the majority of the album is exactly what indie rock has been lacking for over a decade, and this is too crucial a release to get caught up in nitpicking.

Each pass cements that Stevens has done the impossible yet again: He's released another album that's both genre-defining and genre-defying.

As a cohesive album and a personal statement, Sound of Silver is superior in most every way.

The songs are classic Mogwai, only more sophisticated--and, as such, startling different.

From its painstaking production to its dense lyrical constructs to its mammoth choruses, High Violet is likely to be one of the year's best.

Its muscular confidence and stylistic purity make it a must-listen for the psychedelically inclined, as well as an easy candidate for one of the best records of the year.

Though the narratives are harder to follow, and the refrains more verbose (or simply absent), this music is still full of youthful anger. The nature of it is simply more suitable for a recent-high-school-graduate-aged kid grappling with more knotty insecurities. It’s also probable that much of Earl’s younger audience has grown up with him, and will relate to this impressive record even more deeply than his first.

They reproduce, even with simple materials and simple words, complex emotions and ideas. And at the same time, they just make you want to sing, freak-out, and play beach-blanket bingo in a basement.

Between his willingness to experiment and a bountiful arsenal at his disposal, a spectacular range of dreamlike moods and sounds are created across Infiniheart's sixty-five minutes.

Those who choose to fixate on Bejar's lack of a pretty singing voice are missing the point. Much like John Darnielle, everything outside of Bejar's verse should be seen as peripheral -- a means to deliver the lyrical ends.

Infectious, progressive, immediate dance music.

In 2010, when oversharing is the norm, Pinkerton can seem almost quaint for its willingness to hold back. All told, it's roughly 10 percent as confessional as the average overheated Tumblr post or Gareth Campesino! lyric sheet. Maybe that's why, to this day, "El Scorcho" is still the sort of song that lonely teenage boys vigorously lip-synch to when they think that nobody's looking. Its lyrics can be vague enough ("I'm a lot like you...") to fit all sorts of specific yearning.

Although none of the new material is even remotely bad, a handful of diverse tracks on the album's second half exceed the high standards set by the hand-picked singles.

Its power and poise never ceases for 90 wonderful minutes.

One of the most satisfying, a nearly unclassifiable mammoth of sound that manages to weave brutality, atmosphere, and aching melody into a body-enveloping cocoon that sticks around longer than the average Hollywood movie.

Album of the Year stands as one of 2010's most innovative and adventurous albums of any stripe, incorporating traces of African jazz, latin music, psych, metal, and more in its relentless attack. It bangs hard from start to finish, and it's guaranteed to send producers scrambling to rerecord their drums in its wake.

Of all the bands in the rock canon, Wire may be the best embodiment of the term “forward-thinking” that is so vogue nowadays, and Object 47 keeps with the mantra with stunning results.

Not only does The Woods jumpstart a moribund genre, it also serves as a wake-up call for the zeitgeist.

Have One on Me isn't at all a ploy for greater likability. It's an affecting, indulgent, and thoroughly fleshed-out monument to Newsom's considerable ambition.

[It] turns out to be a proper Silver Jews rock album, which is to say it has the feel of a drunk snapping into his second wind long enough to belt out a few.

Set Free is a triumph, full of tunes that affect well beyond their modest means.

Tame Impala possesses an uncanny ear for reconstructing psychedelia that spans decades while remaining undeniably present.

With less of the anxiety that marked his earlier albums, that world is a joy to get lost in over and over.

C'est Com..Com..Complique is superb, a monument that could only have been sculpted by the group's original hands.

Folk-ambient doesn't get any better than this.

It's his finest work yet, which is saying something, and the kind of record that will resonate for years not just because it's reveres history, but because it understands it and isn't afraid to demand answers from it.

Public Strain improves on Women in every way, which is no small feat. It's 13 minutes long than its predecessor, but Women doesn't use the extra time to spread out. The band keeps the tension up by building the various lean sounds of that record into new, more muscular variations.

There's still plenty about the group to satisfy long-time fans, and there's a wealth of quality and innovation to win them some new ones.