This stirring collection makes Father John Misty's debut one of the best solo efforts this year, a true freak-folk standout.

There's no obvious precedent, and the session shows Redman at his best as he mixes funky riff-based bop themes with looser, free-form meditations, sometimes within the same tune.

Quik knows what he's doing. You can hear it on every track of this symphonic mini-masterpiece.

None of the Solillaquists of Sound (S.O.S.) is originally from Florida, and that begins to explain how they could compose an eclectic cornucopia as sweet as No More Heroes.

Scandalous, though a natural progression, takes some surprising turns that attest to a tightened-up band still figuring out just how much dy-no-mite they're capable of exploding.

The first thing they did right was actually to be a band: to write songs, and tour with them, before recording. The result is a tight, energetic sound with elements of punk, heavy rock, and new wave.

The stylistic hopscotch on Harlem River Blues--he flits easily from real-deal rockabilly to soulful power-balladry to roadhouse-ready honky-tonk--points to a restlessness that serves him well.

It's Bummer Time, and in 2011 there is no better soundtrack for banging your head to oblivion.

Throughout Love on the Inside, Nettles and Bush trick out their twangy tunes with shiny new-wave guitars, creamy pop harmonies, and robust rock beats.

The disparate riff-based writing can be too heavy on cue cards and too light on connecting the ideas, but it's that same friction that makes the band worth listening to.

Aficionados of ambient music might moan over Florine’s sometimes frustrating lack of low end, but for those with an open mind, a long drive, and/or a large joint, Barwick provides one of this winter’s prettiest half-hours.

A weirdly entrancing collection of polished electronics and acoustic-guitar riffs layered like fruit in a parfait glass.

It's difficult to decide whether Butler's thing is psychedelic thuggishness or thuggish psychedelia, and he probably doesn't intend for us to figure it out. Either way, he's done the near-impossible in creating a sound that's wholly fresh and grows richer with every listen.

Hollenbeck leavens the severity of his attack with instrumental warmth and unusual ensemble timbre: reeds (Chris Speed), accordion (Ted Reichman), vibes (Matt Moran), bass (Drew Gress), percussion--plus, on Royal Toast, frequent collaborator Gary Versace on piano.

The Whole Love feels like a truly audacious studio record, jam-packed with instruments, ideas, and the sort of restless creativity that marked 2002's game-changer, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Teen Dream sheds the uncertainties evident in past Beach House albums--each melodic turn (and there are many) balances the force of confidence with the momentum of curiosity.

Because Bergsman keeps Eden's doors open (centerpiece 'Wapas Karma' is a traditional performed entirely by locals), there's a natural light and a welcome freshness--a breeze from across the world, rather than a suitcase of souvenirs.

As always, Apathy wins on account of the metaphors he spatters across tracks like so much blood, sweat, and tears.

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

There's more melody here than on previous Mastodon albums; opener 'Oblivion' even has a sweetly grungy Alice in Chains breakdown. And Brendan O'Brien's production does increase the fist-pumping factor in 'Divinations' and 'Crack the Skye'--the latter of which bites some of Metallica's Black Album rumble. But this is still a forbiddingly dense piece of post-prog rock.

This is Stevie Wonder or Yo La Tengo territory, fearlessly approaching touchy-feely domestic ground where many fear to tread. They own it, too.

There's so much going on, all of it so intricately plotted and clean, that you're left to wonder: by the time the rest of the electronic community catches up, what will Sepalcure be onto next?

Like the Go-Betweens or the Field Mice, Europe is top-notch indie-pop, with upbeat music and literate lyrics coated in a wistfulness that can be debilitating if you indulge in it too often.

This fifth studio album is a humbly gorgeous collection, propelling an already dynamic band into even more dramatic, heart-wrenching territory.

As perfect as Twilight is, though, Surtur Rising houses it handily.

For a band known more for untamed drones and out-there sonics, Totaled's tempering of pop and experimentation is a welcome new feel.

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

That means you get Stickles roaring about being told he'll always be a loser over full-throttle indie-Springsteen arrangements replete with bleating Clarence Clemons saxophone lines, pavement-pounding marching-band drums, and loads of drunk-dude Dropkick Murphys gang-vocal chants.

Phoenix deal with an American genre on its own terms--and in its own language--far better than most homegrown bands.

Callahan sprinkles his world-weary perspective with enough wry humor to make the album pleasant and endearing.

Rock Music is free of both the maudlin and the mundane, and oddly rousing, too.

