Now six solo albums in, Vile sounds like no one but himself.

One thing we do know after listening to Leucocyte--the Esbjorn Svensson Trio's grandest achievement--is that its leader had much more to say, much more to explore.

This is industrial-strength Beach House with its hallmarks intact, just bigger and better. With co-producer Chris Coady, Legrand and Scally lift some of the haze that has often enveloped their music...now the band has given us this year’s first classic album.

Levon Helm's "Midnight Rambles" in Woodstock, N.Y., have become nearly as legendary as Helm. Occasionally, he takes the party to larger venues, as evidenced by this fabulous live CD.

The song [This Is Country Music] encapsulates Paisley's status as a premier upholder of traditional country within a contemporary framework, and the 15 songs that follow confirm that status.

On first listen, the disc seems unassuming because of its subtlety, but slowly it reveals its layers. The tracks about love, devotion, and transcendence are refreshingly honest and (mercifully) lacking in leering lasciviousness.

Utopia is both resolutely avant-garde and absolutely beautiful, a combination those who associate experimental music with dissonance and ugliness will find utterly paradoxical.

When Joyce Manor cracks open its sound the results are satisfying despite (or maybe because of?) being delivered in bite-size form.

The album will be attractive to head bangers, math rockers, and now even classic-rock devotees thanks to guitarists Brent Hinds's and Bill Kelliher's deep devotion to the almighty riff.

She’s the star of her own movie--and that’s very much what this album feels like--and she’s in charge.

Composition is just part of what makes pop music work, and the best tracks on In Conflict succeed on the arrangements and production as well as the writing.

What results is an album to live with, and to live inside: engrossing and necessary.

If this sounds ambitious, it is. But Russell pulls it off with an engaging nobility.

It adds up to an album of left-field soul that's downcast but not at all a bummer.

Baltimore's Dan Deacon has piled all facets of his musical persona together here.

Atkins’s songwriting has since mutated, so that even songs that would have fit on “Neptune City” (the remix-ready disco track “Girl You Look Amazing”) or “Mondo Amore” (the stomping country-gospel “Sin Song”) represent a progression.

Forget about the dreaded decline. Arctic Monkeys have moved from their alarmingly evolved infancy into rock toddlerhood with glibness, swagger, and whip-smart songs intact.

The smooth-groove classicism here is just part of Hamilton's mature command of the form, with none of neo-soul's studied Afro-Sheen patina.

The record is the most unvarnished rock music Palmer's ever created, leaning heavily on '80s goth and the oddball New Wave of folks like Lene Lovich.

This sensual song suite about the ephemeral nature of love and what it takes to sustain happiness should end up among this year’s finest efforts.

Thomas Mars sings with a casual amiability so hard to resist that it helps carry Phoenix through some of the less immediate material on the album's back half.

The disc is an affirmation that life, and hip-hop, can indeed get better.

Far from an indulgent wallow in saccharine nostalgia--and disproving absurd accusations of a quick-buck dip into a fountain of easygoing oldies a la Rod Stewart--the album is lean and subtle

Samson & Delilah casts the English singer and songwriter even further afield, a mesmerizing right turn into the murky waters of throbbing R&B and ambient dance pop.

BSP has backed up its postured oddities and idiosyncrasies with a new raison d'être: to deliver the true stuff of rock 'n' roll.

The dizzying succession of beats per minute paired with thoughtful lyrics about music's role in shaping memories gives Saint Etienne a chance to create a rare entity: Dance music for the thinking person.

Fade isn't a dramatic reinvention, or even necessarily any progression at all, just Yo La Tengo not needing to be anyone else.

Over the slack strum of guitar, Spaltro tells a spectral tale that feels like a hazy dream until a violent outburst yanks you elsewhere. That’s precisely where Spaltro likes to keep you: on edge.

Smith creates wide-eyed compositions with textures that cascade over one another, capturing the vast celestial wonder of synthesized sound.

It’s the work of a talented rapper who takes palpable pleasure in the possibilities of language.

At its best, Vampire Weekend takes the exceedingly familiar template of indie rock and invigorates it with a chiming guitar sound that suggests the band has been spending its downtime browsing afropop.org.

It sounds like a recipe for a dozen buzz bands this year, but Atlas Sound transcends the fads. Melodies shine through like faint stars through the window.

It's a rock album that mixes 30-year-old influences with the deep, hazy production of indie synth-poppers like M83.

Her songs have the sophistication and idiosyncracy of a singular talent. At times (“Show Me Love”) the ethereal arranging meanders, but mostly (“Bread,” “Kiss My Feet,” “Angel”) it has the authority of a signature.

