So much of Illinois feels magical, however, in much the same way as a large State Fair: there is commotion and wonder as the population is continually enchanted by progress, but to unknown purpose.

MMJ’s musical palate has radically expanded: the reverb and alt-country trappings remain, but they no longer dominate the band’s aesthetic. In nodding to U2, John McLaughlin, Sunny Day Real Estate, Mercury Rev, The Clash and countless other icons through a holistic approach to the pop canon, James and his band mates refuse to let sonics define them.

Throughout Merriweather Post Pavilion the band mixes instrumentation and samples and voices in a way that seems to be an advanced or accelerated development of past triumphs.

Push Barman To Open Old Wounds is a rare species indeed; though all of the songs could be considered “hits,” the album avoids all of the tackiness associated with greatest hits collections.

Destroyer’s Rubies is every bit as marvelous as his landmark Streethawk: A Seduction.

Excluding the established Radiohead franchise from consideration of In Rainbows, it is still one of the most compelling recent releases, and should be considered for 2007's Album of the Year in any context.

It is incensed, dark with disappointment, and shows a startling new side to Sleater-Kinney; while its intensity makes it one of their best albums to date, it isn’t here to make friends or fans.

The whole of the album is stunning and unique, and if the thematic gender-bending core of the album makes a few people ideologically shy away, then it’s truly a shame.

This will most likely be the best hip-hop album of the year as well as a contender for best overall album of the year.

This is a hell of a record.

The strength of Person Pitch is that it really doesn't matter what label might be affixed to it; quite simply, it is a gorgeous album from beginning to end.

One of the finest pieces of pop music to drop this decade.

This double-album is just as hypnotic, just as overwhelming, and awesome enough to win over a new battalion sleepyheads for the next six years and beyond.

Perfect it may not be, but as perfect as possible it might, and Let's Stay Friends certainly has more than enough fervor to make it one of the more refreshing punk purist releases since Fugazi laid down a baker's dozen of songs in the last century.

The XX is for lovers and non-lovers alike, though even its surefire appeal I wouldn't call this a pop album. I would deem it sensual, musical in-out.

Neon Bible may be a bold departure from the beloved Funeral, but the divergence is as inspired as the music itself.

Perhaps taking a cue from another seminal band, Talking Heads, The Suburbs is a more restrained, tempered affair. Yet the beat of their bleeding heart still remains...

Kala is only received as a political record if you listen up properly. The music itself no longer asserts itself like a militia; it's too calm and more scattered.

Cleaned up, stripped down, and melding dance music seamlessly with post-punk, Sound Of Silver is as solid as a dance album can get.

If the Flaming Lips mated with Marilyn Manson and ate Underworld for breakfast, the end result might sound something like Battles' debut album, Mirrored.

How I Got Over is also the Roots' best listening experience since Things Fall Apart over ten years ago (a rap eternity).

This isn’t just Almost Killed Me 2, it’s an exploration of what lies beyond that initial surface – and the truth ain’t pretty.

Thunder, Lightning, Strike is simply amazing. It is filled with boundless, glorious noise, sewing together flamboyance, quirkiness, sturdy sampling, and a well-traveled feel that can take you anywhere you want to go.

Only Deerhunter makes echoes without egos, grounding even Bradford Cox's most wayward divergences in an all-encompassing blend of simple rock stylings.

Every song here, on both discs, is interesting and amazingly well-crafted.

It's hard not to stare in open-mouthed amazement at the sheer brilliance of Black Sheep Boy, though you're trying to clinically dissect all the elements that make it so.

Neither the songs’ structures nor their lyrics offer rich rewards after close listening and dissection.

Boxer is another accomplishment for The National; more understated than Alligator, yet just as alluring, and right on target.

The bar has been raised for 2005.

Undoubtedly his best and most credible album to date.

The first three-quarters of Beauty and the Beat stands as something to be admired.

With Twin Cinema, The New Pornographers have elevated themselves from a band I really like to a band that I can't live without.

Newsom's brilliant but reckless songwriting resulted in eighteen tracks, each with an EP's worth of creativity and talent. But why stop editing an overlong listening experience there? Treating each song as an independent entity isn't such a bad idea.

This is it, folks - this is the Go-Betweens album you’ve been waiting since the joyous news of their reunion. Oceans Apart captures the lushness of their earlier works, the separate-yet-complementary songwriting beauty of Forster and McLennan and their ability to paint the doldrums in charming pastels.