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.

Yet even when relying less on atmospheric synths and playing with a full-band set up ("The Shakes"), Parallax misses early rock's tautness and grit.

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

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

The one-woman choir may seem eccentric, but by the last of these nine vignettes, Barwick has accomplished what few purveyors of such pristine beauty can. Through its oddities, The Magic Place shines.

Fear of a Blank Planet is not only their most vintage-sounding album, it’s also their best.

Their third album is classic hardcore punk: loud, thrashing, and out of control, but with just enough goofy humor to make it easy to swallow.

Comfortably normal, the War on Drugs make for a nice tonic to the sometimes overly weird attitudes of modern indie-psych bands.

Townes does what a tribute album should do: Earle evokes the essence of the honoree without giving up a smidgen of his own individuality.

For the Ghosts Within descends into a strange netherworld bordered by art pop, jazz, and classical that few seek to visit.

Past Life Martyred Saints is more focused and confident than the work of many of Andersen's peers. It's likely we've not even heard her best yet. And even if not, this is pretty sweet as is.

Easy review: three tracks, each between 10 and 29 minutes, every moment electric.

He's mastered the tuneful shrug, the song that sounds unfinished and tossed off but sticks fast to your brain and keeps revealing a depth you hadn't noticed.

[Sonic Youth's] most openly “mature” disc, possibly their best since ’95’s Washing Machine, maybe even the almighty Daydream Nation.

Thanks to Okkervil's chiming, handsome folk rock--and also to Erickson's improbably buoyant spirit--the music doesn't sound defeated or even especially vulnerable. True Love makes good on its title.

This new release is a work of subtle majesty, sidestepping whatever you might think of as "folktronica" while still keeping everything from running into the red.

Brothers finds the Black Keys digging their own space, one that needn’t be geographically defined.

'Young Hearts Spark Fire' showcases their gleeful exuberance, but even on more subdued numbers like 'Sovereignty,' they still sound like two kids who don't yet know their own strength.

What still holds up is the low-end garage-rock throb of Mick Taylor and Keith's guitars with bassist Bill Wyman, and the idiosyncratic bite of Jagger's diction. But even Mick's attempts to offend (like changing the age of that stray cat from 15 to 13) make this special four-disc 40th-anniversary "deluxe" edition more historic document (and collectible!) than satisfying listen.

Singing gets no more graceful than Green’s hot buttered tenor, which he plies here with every micron of grace and soul he can muster. Add the Dap-King Horns (able backers of Sharon Jones and Amy Winehouse) and this is more than a soul album. It’s an album with soul.

Although some songs ("Taxi Cab" and "Holiday" especially) can make it seem like just another, nicer sweater to knot around our necks, the other word I never expected to use here is perhaps the most important for a young band of VW's talent: better.

Rough-edged and overdriven in the right places, super-slick as their Reagan-era new-wave touchstones elsewhere, this pomo-funk concoction from Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé is like a French kiss from Sonny Crockett.

Though the Long Beach band's sound may not be the most original going, Avi Buffalo pull it off with polish, not sacrificing quality production or songwriting for the sake of a vibe.

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

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.

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

In short, it's a triumph. Yes, it's still messy, and yes, Patrick Flegel's apathetic nasal vocals are too saturated, or buried in the mix, or both, but the intricate musicianship and songwriting take this from "yet another lo-fi garage album" to mini masterpiece.

This is not so much a reinvention as another way to look deep into the heart of Elliott's music. It's also an early nominee for folk album of the year.

Here's one of the few first-quarter releases of 2011 that people will still be listening to in 2012.

The bilious frontman has aged like a cheap wine: embittered, but with enough kick left to make for a good time.

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

Songwriter Stuart Murdoch often makes good on Morrissey's promise to deliver songs that live up to their titles.

Their fourth album isn’t substantially different from their first three: Jones’s delivery, alternately muscular and tender, and the band’s total empathy with the genre’s rules elevate each tune to lost-classic status.

The Unthanks’ voices are hair-raisingly exquisite in the most sororal of ways.

Full of airy vocals and synths, the album sounds as if it could lift off at any moment if not for the drum thumps tethering it down. But the beats sound weighty only in contrast.

It's a refined sense of balance that sets her apart from Grouper and Julia Holter, artists to whom Evans is too often compared.

'(Keep Eye On) Others' Gain' and the title track sound similarly hopeful. The gloom is still there on 'You Remind Me of Something' and 'Willow Trees Bend,' but it feels less crushing. There is also more variety to the sonic textures.