It probably wasn't her intention, but Washburn ended up making a modern classic, a folk album for people who claim they don't like a such thing.

Rarely has spilling one's heart been such a colorful affair.

With graceful lyricism and intense instrumental juxtaposition, Levy manages to surprise listeners only two tracks in. ... It’s a showcase of Levy allowing herself to feel and explore as many emotions as she can, no matter how they manifest.

The album is dark and menacing, and also better than the first "Trill," even if Bun doesn't threaten to slap anyone in the face with a pie a la mode.

Singer-songwriter Eilen Jewell continues to move away from her dusty country sound with an album drenched in vibrato and overlaid at points with the trappings of West Coast noir.

Loveless continues to manifest a remarkable combination of bruised vulnerability and desperate longing, alongside a tough, self-deprecating resilience, but there’s more of the former and less of the latter this time.

The album traverses Ray Charles-like country soul, smoky late-night jazz, lush Western swing, and even a bit of Rockpile-style rockabilly.

The result is Vile's best record to date, an idiosyncratic amalgam of intimate performance and communal expression - and one that continues to reveal new layers upon repeated listens.

Like her heroes before her, B.B. King included, Raitt is clearly in it for the long haul, and not content to rely on past glory. Instead, she wisely digs Deep and her listeners are the better for it.

The striking thing about Justin Townes Earle's new record is the variety of styles it visits in just over 30 minutes. Just as striking, this variety doesn't come across as dabbling or disparity.

This album isn't for everyone, but it's as open-hearted and grittily triumphant as any you'll hear this year.

It’s an accomplished, enjoyable record from start to finish, regardless of references or lineage.

Recorded in five days with producer Four Tet and musical duo RocketNumberNine, the disc maintains a raw, improvisatory feel.

This isn’t complicated, just tasty, and performed with wit and expertise.

Hunter keeps on doing what he does, and on Hold On! he’s doing it as well as he ever has.

A collection of songs that proves nearly as personal, as socially aware, and as deft at intertwining the two, as was Pulp’s 1998 opus, ‘‘This Is Hardcore.’’

The disc exudes confidence on every front, though the group’s ambitions seem scaled up to world domination.

Solo is Iyer's grand statement, and with it he has fulfilled his promise.

While Waylon's shadow will remain a constant companion, the younger Jennings continues to prove that he's a great shot in his own right.

It’s a brave account of how you can fall out of love just as easily as you fell in. Like the first blush of a new romance, it is intoxicating.

By midway through the album’s opening title track — its rolling banjo, accordion, and bagpipes atop raging punk chords as Al Barr and Ken Casey stake out an us-versus-them ethos — they’ve practically ionized every molecule in the listener’s body until all that’s left is the rush that the band intended. Although it may be schtick, it’s a really good schtick, and the Murphys are damn good at it.

The Next Day offers many sides of a multifaceted artist and almost all of them mesmerizing, as the songs grow richer with each listen.

It marks the centennial of Guthrie's birth and is a fitting tribute.

[Banga] is a classic Patti Smith album in that it mixes pop panache with punk sensibilities and poetic ruminations.

Whereas second LP “You’re Gonna Miss It All” delivered Facebook rants from a self-pitying underclassman, Holy Ghost is the hard-charging graduation speech.

They wend through minimalist pinwheeling (“The sun roars into view”) and pared-down funk (“The rest of us”) to reach the title track’s Renaissance-motet epiphany, their odyssey made relatable through the grit, breath, and song that permeate their enchanting chronicle.

For a few tracks, like "Magic Chords," her sound starts becoming a trap for a song that never quite coalesces. But the flip side is "All I Can," which reveals a streak of slow-build adult pop craft that's kept under wraps for much of the album.

Cue up any of the songs on Nashville and you hear the sound of Stuart's mission being fulfilled.

Common Ground has the pluck and swing of a porch pickin’ party, with the Alvins swapping licks and vocals on a number of Broonzy classics.

The Weight of These Wings matches the take-no-prisoners attitude of her lyrics with music that travels unexpected routes but often winds up touching the soul.

With her lovely, expressive voice, she finds the truths at the core of each song, making this one of the early year’s breakthroughs.

The songs are bigger, the production is bolder, and Hop Along is more confident than ever, expertly weaving fresh, unexpected elements into its sound.

Spare and quirky, like a dub remix of some forgotten 1980s Top 40 hit, it slowly, repeatedly builds to a swooping chorus all the more melodious for its relative rarity.

The songs are meatier and dimensional, emboldened by whirling electronics, taut guitar solos, harder drums, disparate textures and moods, and a lyrical self-awareness that perhaps life isn't just one big basement dance party.

