The results are hit-or-miss.

These on-record musings never reveal the off-record Marnie, which is a shame, but the sprawling, chimerical Marnia brings you close enough to be captivating anyhow.

Welcome Oblivion tracks like techno-folk haunter "Ice Age" and the doom-pop jaunt "How Long?" make uncredited cameo appearances in your nightmares until you go insane and eat your own hands.

Hit the Waves is so heartfelt as a pastiche of '80s alternative music that it almost muscles its way into being brilliant.

Four records deep, Pissed Jeans may have trimmed some heaviness, but they open space for discovery.

New Moon is their most purposeful beast yet.

It's easy to imagine her getting very famous, because Torres doesn't wash the songs out with its prettiness.

AMOK is as heady and immersive as any great Radiohead album, but those comparisons eventually wilt: Yorke's new band has discovered a symmetry all its own.

While lukewarm as a whole, The Messenger doesn't suck nearly enough to bruise Marr's status as a guitar deity on wheels.

It ain't exactly Bill Shakespeare (or Trojans), but it gets the job done.

The beauty of Beach Fossils has always been in the tension between Payseur's disaffected deadpan and the band's super-visceral live shows (before Beach Fossils, he spent years playing in hardcore bands) and on Clash much of that post-punk energy translates seamlessly.

Push the Sky Away feels heavy on breath-taking and woodshedding, an album of waiting for sparks to ignite.

The lyrics resonate hard, though, felt most strongly when Rønnenfelt sings with broad expressive shouts.

Calculated yet impulsive, Young Fathers prove Scottish hip-hop's viability.

The Scottish outfit have delivered again with jangly pop full of skittering guitars, self-flagellating lyricism, and whimsy under a pall of darkness that no amount of the big spotlight can dispel.

Foals haven't lost their math-rock edge; they've infused it with fun.

Somebody needs to boot Nielson off his why-fi connection: beneath the murk is the work of a riveting craftsman.

Bleeding Rainbow provide tunes to which one could satisfactorily gaze at his or her shoes during any point of the year.

The History of Apple Pie aren't exactly breaking new ground in the world of indie rock, but they are the sort of band who win you over in seconds.

It's not as challenging as previous Ducktails recordings, but a pleasant pop record nonetheless, and the band's most universally accessible yet.

Beta Love is the best of both worlds: surprisingly slick and danceable, while subtly amplifying their art-school charm.

Anything in Return is his most melodic album.

Tortoise's John McEntire steps in for long-time producer Roger Moutenot, but any of these songs would fit perfectly on the band's last half-dozen albums.

If there's a knock to be had against the Harlem rapper, it's that he lacks an original presence. So it's curious that for his major-label debut he's opted to further venture down the rabbit hole of references, loading Long.Live.A$AP with a bevy of guests with personalities far more distinctive than his own.

Love Sign dips a little too far into the Fountains of Wayne kiddie pool.

Lysandre inevitably feels a bit skimpy. It's still an unnervingly tuneful warm-up: freed from his hipster shackles, Owens is harnessing the power of the incredibly uncool--and he's all the cooler for it.

For the jaded among us, this is regressive and full of genre-contrivance.

Fascinating speed-bumps aside, it's a mission still very much accomplished.

And so it goes with Mogwai's A Wrenched Virile Lore: a broad range of electro producers, ambient knob-twiddlers, and singer-songwriters re-assemble the Scottish post-rock champs' most recent studio album, the excellent Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, mostly with shitty bonus-feature-styled results.

The disc's six tracks clock in at less than 40 minutes, so there isn't really time to screw things up on a royal scale, making Grace/Confusion a fine listen.

Call it what you want, just be prepared to call it something other than music.

Special note to the freakazoids who think "Starships" killed hip-hop: the rapper who rhymes "fri-vo-lous" with "po-ly-ga-mist" is X-Acto sharp as ever.

Their third record proves that even the most militant punk songs are often best served by a stripped-down aesthetic.

Even at Tesfaye's most awkward, it's impossible not to be intoxicated.

