From start to finish, it’s a solid bit of pop, one that clearly took a lot of hard work to make.

Luck in the Valley expands on his previous palette and culminates the sounds that have been gracefully flowing from his fingers for the past decade as a solo artist.

Unless you’re already a Music Tapes fan, chances are you haven’t experienced anything quite as exquisitely raw, effortlessly transportive, and charmingly distinct in a long time.

The music on Safe is embedded in the contours of an anxiety attack itself. Rather than an attempt at inducing states of rest, the music is contrarily restless and embroiled in agony.

Jay-Z has rebounded to make one of the year's most interesting and engaging rap records with a sense of immediacy and wordplay that no Denzel Washington film could match.

Tommy is exhausting, refreshing, new.

A stunning solo debut.

So when the repetitive rhythms of 23 don’t bowl you over like the first synth lines of Melody, allow yourself the opportunity to sit through its entirety. What you’ll find is an album that reveals its true personality slowly, surely, and yes, lovingly.

Behold both as an artifact and as a word doesn’t invalidate utterance however; rather, it invites unbound reflection.

More often than not, Chung’s tireless attention to his work is well-edited, and even the most chaotic and boisterous tracks are riveting.

It’s a diverse group and they’re doing some excellent work. Really great stuff.

Even at its densest, Whole and Cloven, the third solo record for Bowles, sounds almost desultory, a great credit to his compositional approach.

Andorra is a psychedelic and polyrhythmic trip to a place even less known than the actual country and a momentous addition to Caribou’s enviable discography.

A return to/remaining within form where Carey’s freewheeling guitar and (thankfully) sandblasted and virtuosic voice beam at us from our speakers in triumphant denouement.

Of course, songs like the playful “Lost My Head There” and the searching “Dust Bunnies” could just as easily be about the consequences of excessive drug consumption or no-less excessive levels of modern stress, yet the persistence of the self-alienation motif amid slanted nods to his career in music end up strongly insinuating that his growing status as a rock icon is weakening the already weak hold he has over himself.

All works of art, like all minds, have the potential to overcome mere sentiment. And that potential is glimpsed here in 10 restless hatchlings that make up Carla Bozulich’s new and perhaps most essential record.

Wilco are just doing what they do best, and doing it better than ever.

As they stand with Ice Cream Spiritual, Ponytail have captured an ample document of their instrumental majesty without losing a lick of their live energy.

Beach House have reached the point in their career where achieving grand melodic climaxes seems to come to them effortlessly, and on Teen Dream the climaxes are as thrilling as ever before.

Nine Types of Light has the same basic sonic patina, but TV on the Radio still have cards left to play.

Daniel has successfully harnessed this concept to produce an impressively cohesive art object on all fronts, one that yields perhaps the most provocative statement any musician is likely to make all year. It just might be a little too provocative for some.

This is the new big British band? This is barely inspired enough to make it off campus.

With a less captivating vocalist, this kind of genre-hopping might have felt inconsistent, a potpourri in constant motion, too scattered to register an impact. But Polachek’s range, her penchant for leaving her gasps and deep breaths in her vocal tracks, her carefully thought-over phrasing — these tie Pang together into one very earwormy book of spells.

While Eden’s Eastern flavor is certainly enjoyable, it walks a thin line between cultural exploration and exploitation.

The delivery is too matter-of-fact, too genuine to evoke pity or sadness. It is lethargic, yet not dreary -- it grabs you violently and lays you down so, so gently.

The strength of Creature rests in its ability to reconcile the energy of her debut album, albeit and perhaps unfortunately without the youthful spirit, and the growth of her second album, without sounding in the least bit labored.

The experience is nothing less than fully immersive by the time we’ve made it through “Shelter Is Illusory,” the closest the album gets to true pop (aside from Armstrong’s co-written “Adamah”), replete with a gorgeous quasi-operatic upward-searching chorus from Armstrong and a keening processed-strings backing.

For all of its harshness and grit, Daniel Bachman is an elegant, personal work, a letter written cozily from the hearth of modern country music, its ink smudges and scrawl an affectionate indicator of the hands that wrought them.