Olé! Tarantula... is one of the eccentric singer-songwriter's best in years, mainly because it sounds almost exactly like something he would've recorded two decades ago.

McLamb's voice is still too nasal and uncontrolled at times, and though Burton's production is lively throughout.

It does mark another 10-year shift for Mould, one in which he revisits old haunts, clears out the weeds, and plants a fresh flag.

Still Trippin’ showcases Taye’s ability to structure an album so that it has a genuine sense of dynamics, even if individual songs mainly consist of stuttering beats and vocals.

Pretty Years is joyous, revelatory, and the moment where the varied sounds of those past three records all come together.

Like the work of Spoon and some of the Constantines' Canada brethren, the music on Tournament Of Hearts reassembles familiar shards of indie-rock, classic rock, and new wave into original soundscapes that are both dangerous and alluring.

His hushed voice and intricate acoustic guitar work fill the space with reflective songs that sound little like anything he's done before.

The intimacy it reaches on Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not is as hard won as it’s ever been. The band approaches it from the obtuse angles only it can, arriving there because of its excessive volume, its unorthodox tempos, and its lyrical inscrutability, not in spite of it. To the uninitiated, it may seem formulaic, but it’s the self-imposed limitations that make Dinosaur Jr. so distinctive.

So Boys Outside has its experimental elements after all, but only by degrees. Mason starts with sturdily constructed songs, then loosens the screws one by one.

Like The Roots' new Phrenology, Electric Circus possesses many of the weaknesses associated with ambition: a bloated running time, the faint aroma of pretension, an obligatory spoken-word piece, and songs that outlast their welcome.

Singer-songwriter Moffat continues to showcase his unlovable-loser persona on the band's fifth set, but unlike on 2001's The Red Thread, he doesn't get bogged down in misery and despair: A wicked sense of humor and a more expansive musical palette help balance it out.

Hedwig And The Angry Inch deserves to be the Rocky Horror Picture Show of its generation, and Wig In A Box marks an encouraging step in that direction.

Flying boldly in the face of youth-addicted popular culture, The Grind Date celebrates the joy and wisdom of adulthood.

Both hauntingly beautiful and a helpful summary of Stevens' career to date.

Monsters Of Folk is a real pleasure, full of songs that are loose, catchy and likeable.

This may also be Sleater-Kinney’s lustiest album yet. Several of the album’s 11 songs are peppered with breathy sighs and ecstatic yelps, and it’s almost as if Brownstein is staring you directly in the eyes as she sings, “Let me defang you and defile you on the floor,” in “Bad Dance.” But this, too, has its political aspect. ... A stunning finale is another Sleater-Kinney specialty, and The Center Won’t Hold delivers with the devastating, disarming “Broken.”

After 10 years and seven albums, Heaven finds The Walkmen in a better place.

It’s better to approach Album not as what its title offers, but a collection of singles. These are the new rock ’n’ roll 45s, variations of the same sad pop song shone through the prism of a guy who’s survived his own unique heartache.

Dread surrounds Exile In The Outer Ring like a thick fog. As much as EMA empathizes with “the kids from the void,” her excellent album offers little comfort besides the gentle urging of “Hey, don’t go away” (“Down And Out”).

As is Radiohead's custom, The King Of Limbs hasn't been designed for immediate comprehension or acceptance.

Despite Hanna’s avowed penchant for creative forward momentum, Run Fast’s ruminations on the past are most touching.

It's sometimes hard to separate intentional mood-setting atmosphere from indistinct songwriting, but the album establishes enough momentum that the general cacophony becomes as epic as it's meant to be.

From the first track, The Craft replicates Blazing Arrow's assured, patchouli-scented combination of rock-solid songcraft and spacey experimentation.

Not only does Twins prove an exciting and vital listen, it's Segall's second consecutive album of guitar-heavy, rough-and-tumble rock 'n' roll--the Nuggets disciple's best stylistic look.