Lonerism is a life raft for the abyss of song-induced self-reflection it inspires.

The songs are what we've come to expect--approachable slacker jams mixed in with cursory love songs, and the occasional guitar solo that proves reverb and washed-out colors don't have the monopoly on nostalgia--but production is cleaner and energy levels are lower.

Temporal as a whole is evenly mastered and gratifyingly titanic.

Koi No Yokan is not only the year's best metal-rock-space-pop album--it's also the finest Deftones album, front to back, to date.

The Inner Mansions is much more interesting than your typical bedroom pop album.

On the whole, King Animal is a welcome return, and though it doesn't reinvent the wheel, it reminds us why these guys were considered the architects of the Seattle scene.

The Ohio trio took their time with Feel Anything, arriving at this more focused, albeit less celestial, effort.

The music is what matters, and Prince Rama, with this highfalutin' silliness, have delivered big.

With tracks like "LUV XXX," "Beautiful," and "Lover Alot," everyone's favorite dude-looks-like-a-grandma just can't let go of that screechy horndog rock.

It's a minimalist approach that started on the Soft Moon's outstanding 2010 self-titled debut full-length, and continues here with each composition taking on an overall instrumental feel despite the occasional presence of lyrical accompaniment.

On Dyin' Breed, they stoop to some depressing new lows.

Ironically, this patchwork of 12-inch singles is Kieran Hebden's most delectable album-as-album.

Lifeless and boring.

Even though the album's zany unpredictability can be thrilling, it often feels like Banks is adorning vacant tunes ("Arise Awake," the plodding instrumental "Another Chance") with bells and whistles.

Everything about Free Dimensional is cheesy--from the mousey bedroom beats to the predictable synth lines to O'Regan's (hard) Soft Cell vocal delivery to the awkward, bumbling raps. Regardless, several songs are stunning.

Patrick Stickles finally overworks his music to match his trying-too-hard fables.

Khan might be getting bolder, bigger, and more experimental, but pushing past what everyone expects or wants from you as an artist sometimes works - even the third time around.

In sacrificing weirdness for conformity, Cobra Juicy shows growth, but somewhat mugs the band of what made them so singular.

Gibbard's carving out new musical territory on Former Lives, while amplifying the broken heart of what makes his sound so wonderful.

Glossy and palatable, but also decidedly sophisticated.

Ellison excels everywhere else, keeping the beats brisk and the instrumentation organic and lively.

Art-pop triumph "Tell Me" puts it all over the top as the zenith of Triple D's young career. That's something to be optimistic about.

The album's listlessness - when compared to the blisteringly restless heartbreak/firecracker of Dreams - is kind of a bummer.

Individually, these songs pack an emotional wallop, performed with a passion that is rare in today's indie-rock scene of disconnected cool. But taken as a giant lump, they're exhausting dead-ends: 12 straight climaxes cancel each other out - and Babel could use a little rising action.

On Shields, they achieve a fluid synthesis: Rossen and Droste still share vocal duties, but they often tag-team the same track, trading off lines and writing melodies for one another's voices. Their styles coalesce so smoothly, it's often difficult to tell where one singer-songwriter starts and the other ends.

If a breathy, acoustic aquarium is up your alley, then take the dive and swim alongside Porterfield's magical lyricism.

whereas Krell's keening, pleading falsetto dominated Love Remains, Total Loss finds him granting the rest of his sonic palette more prominence.

Her [Andrea Lukic] presence makes Sundowning cathartic--if not downright life-affirming.

Mirage Rock might as well be the name of a new airy-rock subgenre, with luscious, echoey story-tunes rolling in like a soft mirage-inducing mountain fog.

[A] terrific, visceral album.

Bland, quasi-political lyrics and zonked-out, dead-end textures.

Hansard gave himself a hard act to follow, but he pulls it off with Repose. He doesn't shun the sound that made the Once soundtrack a hit, but he does expand his palette and show off the breadth of his songwriting prowess.

The lack of innovation is frustrating, since these guys nailed this formula long ago, but they mostly make up for the lack of newness by expending insane amounts of energy.