Layers of production can obscure the organic--or at least faux-organic--sounds of a ripping performance. That's not the case on the debut full-length album from French house duo Justice, whose complex, dark, and heavily pop-rock-influenced dance tracks span banging disco grooves to instrumental electro-funk space operas to minimalist hip-hop.

More important, the intimate atmosphere and the effortless rapport between Jarrett’s radiant chords and Haden’s eloquently simple bass lines remain.

A magnificent, subtle reshaping of classic honky-tonk sounds and sentiment, fulfills that promise and then some.

Whether he is grappling with his confusion with the modern world in the searching title track, mulling the delightful aggravations of relationships on “If It Wasn’t For You” and the joys of making up on “A Little Smile,” or working up a froth on his rage, rattle, and roll version of Television’s “See No Evil,” Jackson is in peak form.

Morning beautifully captures what makes this album so rich: that delicate divide between grandiose and intimate.

After 34 years of recording, the brothers think it's their best collection yet. Again breaking the artistic rule, they may be right.

Life Is Good, finds him humbled and reflective after his high-profile divorce from Kelis. This doesn't diminish his impact, as these songs mix anger, nostalgia, and insight.

Again Porter delivers passion and craft in abundance, owing to the songwriting, the acoustic-jazz arrangements (by producer Kamau Kenyatta and pianist Chip Crawford), and his corduroy-warm baritone, pliant and powerful.

The brisk 38-minute, 10-song collection brims with sideways guitar pluck and twang, warbly keys, and earwormy tunes that demand immediate repeated listens.

The result is this quite sensational new album that not only purges the darkness, but marks the finest music he has made.

An 80-minute prog-metal fever dream that proves the band is back and better than ever.

This being Dolly, there are the occasional missteps (the silly “Lover du Jour,” the overly earnest “Try”). But even when Parton goes camp and piles on the gloss, there’s still a big heart beating beneath the album’s surface, much like the artist herself.

On tracks like “Americans” and “Along,” this reverence for the synthetic is almost indistinguishable from his zeal for the real, and it’s a tension that gives all of R Plus Seven a unique sheen--and some potent fumes.

Sometimes his baritone carries lyrics that are blunt and tart, and others opaque and blurry, but never lacking bite.

While there are songs of undeniable artistic invention (“Dawn in Lexor,” “#CAKE”) there are also moments of ostentatious indulgence, intellectual handstands that feel like ends in themselves. But then, that’s always a hazard with a band this original and audacious.

Even though Khan's music is not yet as ambitious as [Kate] Bush's best work, it has enough arresting moments and unique beauty to suggest that Khan is an indie songwriter and chanteuse to watch.

The album’s title refers to the feeling of never being quite done, but “99.9%” oozes poise and confidence.

As debuts go, this is a marvel by a singer and songwriter who has no desire to fit snugly into one category. Her talent isn’t that easily contained.

Marling combines craft, instinct, and emotion for a collection of tunes that showcase a variety of mostly acoustic moods but coalesce into a hushed, beguiling whole.

This collection of live radio performances from the band's early years is like a letter from an old friend long delayed in the post.

For the album’s driving first half, the messiness is captivating, culminating in “Dream Captain,” reminiscent of T. Rex on “Bang a Gong.” The second half teeters on standard bohemian dissipation, but with a sly and rare self-knowingness.

The strength of this album lies in Bird's ability to write challenging, evocative lyrics, and then wed his erudite prose with joyous melodies.

If there's a lesson to be learned from The Way Out, it's that we need little more than the sounds of each other's voices to find comfort--or in the Books' case, to crank out yet another masterwork.

She seldom raises her voice in anger or frustration, but imbues her words with emotional heft.

His latest release, Fortune, weds his marvelous lyrical economy to music that ranges from spare acoustic guitar to a clanging junkyard sound, and proves once again that he’s a ringmaster at turning misery into art.

I Learned the Hard Way is yet another work of impeccable late-’60s nostalgia by the flagship act of Brooklyn label Daptone, where soul revivalism is a way of life, from crack horn section to period recording tools to throwback art and typography.

His materialism threads throughout So Far Gone (champagne flutes, girls, BlackBerrys, more girls), but he chases that with soft touches of humor and honesty.

Maraqopa is melodious, sprawling in all the right ways, even a little ramshackle.

On an album as free of frill as it is of gimmicks, Earl Sweatshirt lets his music stand on its own merits.

The fleet-tongued 'Casa Bey' shows what Mos can do when he's focused, and it makes you wish he put together a whole record of songs as dynamic. But the album is also littered with tracks that sound like fragments in search of completion.