Acid Rap is the summer action blockbuster of mixtapes, where the audience need not dig much deeper than the surface to enjoy the best of what the production has to offer.

It took exuberance, painstaking detail, and wide-eyed nostalgia for Daft Punk to create Random Access Memories, their best.

Once I Was an Eagle is a singular achievement: a haunting record, peopled with aural ghosts that come gradually crawling from out of the grooves.

Kanye West doesn’t give the listener a second to realize the album is more a masterly response to a masterpiece than a masterpiece itself. With one sweep of the hand, West brushes away expectations. And then he sticks you squarely across the face

It’s the duo’s most sinister and fascinating collection of songs, enrapturing the listener with dystopian soundscapes and frustrating arrangements.

Judicious use of the skip button to find the tracks on which Andersson’s transfixing voice is front and center, results in a much more rewarding, immediate experience.

Nothing feels out-of-place or out-of-sync, everything clicks together in flourishes of simple brilliance.

...Like Clockwork is a droning, incoherent endeavor, and it simply doesn’t reward the attention it’s asking for.

Torres is an album that is pulsating with life.

As an album set out to reappropriate pop rock, MCII succeeds.

A collection of remarkable songs by a group of musicians that compliment one another as well as any group over the last decade.

What makes Cerulean Salt so enjoyable and so endlessly relistenable is that some of her snapshots likely resemble ones from your own lost photo albums.

With Wakin On A Pretty Daze, Vile has added another seemingly effortless 70 minutes’ worth of straightforward, easygoing golden tones to his consistent discography.

Overgrown is not the enigma that was his debut, but rather it is a first-rate album from a musician that isn’t all that interested in being enigmatic.

The vast majority of The Next Day is vibrant, even delirious, roaring with Bowie’s heaviest rockers and teeming with guitar hooks that just beg to be lovingly re-appropriated by James Murphy.

Ultimately Cold Spring Fault Less Youth is a fascinating record, a series of varied and elaborate soundscapes that find the right balance of mood and melody.

Fanned by an intelligent approach to production, Disclosure’s fire has started to burn, and is destined to whip itself into an inferno this year.

Savages’ smart reorganization and shuffling of punk, post-punk, krautrock, and noise music into something brutal, jarringly confrontational, and completely singular is a breath of fresh air and an unignorable statement of power and resistance.

Until Ex Cops stumble upon a niche and make it their own, their career is going to be eclipsed by listeners hearing influence over innovation in their music.

The vocals on You’re Nothing, however, are much more emotive and indicative of a newfound acknowledgement of the singer’s vulnerability as a frontman. The result is anything but sappy.

It is not a return to form, because how could we expect or want it to be? It is a return to the contextually avant-garde, and for Deerhunter in 2013 that means rock n’ roll.

With We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic, Foxygen is a breath of fresh air, reviving a vintage style of songwriting in a new and creative fashion.

Woman works because it balances restraint and candor, presenting love in neither a chaste nor debauched light. Milosh, through his gossamer vocals, delivers a message of stunning clarity: despite the risk, love is beautiful.

What Avalanche may lack in immediacy, it makes up for with the gloss and professionalism that coats each of its songs like a gossamer gown. The quality of Hannibal’s handiwork and the sheer passion of Coco’s vocals speak for themselves.

It grows beyond its deeply emotional roots, to become whatever you want it to be.

Twelve Reasons to Die is a straightforward concept album, and it’s very well done.

Fans of Marnie’s music are fully aware of what an album of hers going to bring, and on The Chronicles of Marnia, she brings it.

It is an album that needs to be experienced in its entirety, but in the age of remixes, the blogosphere, and Adderall, who will have the time or patience to dig into Impersonator? Those who do will find parts of it beautiful and rewarding, if they can stomach the emotional drain.