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.