Throughout, Martin wrings squalls, squeals, and a rat's nest of tortured notes out of his frets, dressing the band's majestic shit sandwich with a schmear of battery acid.

Even when they're smiling sweetly and rubbing sleep from their eyes, Felice and crew know how to come on larger than life.

Surfaces aside, the songs on Breaks In The Armor are impassioned and crafty--right in line with what Bachmann has been up to for decades now.

Lout is a difficult EP to place. It’ll either entice long-standing fans with its heavier sound, fitting well with the band’s aesthetic, or alienate those who prefer the band’s early work. But this reinvention of The Horrors somehow works.

Rouse's primary gift remains his easy-flowing melodies, which are coaxed along by his cherubic rasp.

The record is an achingly beautiful paean to companionship, whether musical or romantic, but it also embraces the mess of togetherness.

Nobody makes hip-hop as textured and atmospheric as El-P, and he manages to temper his disorienting noise with soulful suggestions this time out.

He’s been doing that for years now, but on his 21st record, he again accomplishes that goal in his own inimitable style, still mining the uncommon depths and winning melodies within his own bizarre parameters.

An album that’s otherwise so successful at distilling a singular vision into something both gut-punching and sonically intriguing.

On her 4AD debut, Visions, she continues her march toward accessibility, rendering hazy, quixotic sketches into tangible, hook-heavy electro-pop.

There’s a lot of musical shape-shifting on City Music, but the varied approach helps capture the gritty, up-and-down nature of a place that never sleeps.

The record is sweetly evocative, swathed in meditative rhythms and lighthearted melodies.

Megafaun fits squarely in the bearded Caucasian folkie camp, but the ethereal Gather, Form & Fly is far too extraterrestrial-sounding to be bound to this planet, much less this country.

By the dazzlingly innovative and heartfelt record's end, the band has worked in a bit of everything it has to offer, and offered it with winning sincerity.

The rest of Powerplant’s brief 29-minute running time can’t quite live up to “123,” though it has plenty of powerful moments.

A peek at the liner notes for Oh My God, Charlie Darwin—which solemnly states that the album was recorded “in the solace of a Block Island winter”--suggests that Rhode Island’s The Low Anthem is angling to be this year’s Bon Iver. The music itself does nothing to dispel the notion.

While Chemtrails was cause for concern that Del Rey had perhaps lost her magic touch, Banisters is a reminder that when the singer-songwriter is in charge of her vision and fully taps into her emotions, she’s still capable of crafting breathtaking beauty.

By zeroing in on a more human theme, he has found a way to open up, creating an album that’s easier to listen to than its predecessors while still being dazzlingly difficult to perform.

It’s as if Low has taken its tried-and-true songwriting formula--a slow buildup into a smoldering climax--and stretched it to the length of an entire album. And an entirely superb one.

This is the sound of a band working hard to evolve, and if the strain of incorporating such a large swath of musical experimentation occasionally shows, well, maybe that’s the cost of attempting new tricks at an advanced age. Never let it be said that the band embraced different sounds at the expense of its tried-and-true formulas, however. Part of what makes Gigaton fascinating is the way these sonic departures actually fuse in unexpected ways with some of the band’s traditional four-on-the-floor stompers.

Sophomore release Tarot Sport provided the giant leap to get to this point, but Slow Focus displays an act from a niche genre deftly handling the necessities and opportunities that come with sudden, rapid ascendance.

The Roots' uncompromising sucker punch of an album captures the sound of battle-scarred survivors intent on being the last band standing in a world and music industry steadily falling apart.

It's a moving work, intensified by Shields' improvisational guitar and the way Smith's voice makes Mapplethorpe's particular story universal.

While its previous album, Punch, took that sophistication to a level bordering on esotericism, the new Antifogmatic is as warm and welcoming as the bracing 19th-century drink that gave it its name.

