The trio's strongest asset has always been inspired, thoughtfully crafted pop songs, which Share the Joy should finally make clear.

Huismans has always fought the good fight in his attempt to fuse dubstep with comparably hard-nosed genres of electronic music, and Fever is his most fully realized effort yet.

Carry on, ye bearded gods.

Argos's unrepentant superstar imitations aside, Brilliant! Tragic! holds some well-written standouts.

The songs, a handful of covers and about a dozen originals, aren't terrible, but the ukulele gets really old, really quick.

Hooks are competent and decent but never demanding enough for you to race out to get a song's lyrics embedded into your skin.

For anyone bored of being bored of being bored, strap this one on and ride away.

w h o k i l l may be strange on first pass, but only by its uniqueness, a music whose microgenre would disappear in a whiff were Ms. Garbus to have never stumbled upon it within her.

Diotima is poetry, classical allusion, the consideration of platonic love and our place in history. It is searing shards, intricately arranged, forward-moving, stretching to infinity--lurching, faltering, and then thundering for passages that stop time and levitate your world.

The smooth shape of this album - there's no rising or falling action - and lack of a big concept won't replace 2005's Black Sheep Boy for diehard fans, just as the superior The Stand-Ins didn't in 2008. But Elvis Costello fans should holler.

Man Man fans probably weren't expecting "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head"–levels of optimism from the happy-titled Life Fantastic, but the vibe on the Philly-based band's fourth album is pretty morbid, even by their standards.

All Things Bright and Beautiful, 12 sterilized laptop clunkers that are indeed bright but far from beautiful. There's no maturity in sight.

Hard Bargain is a gorgeous album.

Ditch the first 20 minutes and open the album with the stunning, nearly seven-minute "The Violent Bear It Away," which is tucked away toward Destroyed's end, and here's a career-defining work.

The pointlessness is grating. XI Versions' final three songs do show signs of life--Animal Collective, Walls, and Pantha himself manage to work up a buzz--but they can't compensate for time killers by Lawrence, Carsten, and Efdemin that make inoffensiveness offensive.

Thirty-some years in, the Beasties are as sharp, hilarious, funky, and escapist as they've ever been.

At times, the album draws more from drum and bass than from UK funky or any other bass music du jour.

Although his results can be flimsy, when his creations get legs under them, Terra is the bomb.

Building levees of emotion and tearing those bitches down - Explosions in the Sky have never sounded more thrilling.

It's infectious, and though the album is heavy in inspirational debt, Passive's highs are tantalizing enough to lure you to come for a bright-eyed joyride.

The tunes are repetitive in the vein of Oakey's earliest industrial post-punk '70s rants, but with the angry friction of those heady times cooled off, like a trip to the corner after a heated outburst. And if the album doesn't quite attain the life-altering awesomeness of Dare--well, what album does, really?

T Bone Burnett's trademark production has the rhythm section thumping as if you were listening to the whole thing from a booth at your favorite pub. Which suits Earle fine.

House of Balloons is a gorgeous album that pairs moody beats and samples with morbid lines about drugs and late-night encounters, all of it caulked with sex.

The continuous hitmaking of Present the Paisley Reich might be gone forever, but Dancer Equired offers up enough catchy pop jams to warrant a listen.

Although a three-song offering that sounds like something scraped together using leftovers from a four-year-old album may seem a letdown, it's not, if only because, in those four years, many have tried to mimic Burial's sound but to no avail.

Tomboy is a tricked-out, big-budget epic built for IMAX.

It's taken Isbell three albums to find his comfortable post-Truckers solo-artist groove, and on Here We Rest, he settles in quite nicely.

Bringing in Nevermind producer Butch Vig risked dangerous nostalgia, but his analog recording gives a fresh, warm feel to the proceedings.