It’s fascinating to hear how some songs started in one direction and darted into another one entirely.

It’s an ideal album for this decisively odd moment, its homemade feel (much of it was recorded in her house, with percussion partially supplied by objects around her home) and sense of awe giving it a defiant energy. ... A thrill ride.

Where “good kid” was a perceptive look at Lamar’s adolescence in a small part of Los Angeles, Butterfly is a weary assessment of his adulthood, and a world that’s bigger, more complex, and more flawed that he knew. If the albums share anything, it’s that they’re both cinematic. But the movie Lamar is shooting now puts the current era into a more fitting frame.

For all of the gussy rhythms--which can stop just this side of overly cute--and legit power, there’s real subtlety at work, too, and in unlikely spots.

The album is a 55-minute blitz of thumping beats and head-spinning rhymes that blur by you before you have a chance to process them.

Backed by his new band the Vanguard, to whom the album is jointly credited, his sprawling funk grooves and pointed (if characteristically indecipherable) lyrics are still strikingly timely.

Maybe it's not surprising that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is so seamlessly his personal best.

The set list for most of these shows was identical, so you get as many as 20 versions of certain songs. For all that, listening through the whole of this box set is an exhilarating experience.

The hits (“I Will Always Love You,’’ “9 to 5’’) are here, but the rarities make this box set essential listening for diehards and newbies alike.

Heard in its complete, unruly, sometimes crazed glory, Miles at the Fillmore shows just how furious the evolutionary pace of his music was at this point.

A taut display of his dry wit and ability to wring beauty out of even the most harrowing human ideals.

Channel Orange stands strong on its own merits.

The highs wouldn’t feel so high without the lows here, which is a regular trope of the genre; but as with all tropes, execution trumps invention, and the Hotelier executes exceptionally.

The Compton MC's long-awaited major label debut is a breakthrough, as he both resurrects and reinvents West Coast hip-hop.

It's both jarring and exhilarating how disjointed the record often feels, from the dreamy Tin Pan Alley balladry of "Sir Greendown'' to the Screamin' Jay Hawkins freakout "Come Alive (War of the Roses).''

The Guitar Song comes grouped in two parts, a "Black Album" and a "White Album," structured, according to Johnson, as a progressive movement from a dark and sordid beginning to a reassuring and redemptive end. That structure isn't always discernable in listening. What is immediately evident, though, is that this is a phenomenal collection of country music.

As it stands, Stevens’s words drive these songs, and not always in the most linear fashion. Lyrics that meander in unruly metric on the page are parsed into eloquent couplets that, somehow, sound conversational.

Thrilling and joyous, fierce and focused, the women sound like they’re having the time of their lives sinking their teeth back into the music together.

Inevitably, there’s some repetition--no fewer than 12 different attempts at “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” for example. What’s exhilarating is the chance to eavesdrop on the evolution of the songs as Dylan grasps, bit by bit, for the emotional center of each one.

The album bubbles over with insidious grooves, inventive samples, and lissome rhyming about things frivolous and fraught.

The Dusk in Us is, then, a 44-minute master class in wielding extreme art toward human ends, using hardcore’s berating heft as a foundation for dirging experimentalism.

Musically, the band mixes its customary blast beat-driven grindcore maelstroms--the punishing one-two assault of “Smash a Single Digit” and “Metaphorically Screw You,” the layered, complex “Cesspits”--with industrial dolor (“Dear Slum Landlord”) and junk-bin clangor (the title track): caustic nods to influential circa-early ’80s noise-mongers like Public Image Ltd. and Swans.

There’s enough variety here that you understand why the whole shebang needed to come out--and vintage audiophiles will just about bow down before the quality of these tapes.

An album this endlessly chill might get boring in a less talented songwriter’s hands, but Musgraves never fails to draw listeners into her reverie.

It’s a refreshing, empowering record that embraces finding identity in a lack thereof.

Apple has been here before, but it makes her new album no less arresting.

Some of the phrasing on "MPP" sticks; some of it soars; most of it slips and slides through puddles of rich sonic texture. Only at a distance does the magic of the whole major-key mess become clear.

The album isn't as heady as She Wolf, but there's an easy charm to how Shakira deftly navigates such a mash of genres.

Even the very concept of a songwriter laying down a plethora of new songs in his publisher's office for others to perform feels out-of-time - quaintly and genuinely so.

On Divers, her breathtaking follow-up to 2010’s “Have One on Me,” the singer, songwriter, and harpist affirms her stature as a visionary. It’s the most streamlined of her four albums.

Nobody else is doing what Holter is doing, and it’s well worth following her lead.