The Neil Young and Beatles influences are laid bare, the quirkiness is now more tuneful than cerebral, and the band has surrendered to the basic human craving for candied country melodies.

An album that sounds simultaneously deeply personal and in tune with confusing times.

Unlike the typical odds-and-ends set, A Lifetime Of Temporary Relief could bring more fans into the fold, and it'll surely satiate those who've been listening closely to some of the last decade's most rewarding music.

It may be predictable, but if predictable means rock-solid and mostly magnificent, why bother asking for more?

As always, Mercer’s vocals threaten to dominate the songs--each line could be the last in a prolonged, bellowed tantrum--but the mostly live-in-studio takes capture the skilled frenzy of Frog Eyes’ shows.

Clarke’s tendency to drift into the otherworldliness of his act’s namesake brings some much-needed grime to all that bubblegum.

Refreshing earnestness has always been one of his strengths, and Sleeper, inspired by the death of his father, is an honest study on loneliness, heartbreaking without ever becoming maudlin.

It's the self-possession of lyrics like these, and Solange's newfound love for sincere, catchy hooks, that make True the best work of her young career and one of most irresistible pop records of 2012.

If Madlib were somehow to commandeer a time machine, kidnap Sly & The Family Stone, Prince Paul, The Firesign Theater, Melvin Van Peebles, Redd Foxx, Negativland, and The Last Poets, lock them in a studio together on Haight Ashbury during the Summer Of Love with Hunter S. Thompson's drug supply, then force them to record an album together, the result might sound a little like The Further Adventures of Lord Quas.

With its layers of guitars and sharp lyrics, Keep It Like A Secret is a smart, challenging installment in a career that's been as varied as it is prolific.

Each maintains a newfound cool, which must be the result of Islands’ principal dudes realizing that they could live without one another, but that they’re far deadlier songwriters together.

There’s some beautiful songwriting here, but it’s buried beneath the smudges of its producers.

Best of all, the Conchords never force their hand, frequently letting bizarre sonic references and awkward lyrical fumbles serve as unspoken punchlines.

Murky and abrasive, the new material comes on like a punk version of Jesu; stripped of most electronics and dynamics, it's a Broadrick riff-fest, jagged around the edges and nearly dehumanized.

More Life is light, often weightless. Despite its playlist tag, it is unmistakably a Drake album--it even has a Blueprint highball closer like each of its predecessors--and as an album, it is probably Drake’s worst. But as a collection of totally atomized songs and ideas, it’s up there with anything he’s released.

Even when Swanlights doesn't always take corporeal form-that looseness also means several of its melodies simply fade into the shadows-Antony's voice remains a spectral wonder.

Because of its obsession with rhythm, II is at once more accessible and more overpowering than the average instrumental record. Each repetition brings an ambush, and a renewal.

A vibrant, glitchy, hook-laden celebration of nightlife.

For the first time, the cantankerous Lightburn matches his lyrics--from rapture to self-exploration to joy both lived and missed--perfectly with the music, which nods to Britpop but never succumbs to any genre trappings.

The Ship is a thrilling album, emotionally draining in parts, but more than worth the struggle. Forty-one years after Another Green World, Eno is still foraging for new musical ground, and what he’s able to come up with is nothing short of miraculous.

Lenses Alien bears traces of Modest Mouse, Superchunk, Cap'n Jazz, Slint, and others, but the songs exude a craftsmanship that simple re-appropriation couldn't achieve. The band may be trying too hard to emphasize that by opening the album with an epic track, but the point isn't lost.

There isn't a bad song on Beyond—though both of Barlow's contributions slow things down a bit—but it never reaches the transcendent, wailing energy of Mascis' best.

Japandroids have always sought love and adventure in equal measure, and they get both on Near To The Wild Heart Of Life.

Making good on the only slightly veiled threats of Curses, the new Travels With Myself And Another finds Falkous’ barbed stories--of fruitless sex, godless existence, and other pointless-yet-unavoidable bullshit--stretched wire-taut, with nary a moment of wasted energy.

