If labelmates OutKast had condensed Speakerboxxx/The Love Below into one LP, this is the kind of mixed bag it likely would've created.

Lost in the Dream matches last year's Wakin' on a Pretty Daze from Vile riff for riff.

L'Enfant Sauvage... is the merde.

For certain, the low-voiced local occupies artistic territory with Leonard, but Gold Record also spins reminiscent of Bob Dylan's summer surprise Rough and Rowdy Ways in its zoomed-out lyrical portraiture and employment of pop culture references.

Kendrick Lamar does an impeccable job of wrapping up the entire Butterfly process in a tidy bow.

"Lucifer on the Sofa" has enough endearing moments to sit comfortably in the meaty middle of the band's catalog.

Spiral Shadow assimilates both paradigms as if Jane's Addiction and Kyuss shared leathers.

Accompanied by piano, ex-Ulver shredder Håvard, and the Norwegian Girls' Choir, the now-New Yorker strips away intricate instrumental passages and dramatic flourish in favor of direct, oft-soaring communication. ... Brutal beauty.

The Odessa Tapes has it all, most tellingly a warmth and intimacy foreign to More a Legend's typically starched Nashville conformity.

Joe Ely brings the desolation of Texas plains to life in a manner that's profoundly inspired.

Rook is an epic undertaking that plumbs the depths of the seas ("Leviathan, Bound") to the heavens themselves ("I Was a Cloud," "The Hunter's Star") for the sounds that make the stories sing.

Moments, ideas, turns of phrase are jumbled together, good and bad, resulting in the sweet smell of garbage.

There's effortless, unhurried groove as he slides from the disarming grit of Nineties hip-hop in "Without You" to Sixties soul on "The Bird" and honey-dripped R&B with "Am I Wrong."

Abandoning "another album with a rhythmic premise" according to So Beautiful's deluxe edition DVD, Paul Simon nevertheless injects echoes of Graceland and The Rhythm of the Saints in "Dazzling Blue" and "Love Is Eternal Sacred Light," respectively, feeding their author's master class mixtape of varied musical mattes (the Moby-like spiritual sampling on "Getting Ready for Christmas Day") like There Goes Rhymin' Simon and Still Crazy After All These Years.

Ten years later, they've managed to capture our paranoid times and sound transcendent as well.

Hooks sparse and structure loose, Iridescence redefines future pop.

Toasty as vinyl, comparable to Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's CDs of Nevermind (1991) and In Utero (1993), firstborn Bleach reiterates its place not at the front of the line but in between its two older brawlers.

An excellent, bracing, work from Jason Molina and company.

The new songs have attitude, but they sound like outtakes from 2000's classic Kid A and 2001's lesser Amnesiac.

This solo debut makes all the right moves to sail past retro on its way to timeless.

Where its predecessor corralled modern versions of The Canterbury Tales that the band's foxhunting moniker continues to evoke, Pecknold's Helplessness relies on a suitelike flow in the absence of greatest hits.

It's evident that the band's traditionally simple sound has been augmented with greater influences and a desire to overstuff, miraculously without overkill.

There's sex, drugs, crab cakes, and people you've never met and never will, including James Gandolfini and the children of Newtown, Conn., but their presence devastates nonetheless.

New Moon is a near yearbook, a simple reminder of the talent and fruition of Steven Paul Smith, friend, comedian, and one of the greatest songwriters of this generation.

The lengths of hiss and silence can be unnerving, especially when his ethereal prose floats into a void. Yet when the swells come and Walker breaks the waves, it's a thing of absolute beauty, and the black turns neon.

Eccentric, eclectic, and brilliant.

Happy Songs for Happy People offers many of the thrills of Rock Action, but without the diversity and succinctness that made that album shine.

An album that absolutely cannot be ignored.