While Veckatimest contains just over fifty-two minutes of some exceptional music, it lacks one critical component that's essential to any form of art: emotion.

Diehards will lob all the complaints about sequencing and omissions, but if we're being honest here, what this compilation isn't leaves no blemish on the quality of what it actually is.

Bitte Orca signifies something exciting and all too infrequent in popular music: striving for a sound that doesn't have a definite audience.

Crimes is the latest in an evolution that has seen the band complicate their sound without losing any of the confrontational nature or acerbic tone of their previous efforts.

This is the kind of record you'll spend days rocking out to. You'll get lost walking around listening to it (I know I did), think about quitting your job to relive the days when a record like this was all that was allowed to matter.

A masterpiece that celebrates life, in all of its horrific, painful, magical and wondrous glory.

Listening to Ys is like dreaming with eyes open, a detached lucidity in which clarity inevitably follows.

Lambert promises on the album's stellar title track, and if that isn't a warning to all of Nashville, from a woman who has compiled one of the year's finest releases, it should be.

Despite all the pomp and circumstance surrounding it (and boasting some admittedly rad cover art) their latest record is consistent in quality with their, er, lesser-selling efforts.

It's strange second-hand pop, deconstructed and represented as something entirely new, augmented by a range of melodies and affectations. Good for him and good for the world for the opportunity to be exposed to his music-pop music in its purest form, pop informed by pop.

Unfortunately, the opener is really the musical peak of this self-titled disc and as the album slowly slumps toward its egotistically long final track, listeners will probably have already tuned-out.

Björk shrouds Medúlla in mystery and darkness, but it's far from gloomy.

It's whether or not This Is Happening stands on its own merits as original composition consistent with the quality of the LCD catalog. It falls short on both accounts, unfortunately, in what basically amounts to a final victory lap for a band that made its mark and doesn't have much more to say.

Be forewarned: Donuts can be a frustrating tease when the average instrumental clocks in around the one-minute mark. But for those who hold a true appreciation for Dilla and his avoidance of predictable sounds and mainstream beats, Donuts will sound right on track.

there's nothing else like this band right now and possibly ever. The volume and power of late 90s rap metal without all the stupidity and endless chugalug. Vocals that not only sing sweet melodies but support them with harmonies that push and pull against the current of noise, only sassy and canny, like a My Bloody Valentine that's being marketed to pre-teens.

Here more than ever, the songs come before the samples; while the samples and sounds still accompany everything, they are now more like a third band member than leading player. This gives The Books a newfound depth of subtlety.

Nearly every song comes off as unassuming in its rightful place. Each track has a designed role, and for that reason you won’t need to use the skip button.

Spoon has again produced a collage of songs that may be proverbial, but are not paint-by-numbers.

It will, absolutely and deservedly, reside among the best of the year, but, when given space, can ruminate indefinitely in one’s consciousness and soul.

While there has clearly been a degree of evolution... none of Eluvium's previous effects are lost with his new offering; the music still winds its way through your mind, but at the same time it moves the soul as well.

While the celestial exploration is briefly juxtaposed with sci-fi experimentation on the Autechre-like 'Rough Steez' and 'Phantom Limb,' those detours only here to provide respite from and not actually disrupt an ultimately delightful, delirious headtrip designed to push your fuckest of buttons.

Whether blazing a tight new trail or feeling its way in the darkness, each tune on the album heads somewhere, collectively making as much of a stylistic progression as the recording of "Our Endless Numbered Days" made in fidelity and depth.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah gets my pick for summertime album of the year.

More than the sound, the words of Bright Ideas are especially important; they are not particularly eloquent, but they are representative something larger: each clumsy, unsure expression desperately needs to be said.

It makes a stunning case for a silent nod of the head: sometimes it’s good enough to enjoy an album, taking it take it all in as it comes, without attempting to articulate its majesty.

Hospice sits squarely in this camp, a heartbreaking aural experience that hits us on a deeper level.

Constantly winning and resurging, not a moment of Apologies to the Queen Mary is lost to the chaos.

Tarnished as it is, Faking The Books is still a treasure. Ignore the ham-fisted political treatises and enjoy it for what it is: a streamlined marvel of IDM song architecture.

You always know when a Walkmen song comes on your shuffle, and Lisbon does nothing to dispel that. In fact, it adds another solid entry to an increasingly solid catalogue.

Taken as a whole, The Besnard Lakes display a unique style, a winning combination of intriguing songwriting and diverse arrangements.

