While some may quibble that the set isn't chronologically ordered, that makes each disc more like a concert unto itself. All the hits and some deep cuts are present and accounted for, but the covers are the most interesting.

Savage Young Dü aches breadth and depth.

Not as big and bright as 2003's It Still Moves, yet with the early-career sprawl edited out, Z's as lovingly worn as a vintage clothing score.

A legendary liquor-soaked session with Tom Waits, two discs containing a ragged-but-right contemporary concert, and a booklet that takes an in-depth look at the making of DTAS crackle and pop, but in revisiting its creators' original intent, a formerly sneered at LP becomes essential.

Clark's exacting sensibility makes every song a new experience, finally birthing an album where every shot hits its mark.

Run the Jewels 2 gut-punches the competition into second place.

Since I Left You is as much of a revelation now as Primal Scream's life-changing Screamadelica was a decade ago.

Three albums isn't especially encompassing, but if you're invested in deciphering the legend of Captain Beefheart, Sun Zoom Spark boxes up more vitals.

Overlong as they are, these are beautifully recorded tracks: unadorned, antiquated, intimate.

Live at the Paramount--also included as a CD--comes off as otherwise bloodless. Joyless. That goes double for the lifeless remastering of the original LP.

There's an enduring ebb and flow, and perhaps some intentional indecision, as the Denton-born Sylvester Stewart swings the band from humanist psychedelia to Church of God in Christ gospel modulation, James Brownian run-outs, and even showtune sing-alongs.

At times atmospheric with a grounded mysticism ("Astral Plane" and sweeping strings on "Just in Time"), June's voice still serves as mesmerizing focus, especially the slow drawl and moan of "The Front Door" and closing blast of "Got Soul."

Throughout, the 29-year-old Lone Star ambassador tucks the hallmarks of her roots--winsome steel guitar, rambling banjo, acoustic guitar--into genre-hopping, the elements present and persistent enough to make the album, at its core, country. Purists will disagree, but if anyone insists on calling this Musgraves' crossover, they must admit this: Golden Hour is a crossover done right.

Still the same Fiona Apple: bigger than "all the fishes in the sea."

Animal Collective has backslid into a comfortable, but unfortunately unexciting, middle ground.

The real feel good "hit" of the summer.

The Demos, Remixes & Live Radio half of Illmatic XX, the 20th-anniversary celebration of the Queensbridge rapper's seminal debut, deviates the right direction from its 10-year predecessor.

Every emotion is intense and genuine, and the musicianship is just as moving as Mercer's lyrics.

At its core, this constitutes a hearty glimpse of young Bob Dylan changing the music business, and the world, one note at a time.

It sounds unfiltered, raw, and rough, and the quartet's mixture of guitar, organ, fiddle, percussion, and flute (Jethro Tull in the house) makes it all the more authentic.

[A] meticulously compiling fan favorites, deep cuts, rarities, and alternate versions from that 40 years' worth of work. There's hardly a bad track in the bunch.

Though Waits holds a reserved seat in the small club of artists who don't put out bad albums, the whiff of wild youth hangs around Bad as Me as if it was recorded in back alleys, behind churches, and in bars after hours.

Gone are any remnants of yesteryear's "rock music" ideology, thrusting Radiohead into a mature state of potentially their best work still to come.

On third full-length Dear Science, the Brooklynites have turned a corner, safe in the knowledge they can pen a good pop song. Not everything works, of course.

Her proper debut full-length follows suit, but honed with more power.

Wrapping in just under an hour, this ultra tight-knit collection telegraphs timelessness in story and song, a lasting chronicle rooted in folk tradition that sits among Griffin's best work.

An 8-CD vinyl replica box set of no additional material.

Anyone on the fence after 2004's Your Blues need only hear Bejar bark, "I tried to enjoy myself at the society ball" on the luxurious "A Dangerous Woman up to a Point" to see his strength as a songwriter.