His first album of new material since 2004's "Real Gone," it's also one of Waits's most balanced works in recent memory.

It’s a jittering, coruscating sucker punch of an album--and St. Vincent’s first bona fide masterpiece.

It's that sprawling sense of humanity that makes Dear Science such a rich listen.

A sublime, succinct overview of the composer’s sprawling catalog.

An existential crisis has never sounded like so much fun as it does in Barnett’s songs.

The record is a celebration of life and a reminder of how rock ’n’ roll can help transcend grief and loss. The E Street Band sounds rejuvenated with Roy Bittan’s piano work and Charlie Giordano’s resounding organ swirls and swells driving the songs and echoing early E Street magic.

In Rainbows is a wonderful, absorbing album.

Invisible Cinema is the opposite of a silent film. The soundtrack is provided; the listener brings the visuals.

Less glitchy and bass-led than FlyLo’s previous work, it enters him in the canon of mystics and psychedelic journeyers who’ve sought to crack the doors of perception.

Exit, which was mixed and recorded on a laptop, using a popular program called Pro Tools, is a tribute to the unexpected beauty of everyday things.

The album manages to co-opt elements of the Beach Boys - soaring harmonies, tack piano, orchestral arrangements - yet doesn't particularly sound as if it were recorded by the group.

The album is dense and intriguing, neither a straightforward rock record nor so wildly experimental as to be inaccessible.

Quieter but equally captivating.

While the sound of mbv is reassuringly familiar--openers “she found now” and “only tomorrow” tread melodic paths that seem strangely familiar even as they wander--its newness is remarkable.

It’s a roller coaster, to be sure, but it’s one that Olsen controls with a steady hand even as she sings for her life.

'We Call Upon the Author to Explain' goes the title of one song, but Cave offers no explanations and no justifications merely another lean, assured set of glamorously gloomy songs.

In addition to producing the set with an ear for warmth, Grohl plays drums on “Let It Rain” which definitely gives the band some extra snap. And the group’s signature harmonies are lush throughout. Given the title, we look forward to a possible “Vol. 2.”

It’s among her finest work in a 35-year career, assured and at ease, and one of 2014’s first great albums.

It's a perfect point of introduction to one of the most challenging and satisfying talents in jazz today.

While there are a few standard contemporary country tracks included in the mix--including a serviceable cover of Gavin DeGraw’s “Not Over You,” featuring DeGraw on harmony vocals--the tracks that stand out have a fresh appeal.

The album is simultaneously beautiful and shocking, its razor-sharp originality infinitely relatable.

Vince Staples goes all-in on his sprawling double-LP commercial debut, and the returns are decent if not world-beating.

Raising Sand is the stuff of which music lovers' dreams are made: an unexpected collision of two distinct but complementary worlds that transcend the sum of their parts to create something unique and mesmerizing.

With 14 tracks clocking in at around 30 minutes, the album is a remarkably fast listen given the amount of detail packed into each song. Mitski is generally successful at wrapping big ideas into impactful vignettes, although there are some points that move so fast they feel inconsequential.

There’s definitely an epic heft to it, aided by a deep, varied bench of guest talent.

Not quite of this world and not quite over the edge, these earthy, epic songs aren't meant to save us, only to supply some monumental crescendos and a wide-screen view on the way down.

You barely detect it at first, but something miraculous happens on Arcade Fire's revelatory third album. The songs breathe--occasionally in long exhales, sometimes in staccato gasps.

It’s refreshing to hear Jamie xx go so widescreen.

Suffice to say that if you have enjoyed Griffin's repertoire of considered and emotionally precise songs -- as fans from the Dixie Chicks to Solomon Burke to Jessica Simpson have -- you will find your life enriched by "Children Running Through."

As a gateway drug for newbies, "Part Lies" is a good introduction to the rich pagaent that was R.E.M.'s musical life.

Whatever the distance between image and actuality, Springsteen always told the truth to us about the things that mattered. In Springsteen on Broadway, that truthfulness adds up to an honest self-portrait.

Her latest album marks yet another sea change, a clanging, clamoring work of art that's as disturbing as it is moving. Let England Shake is staggering, from its seasick melodies to its visceral imagery of soldiers falling like "lumps of meat."

“Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)” starts the record with a foreboding sound that moves to stately piano and tremolo strings before exploding into soul. Nirvana’s “In Bloom” is turned into sweeping countrypolitan; “All Around You” offers killer country soul. “A Sailor’s Guide” confirms that Simpson isn’t content to stand in the same place for very long.

"Emma" was gorgeous in its austerity, but its follow-up is staggering for its vision. Bon Iver's self-titled sophomore release will go down as one of this year's most arresting albums, drunk on its own impressionistic charms and oblivious to anyone's expectations but Vernon's.