With his soundbombing past set aside for the moment, DJ/Rupture proves he's just as capable of providing a different kind of head trip, one that sufficiently aids the comedown from whatever your nocturnal activity.

Brighter Than Creation's Dark is a tour de force that easily earns its praise and rings out as classically as any classic rock album.

The Canadian math whiz and artist formerly known as Manitoba proves he's just as calculated as he is cerebral, crafting music that feels equally clubby, fluid and submerged to back up the ideal album title.

While there isn't much variation in instrumentation or sound, the impeccable, thought-provoking lyrics more than make up for it.

The album is loud, visceral, and messily human, and should be regarded as an essential chapter in Cave's considerable discography.

You Could Have It So Much Better might as well be titled You Could Have It Just As Good A Year Later, since Franz Ferdinand seem to belong to the school of "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it."

The Mountain Goats find a way to bounce back from the psychiatrist-worthy lyrics with strong, vibrant but subtly crafted compositions.

A delirious fever-dream of an album that continues to impress with each consecutive listen.

The Dr. of Mathematics has one-upped it with Andorra, keeping all of the earlier album's core sonic qualities while adding layers of heartfelt atmospherics to craft what is not only one of the most mesmerizing and unique albums of the year, but also one of the best.

Maybe the growth is only obvious to those who've been following, but that doesn't take away from the obvious upgrade of accessibility found here.

The prevailing lack of substance declares itself by the time "Still Take You Home" kicks in, and it becomes evident that Alex Turner’s somewhat chirpy vocals are the album’s lone cohesive influence.

Feels like being caught up in a creative whirlwind; every song at some point grants you the position of the fly on the wall - being privy to a group of people just chilling out, making music and living the good life.

Woman King is a brief and yet satisfying taste for what Iron & Wine is all about.

Less accessible than its eponymous predecessor, it creates a darker, less cartoonish world where hip-hop, brit-rock, electronica and Dennis Hopper monologues all seem perfectly at home.

Favourite Worst Nightmare finds the band getting louder, more aggressive, and, as a consequence, losing some of their youthful charm.

At times the running-on-fumes punk benefits The Monitor's overall sound. But the problem is that the songs that surround the defined centerpieces sound undeveloped or just plain fall flat, particularly early on when we hear about a supposed hero covered in excrement and piss as a dramatic plot-point.

It sounds more like half an album than an EP. It also sounds more like half-an-album than half-assed.

Do You Like Rock Music? is a large, unabashed attempt at greatness, and where other bands might diffuse into a chaotic mess in the process (ahem, Broken Social Scene), British Sea Power remain, skillfully intact.

The Great Destroyer is a masterpiece of emotional tumult.

What is key to this album's effectiveness is how Vampire Weekend's rhythmic momentum enervates the filler, turning another band's less flamboyant 'Campus' into a cymbal-crash-on-every-hit mini-epic, or the nearly irritating 'Blake's Got a New Face' into drunken singalong.

The good news, evident from the very first listen, is a welcome diversity of songwriting and arrangements, on an otherwise basic pop rock record.... The bad news is that diversity alone cannot salvage the album from being their least spontaneous effort yet.

Easy to hate and easy to love.

The instrumentation is superb, the record feels unforced, and the music is heartfelt.

There is little doubt that Silent Alarm is stellar, worthy of the praise it has received.

Love Songs for Patriots sounds just as one would expect an aged AMC to sound: with mature, yet loose arrangements with an edge but without balls back up Eitzel’s gloomy, brooding voice, taking wry bitterness to familiar but novel highs and lows.

As much as I enjoy Stage Names, it will never be as highly regarded as the comparitavely masterpiece Black Sheep Boy, as the songs lack the depth and magnitude needed to influence a much more musically inclined indie fan base.

While Sad Songs was immediately arresting, able to knock the wind clean from those who found it, Alligator conjures the same black magic on a broader scale, readying itself to be known beyond those small circles.

It sounds a whole lot like you’d expect the new Xiu Xiu album to sound.

If this is the band's "Parallel Lines," they've brought tunes worth comparing.

Kieran Hebden's latest and best opus since "Rounds" is dare I also say his danciest.

Jarvis is a solid, thought-provoking album.

Operatic in scope, ruthlessly ambitious in its range, The Paper Chase have dropped one the most unique and substantive records of the year.

Coxon clearly shows a mastery that comes from experience, and when he hits his groove it’s infectious.

Contra flourishes in its effort to ease up on "A-Punk"'s stiffness as the quartet engages in sonic experimentation of unprecedented playfulness even compared to the debut's.