Sunbathing Animal offers up lucky-13 tracks and nary a stale song.

Like all of his best work, Fantasizing About Being Black makes an impact on the soul that will be felt until the end of one’s days.

Surprisingly sedate for a final blow-out, Throw It to the Universe sends The Soundtrack of Our Lives down the road to retirement with beauty, class and grace.

With electronic pop maverick Lawrence English producing, they have, if not exactly tamed their sound, at least neatened it up.

He and his group put everything they could into every track--or at least the every one collected here.

Impossible Truth feels like both an empirical observation and an epiphany, a glimpse of the glow behind the world itself.

The musicianship is so uniformly good that you forget about it and allow yourself to be swept onward by the songs.

Howl is an unequivocal roots recording, an evocative combination of Bluegrass celebration, deep bottom Blues and total allegiance to authentic Americana.

While the intricacies of Dreams Say, View, Create, Shadow Leads could be exhausting to a casual listener, those with attentive ears will be enamored by the myriad sonic nuances present in the album.

With her almost stream of consciousness talk-sing, some melodies on Somewhere Else are better formed than others. Like Patti Smith her songs can be as strong ultimately as the care invested in her hooks.

Something More Than Free is like a novel set to music, each of its 11 songs a separate chapter that, when absorbed in full, leave you with the same kind of psychic shift a good book sets into motion.

Votolato’s new album, inexplicably titled Hospital Handshakes, offers yet another example of his considerable skills, a collection of songs that fires up an urgency that extends from first song to last.

The songs, then, range from spare, acoustic folk blues to full-fleshed extravaganzas, yet even the most dizzying tracks have an introspective cast.

Why Make Sense revels in ‘80s dance, R&B, hip hop and pop throughout straddles between sheer musical delight and melancholy as the upbeat music balances earnest lyrics.

Hearing it all together, over four discs, his innovations don’t seem as radical as they might have been considered at the time, but they’re nonetheless fascinating to devour.

False Flag was a raging, hairy monster of an album; Formerly Extinct is its subtler, more intricate, better groomed (but no less wild) cousin.

The production, composing, arrangements, and playing makes A Kind Revolution something uniquely special in the Paul Weller catalogue. Weller is a talent like no other, and you will not be disappointed.

Marrying Beam’s continued interest in keeping the beat moving with some of the strongest folk/pop melodies he’s yet composed, Ghost on Ghost evolves Iron & Wine music even further into the realm of the mystic.

An exciting and distinct new spin on the dreampop revival.

A journey as personal as Lowe’s can only translate into universal messages that people receive in their own way, regardless of which way their winds blow.

Terraplane, though, is the sound of a man utterly rejuvenated.

Dispossession works as a whole, rather than a collection of songs.

Earle has proven that he can embrace the past, look forward to the future and find peace through his music.

Having not lost a single step, Failure is as potent a force now as it was when its style of music was king.

The operative term, then, is explosion, and the JSBX effectively conjure the jittery, edgy, colorful vibe of the city they live in.

Far from sounding like lesser cast-offs, the songs here are just as worthy as anything off those earlier albums.

Superbly performed, the show is recorded with perfect clarity by NPR’s engineers, and packaged with an extensive booklet of essays and photos. Truth, Liberty & Soul is no barrel-scraping collection of effluvia, but a vital addition to the slim catalog of a genius.

Mr. Impossible [is] a record that shows a band evolving, as it embraces full-on melodicism with a cheeky goofball spirit.