His deeply felt meditations on matters of the heart and the soul are matched by the meticulously detailed, gorgeously rendered music that surrounds them.

He's at his best when he slips into his expressive falsetto, but Miguel frequently comes off too remote for a true soul singer.

You’d be hard-pressed to name another songwriter who sounded so fully formed at such a tender age.

Halcyon Digest is as comforting in its familiar feel as it is startling for its sonic variety.

For those on the lookout for alternatives to what currently passes for country music, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter is the latest reason to cheer.

Stott doesn't just produce these tracks, he haunts their halls.

Platinum is a worthy follow-up; Lambert wrote or co-wrote half of the album’s 16 tracks, which bounce from humid honky tonk to glossy arena stage to rustic front porch with sass and ease.

It’s definitely more expansive sonically than Monroe’s previous work, which doesn’t mean it sounds disjointed; rather, it comes across as presenting different sides of the same artist.

This is soul music with personality and real instruments; best of all, it’s unflinchingly honest.

It's nothing more--or less--than the latest chapter in his extraordinary, funhouse-mirror version of honky-tonk traditionalism.

Grizzly Bear has learned not to stress over its craft, and Shields feels all the more fresh as a result.

LP1 is the kind of soft-focus album that the late American R&B singer Aaliyah might have made.

Saadiq, the former leader of Tony! Toni! Toné! and keeper of old-school R&B flame, delivers a deliciously good set of playful yet engaging songs that nods to the past while sounding thoroughly of the moment.

With both her words and music, Shires isn’t holding herself back on To the Sunset, and though the left turns might take some getting used to for old fans, her growing conviction in herself as a songwriter and frontwoman is enough reason to stick around.

His latest is the closest he has come to making a masterpiece in a very long time.

40 years after his debut, the curly-haired songwriter continues to play to his strength: three-minute social commentaries that might sound bitter if they weren't so funny.

The results are extremely life-affirming.

Full of irresistible grooves, quotable lyrics, and moments of spine-tingling beauty, American Dream is a worthy addition to the LCD Soundsystem discography.

With a musician as important as Bob Dylan, our appetite for fresh material and new insights is as deep as the artist's song trove, and Tell Tale Signs, the eighth installment of the songwriter's Bootleg Series, is a feast for casual fans and Dylanologists alike.

Tone is everything for the War on Drugs. You hear tone, a silvery shade of effortless cool, in the electric guitars that ring out in ricocheting patterns and in singer-songwriter-visionary Adam Granduciel’s expansive vocals.

All at Once is an accomplished, expertly crafted album, the kind that’s the product of years slugging it out in dank basements and half-empty bars.

In a way, it’s all as tightly woven as his Grammy-winning work, even if none of these cuts fit that album’s meticulous narrative.

Easy listening this is not, but Shaking the Habitual is at least bold and brash, the work of a band hungry to explore strange sonic textures.

A few tracks (the fuzzy 'Fistful of Tears') miss the mark, but this is the necessary R&B return from one of our great--and seemingly lost--soulmen.

The album that resulted is Simon’s richest, most instantly appealing collection since “Graceland.”

Those cameos [Elton john & Stephen Fry] aren't exactly intrusive, but they do weigh down an album that's otherwise content to drift as gently as the snow in question.

A new Paul Simon record is predictable in the most comforting of ways: gentle world music affiliations, keen narrative, righteous guitar work, effortless vibe. Though his voice retains its coy, boyish charm from 40 years ago, Simon's gift for melody has now been superseded by a knack for rich texture and complex rhythm.

Portishead's methods are hardly frozen in time. And that evolution is what makes these elaborately layered tracks such a knotty, mesmerizing listen.

Ultimately, Stay Positive achieves the admirable feat of being a record you can listen closely to or rock out to, equally adaptable to late-night wallowing and the party at the water tower.

There may not be any moments of dramatic catharsis to compete with “Sea of Love” or “Mr. November,” but the band’s gift for slow, sad beauties (“Nobody Else Will Be There,” “Carin at the Liquor Store”) remains undiminished. Even as they tinker with their style, The National can’t help but sound like themselves.

Fleet Foxes mostly seem content to plug away at the atmosphere established on their debut. The big question on "Helplessness Blues'' isn't where the songs will go, but how much distanced reverb will be featured on any given cut.

Far from a compilation of rough mixes and rejects, any of the songs on this disc -- as spare in sound as they are elegant in form -- would have fit beautifully on a mid-'90s Elliott Smith album.

The result is a brand of soul music that's less susceptible to the revivalist tag than anything else coming out of the Daptone studios.