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.

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

Non-Believers slips masterfully between vantage points and emotions.

It’s an impressive show of strength and act of endurance not just in its multi-part structure but also in Gelb’s long term commitment to his craft and his determination to make something endearing out of the downcast canvas that he’s made his own.

Jamie XX has rearticulated dance music once again. This is an album that surfs from one emotional peak to the next. It’s an album I was actually sad to have end.

Both rocking and reflective, Small Town Dreams is chock full of the kind of ready for prime time anthems that effectively assert both his acumen and authority.

These days lots of different bands/songs are called noise pop, but these folks are doing it right.

This is a well-crafted album that manages to reach some rare sonic ground save for a few missteps. The band works best when it is allowed to let the songs build and layer over one another.

Closing entries, “Oh Dolores” and “The Walls Have Drunken Ears,” provide the album with its most emphatic impressions, leaving no bridge untethered.

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

While not much new ground is broken on A Forest of Arms, and it fails to surpass 2012’s excellent New Wild Everywhere, something can be said for the additional polish the music gets from heavy string embellishment and rather refined production values.

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.

If this album doesn’t bowl you over, it doesn’t disappoint either and rest assured that their next record will be something different that you didn’t expect either.

The contrast between the style and the subject matter is so arresting that you kind of wonder what will happen on the next record when Nelson is, perhaps, not mad anymore.

Clearly, Boz is back, and at age 70, he’s never sounded so assured.

The real nuances come out when this music is heard closely on headphones, but even when they blare out of speakers, there is something alluring to grab the ear and pull you in.

Despite the unlikely set-up, there’s a classic archetypical feel to the set as a whole.

You almost can’t grudge Bishop for his globe-hopping, 9-5 shirking, guitar-buying existence when it produces music as wonderful as this.

Working with a cast of Chicago jazz, improv and experimental luminaries and newcomers, Walker casts a most enchanting spell on Primrose Green, and while it may reflect his influences more than spell out his vision, the love he bears for those influences comes through in every plucked and sung note.

Some long-time fans may object to Lightning Bolts new legibility, missing the communal chaos and staticky buzz that made listening to previous outings like opening a box of bees. But the maelstrom still looms, the intensity remains, it’s just a bigger, more focused sound.

Carlile has that unique ability to convey sentiments that can be both celebratory and circumspect, and on tracks like “Wherever Is You Heart,” “The Things I Regret” and “Blood Muscle Skin & Bone,” her declarations of devotion are sung with both assertion and affirmation.

Their self-titled debut was a good record, the follow up is a great one.

A vigorous, emphatic outing that offers little let up in terms of its energy and intensity.

There’s a lot here, all of it sounding exquisite.

Citizen Zombie resurrects a band that’s still evolving, rather than a nostalgia act, and is all the better for it.

Staunch and undeterred to the brink of defiance, Complicated Game finds McMurtry’s rugged resilience again setting the tone.

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

Hexadic is a dramatic shift for Six Organs of Admittance, lurching into noise and abstraction with hardly a nod to guitar folk or psychedelic rock.