens that show you just how smart and (simple) Gogol Bordello can be.

A Deeper Understanding is an epic, panoramic record, but its effect is an intimate, personal one. The way these song stretch out make them grand, but they still leave space for you, the listener.

Fin creates a passionate kind of poetry not only in its music but also in its listeners.

It is Chance’s ability to transition fluidly between self-imaginings that makes him such an impressive and likeable rapper. It’s also part of what will make Acid Rap one of the major hip-hop releases of this year.

A powerfully uncomplicated rock album.

However, like so many singular artists, Wyatt's presence spans the record and ultimately gives it its necessary gel. His multi-octave voice booms, croons, and cracks across the album with stunning clarity and consistency.

Sure, he takes his cues from old sources, but the result -- dreamwave, or chillwave, or whatever--is so unique and lush that Palomo should be content to ride off of the high you imagine he might get from making something so effective.

Past albums might have romanticized drugs and booze as the way out, but here it's music, and the album feels more healing as a result, even if its ode to the sweet sounds that came before it presents its own complications and delusions.

I think we should all be thanking our respective Higher Power right now that [Lekman's] hiatus was brief, because the album he would eventually make, the stunning Night Falls over Kortedala, is among the best of the year.

Although The Cross Of My Calling ostensibly provides an outlet for the band’s Marxist ideologies, its impeccable musicianship, arrangement and production make any political sloganeering irrelevant.

[Pfeffer] pruned this album to an essential thirty-two minutes, in which every note (and there are a lot of them) has its purpose and every bizarre genre switch leads somewhere important and ends before wearing out its welcome.

Ragon has the skill to twist all his found objects into something real and new: a strange breed of robust neo-folk with a fiery art-punk streak.

The music may not always be easily accessible, but it is almost always interesting.

They owe nothing to a far-gone musical moment, nor can they be pigeonholed. Limbo, Panto may be one of 2008’s most startlingly great debuts.

Marshall still manages to wring pathos out of her work, if not to the same degree and not in the same way.

We're now at a place where we can pretty well look at Dylan's career as, essentially, an entire body of work--and, even when considering all of the obvious highlights of his past half-century, Tempest still stands out.

With its out-of-this-world visions and lines like “Floating off the edge of the ocean/Out into the galaxy,” Dystopia gives listeners the urge to escape to distant lands.

This is an album that proves that Stars are fully themselves, confident in their genre experimentation and fearless in the emotions they express.

Sky Blue Sky is Wilco's first step toward aging well, but it transcends transition and is an album that sounds right in its place and time.

Up From Below is an album to be commended, even if it might lead to the scourge of other hippie hipsters appearing in buses across the nation.

This is pure, unadulterated energy, seething catharsis taken out on throats, fingers, fretboards and drum heads by a band going on 22 years, and showing no signs of weakness or irrelevancy.

Vidal’s newfound penchant for quiet introspection, providing a fantastic centerpiece to this EP, which contains more riveting ideas and modes of expression than most full-length albums.

Black City is his thesis on how he's capable of delivering a dark, lustful album just as easy as he can mine more bubbly, melodic sounds. Beyond this, he's delivered one of the more cohesive and thematically sound albums of the year so far.

Seventh Tree ultimately may have club-happy "Supernature" devotees shaking their heads, but for those of us who cherish all things weird and wonderful in the land of Goldfrapp, it is a welcome (and much-needed) return to form.

Except for the intense, melodramatic middle mentioned above, every other track on this album could be a successful single.

Difficult. All very difficult. But cheap dates get old quick, don't they?

In short, Thursday is a mixtape of subtleties.