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

Damaged isn’t the most tuneful record Wagner and company have made.

Here, as on 2005’s "Takk," Sigur Ros have chosen to distill their rapture epics into shorter, more accessible bursts of swelling beauty. Yet this album still offers all the signature touchstones that make the band so deliciously unlike their post-rock contemporaries.

Even more than on last year’s auspicious digital-only "Exposion," Austin’s White Denim stomp down the fine line between fertile versatility and iffy uncertainty. More often than not on Fits, this works out awesome.

Metals packs more sonic punch than its 2007 predecessor, but the problem here is not with recording quality--it's libido.

This, their third album is as ambitious as its predecessors but mutes the joy in favor of a more serious tone and tighter focus--well, as tight as an album with a 10-minute number called 'Dragon's Lair' can be. The results are mixed.

With Martine's fine-grain arrangements giving texture to Veirs's accounts of paddling down rivers and dreaming of silver silos. It's all exceedingly lovely stuff.

Here the material has the swagger and toughness of loud, sloppy rock.

Even Youngster’s more modest near-ballads, like 'My Year in Lists,' preserve the band’s boisterous style through outlandish lyrics (“You said, ‘Send me stationery to make me horny’/So I always write you letters in multi-colors”) and ecstatic delivery, making twee fare like long-distance relationships or working in a bookstore seem like serious pop paydirt.

Fire from the Sky fully returns the band to what made Shadows Fall so appealing in the first place--without taking a step backward.

This is accessible music pushed to the very edge of accessibility, far away from the safety of the band's song-oriented efforts "At War with the Mystics" and "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots."

It takes a liner note and lyric look-along to absorb the full dose, but "Marvin" clicks immediately. Same goes for the thoughtfully morbid "Border Crossing" and "Kitchen Sink," on which Dolan throws everything from introspection to a wee bit of bounce.

There's some obligatory Velvet Underground deference, like the jumpy "Hey Jane," but for the most part the new disc is more in line with the soaring sing-a-long brilliance of "So Long You Pretty Things" and the simplistic "Too Late."

For the most part an exercise in Prince-like electro-funk, full of squelchy keyboard fuzz and chicken-scratch guitar noise and absurdly complicated falsetto harmonies.

It's exactly the kind of album one imagines Bird could whip up on a lazy Sunday afternoon after a cat-nap.

Ay Ay Ay, the second full-length effort from Chilean-born, German-raised Matias Aguayo (who now splits time between Buenos Aires and Paris) is, in source and spirit, one of the most human dance-pop records of the year.

It's heartbreakingly gorgeous, and if it's sometimes easy to miss the club-kid joie de vivre Antony brought to last year's brilliant Hercules and Love Affair album, well, that disc didn't have this one's lush Nico Muhly string arrangements.

Mirror Traffic is the first time he's tried to make a Jicks-as-band record digestible.

After years of being the untrained savage in the china shop of modern metal, HOF may find themselves owning the store with this accomplished thrash platter.

Johnny Jewel's trademark retro-futuro-electro production sound underpins this 16-track set with a dreamy, after-the-afterparty atmosphere that feels like it could go on all night long.

Dye It Blonde slows down a tad, too often eschewing bright, spot-on hooks in favor of washed-out '60s texture. But when they get it, they really get it.

Loaded with the sort of multi-tiered melodies you find in the early work of XTC.

Fans of old-time music, that vague notion of a genre called Americana, and bedrock artists like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard should find Dirt Farmer, Helm’s first solo disc in 25 years, appropriately haunting.

It's all a lot to wrap your head around, and depending on your mindset, you could either follow the sound collage down the rabbit hole or simply ride the surface-level groove.

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

Indeed, although she's best known for those late-'70s Hotel Chelsea/CBGB-era fringe-punk albums, Outside Society illuminates some of Smith's underrated pop-minded phases.

Smith seems to struggle with whether he wants to write emotional pop songs or dark experimental soundscapes, but the push and pull between the two sentiments is ultimately gorgeous.

All in all, not bad for the inevitably disappointing follow-up to the greatest rap disc ever made.

Though the Random Axe effort is relatively high-profile, these three conjure one another's grimiest gusto.

Almost dreamlike in his flow, Thundercat totes us along by way of his agile bass-neck work, sly Rhodes riffs, and vocals that sound filtered through daisies and sunshine.