The most wildly inventive, exploratory, unafraid, surprising, nonsensical, and flat out funkiest single I’ve heard all year.

Hole’s original précis was to become something like Sonic Youth crossed with Fleetwood Mac, and America’s Sweetheart is the closest she’s come to creating that vision.

Soul Journey might sound downbeat and lonesome, wistful and dusty, but this is gospel music compared to what went before.

They rock hard and fast and damn the stylistic similarities, because they have as much energy and explosive tendencies that even the Stooges themselves showed back in their heyday.

The net result is an amazing pileup of discount psychedelia and stoner rock grind, with ample doses of ecstatic amplifier brutality thrown in to explode any ham-fisted accusations of classic rock necrophilia.

Such are The Clientele’s gifts that its hard to believe The Violet Hour is only their debut album; few bands with more impressive vintages and prolific back-catalogues have managed to make records as touching, cohesive and deeply seeped in their own character as The Clientele have here.

In its ambition, emotion, aggression and intelligence, Kick Up The Fire, And Let The Flames Break Loose is a work of sheer bloody genius.

The Eraser is a triumph.

If The Unfairground doesn’t quite qualify as a "stunning" return to form--"stunning" never really being Ayers’ stock in trade--it certainly represents the delightful and unexpected renaissance of a perennially undervalued artist, whose quiet but significant influence is long overdue for re-assessment.

Edan has lowered his tone, beefed up his content, mastered an independent, creative production style and crafted a concise album that makes a strong stab for early album of the year bids.

Each of their albums so far has been misleading because none of them have really caught what Embrace are about properly, who they are. This New Day, warts and all, finally does that.

If Louden Up Now was the sound of !!! trying to integrate their fusion of conflicting ideas and failing admirably, Myth Takes is the band not giving a damn and succeeding improbably at something even more interesting.

Whereas the somewhat timid and searching De-Loused in the Comatorium was all about surprising audience, critic, and probably the band itself, Frances the Mute is a self-assured organic animal that should come as no surprise to anyone.

Simply put, either you’ll love this album or not “get” it. It’s too good an album for you to not like if you understand it.

Snaith’s newest album, Andorra, merges "Milk’s" heady sense of immediacy with a clear and consumable swiftness.

Noah’s Ark proves, again, that the Casady sisters are perhaps at the forefront of the overlabored ‘freak-folk’ scene.

Their previous efforts have now paid off, culminating in a condensed treatise of confusion, longing, and maturation.

Current yet sounding potentially classic already... Reznor forces himself further into the mainstream with With Teeth--but on his own terms.

It’s still identifiably Low, but richer and more diverse than before.

Feels is a near-stunning album a notable amount of the time.

The National are able to pack as much power into the songs on Alligator as any of the more heralded indie-rock bands working right now, only The National have taken the common influences and grafted them into something altogether fresh and remarkable.

It’s the band’s throatiest, most pressing and urgent release to date.

While Ys is ridiculously overwritten, over-performed and self-contained, her fables always sublimate into the hot fog of real emotions just before they calcify.

Bows and Arrows is an album of grandiose pleasures, the sound of a band not just making good on the promise of their debut, but expanding every which way at once, merging distinctive songcraft with decadent theatrics, and tethering themselves to a confidence that they, unlike others, will survive the sea-change of a deflating scene.

This is their radio-rock record, and it's not a tribute, it's as close to the real thing as they've come since they actually had a chance at radio play back in the '90s.

Aerial isn’t perfect, but it is magnificent.

Throughout The College Dropout, Kanye subverts cliches from both sides of the hip-hop divide, which again isn’t unprecedented, but still refreshing and revelatory coming from someone who could have just as easily stood pat on his massive Midas-producer stacks.

The debut album was good, but this is better. Much, much better; the kind of record I will happily and willingly return to long after this review is dead and buried.