He [Greg Dulli] can still hit that sweet spot of come-hither crooning, but the production hides much of his more agitated wails in the mix. The vocals are therefore no longer the dominant element of the music.

About a third of Noble Beast coasts along like this, generating an amiable atmosphere while advancing the album's contemplations of evolution and the loss of self. But then Bird arrives at a song like 'Fitz And The Dizzyspells', or 'Anonanimal', and suddenly Noble Beast turns into a higher form of pop music, so beautifully, horrifyingly evolved.

A maniac verve for hooks that returns in fine, refined form on Brill Bruisers.

Beck swaddles the hurt in a lush assortment of elements that would sound like Babel under anyone else's direction.

It's an exquisitely bittersweet meander through Wainwright's cobweb-strewn psyche liable to leave listeners laughing through tears and crying through laughter.

For Liars, forgoing heady concepts and willful obtuseness--embracing rock music instead of deconstructing it--may actually be the boldest move yet.

The Magic, the band’s aptly named 13th album, is the loosest, most expansive Deerhoof LP in some years.

“Enigma” really is a fitting word for Gaga. Her choices can be puzzling, and not every song is a success, but that unpredictability is what makes her exciting and leaves us coming back for more. So maybe Gaga doesn’t know who she truly is yet. It’s still enjoyable to watch her figure it out.

It’s the rare, rare reunion album that’s shoulder to shoulder with what came before it, standing on the band’s solid catalog instead of trying and failing to start the climb anew.

It's no longer the Okkervil River of The Stage Names or Black Sheep Boy, and that's a plus: I Am Very Far signals that the band's gifts with song and sentiment were never tied to specificity.

Ten albums into its career, U2's emphasis on its basics--chiming guitars, a war-themed lament here and there, the enormous choruses of songs like "Beautiful Day"--is a refreshing reminder of the group's core virtues. But in terms of execution, it splits about 50-50 between soaring hits and dispiriting misses.

Sporting geometrically interlocked riffs and solos that feel simultaneously epic and oblique, the disc harnesses post-punk cool as well as classic-rock heroism.

With Lost Songs, it's rekindled the raw, unflinching spirit that, a decade ago, placed the group among rock's elite.

These songs are complicated robots.

"We" need more Sims and more Simses; we just need more fun too.

While the work may not always feel cohesive, SASAMI moves between these worlds with ease.

In the end, Motion City Soundtrack has created another in a series of impeccably constructed pop albums.

Lane’s songwriting is less cutesy than Musgraves’ though, and it gets to the heart of the matter with almost painful honesty.

Unfortunately for Nelson, Band Of Brothers isn’t the country legend’s best album of all time. It’s pretty good at best, a must only for reasonably hardcore Nelson fans.

As minimally executed as it is maximally conceived, Biophilia doesn't sculpt emptiness; it swims in it.

It’s not a “return to rock” (a phrase that probably interests Harvey about as much as “dirt-filled sandwich”), but The Hope Six Demolition Project does contain some of the songwriter’s most guitar-heavy material since the Uh Huh Her days.

The details sometimes outshine the songs: Lyrics about love come off as worn, and lyrics about God seem lifted from Sunday school.

Mew really does inhabit a place where few contemporaries can be found.

On Revenge, Murs and 9th Wonder wisely stick to the winning formula that paid such rich creative dividends on 3:16--strong song concepts, minimal guest appearances, a brisk running time, dope beats, and lyrics both smart and smartass.

Woods works well to find the right space for each instrument, maintaining the balance between accuracy and capriciousness that continues to define the band.

There aren’t many hooks to be found here, which means a lot of Three Futures sort of blurs together. But it’s all hazily fascinating, flowing naturally through its various peaks and valleys, and it succeeds in Scott’s goal of being truly immersive listening--something that reveals itself to you in strange new ways each time you return.