Little Big Town make implicit the debt they owe to the California rock of Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles in a way that makes Little Big Town seem fresh and thrilling compared to most other Music Row acts.

It's a crucial listen and one of the most rewarding releases of 2012.

At a certain point, the xx need to turn off that reverb pedal and learn to sing above a whisper - but I'll be damned if they haven't worked their magic again.

A no-frills, consistently engaging album with heart - and hooks - to spare.

This may be the most uncharacteristic of his albums, but by venturing outside his comfort zone, Hawley has in turn made his best.

In This Moment are up to some weird, wild, wonderful stuff.

Silver Age is the best album Mould has released since his days in Sugar.

Stripped down to a bare, live-band essence, and with the old-school touch of Roth/Daptone, Antibalas go places by simply playing it safe.

Mature Themes is paced with brilliance.

With your headphones strapped, the album's dirty optimism will brighten even the darkest, stalest airport-layover experience (true story).

Light on laughs and riffage, the title/cover entendre makes it hard to tell if it is supposed to be so terrible or a joke about being so terrible... But the long-available cover of Radiohead's "Street Spirit" is inspired, and first single "Nothin's Gonna Stop Us" grafts one candy rope hook after another into one of the year's finest melodies.

It's the album's more subdued tail end, particularly "Ahead of Myself" and "Temptation," that shows a songwriter rising above his comfort zone to deliver a career-defining transition.

It's perhaps overly long (53 minutes) and hard to penetrate, but Animal Collective's creativity glows brighter than Ric Flair's hair.

Gira's career has been one of violations and risks; there are plenty here. However, his trademark brand of post-rock/ambient alienation may finally leave listeners indifferent.

Steam Days is usually pretty, but it's also a snooze.

Sometimes it gets too cheerful.

America is a beguiling, remarkable work, a deep, carefully measured, completely idiosyncratic breath released on the dawn of a promising day.

Ascent is stuffed with psychedelic guitar virtuosity, moments where Chasny leaves this plane and enters one of those transcendental, mind-freaked, head-tipped-back, eyelid-fluttering states that few are capable of.

Cooder, like a Keith Richards/Woody Guthrie hybrid, observes [the current political scene] all as a damn shame, with little condescension and oodles of wit.

Crafted with worn elements of the electronic cannon, his third LP as Shed doesn't offer much that's fresh. Rather, it's nostalgia and recontextualization that drive this effort.... [Yet songs, I Come By Night, You Got the Look, and Follow the Leader] are all indicative of mastery.

Yeasayer remain the new-millennium kings of studio manipulation, and it's downright jaw-dropping that they're able to experiment so wildly in the context of such catchiness. Fragrant World feels like a victory lap.

Insipid lyrics, absolutely zero feel, and derivative riffs that make Godsmack seem ingenious add up to everything that gives metal a bad name.

Embracing those basics of simplistic pop, the kind that doesn't need to be over thought, works nearly all of the time, and though a little bit of depth to the proceedings would have been nice here and there, a robust hook will do just as well.

[Their] strange blend of influences can be fascinating... but Instinct - clocking in at a bloated 14 tracks and 56 total minutes - runs out of gas way before reaching the finish line.

On Life Is Good, he's lyrically and musically rich as he's been for years now.

On C.A.R., Cohn finds a loophole to get one of those rad concepts out of just that: a depressive who longs for suburban utopia.

Idea of Happiness never tries to re-imagine the concept of the summer album or, at the very least, the genre of synthpop.

Ocean brings substance with style, rather than style demanding to be considered substance.

Teeming with B-sides, live tracks, and demos, much of it previously unreleased, 21 is both exhaustive and indispensable.

There just isn't much personality on display here: Icky Blossoms strive for in-your-face decadence, but most of the time, they sound like every other anonymous dance-pop act on the planet.

The many-splendored guitar blitz of Major rings in the return of good old-fashioned butt rock, but played to the squarely measured rhythms of '90s emo and Northwest indie stuff like Built To Spill.