It's immersive and transgressive, if you care about this stuff.

She may sing about her belief in herself faltering, but her sincerity is actually stronger than ever. The victory here isn't just that Nikki Nack betters Whokill by beefing up its feral ferocity with more sophisticated chops, or that she triumphed over her detractors by proving she hadn't already peaked. Garbus found power in a hopeless place.

This is serious music. Albarn has stated that this is his most personal record and he ain't kidding.

Throughout the album, she shifts from restrained cool to soaring sentimentalism in mere seconds; this dynamic is something that Civilian possessed, but Shriek masters.

The Way and Color is a gem in its own devastating way, but don't be surprised if TEEN occupy a completely different space next time.

Breezy in its boldness (12 tracks, under 50 minutes), this is a heavily considered album from the only reasonable rap star around.

Food is indeed "the real thing," a satisfying album grounded by familiar funk, rooted in classic soul sounds and focused on the everyday rituals of life: eating.

Testimony brings rap's raw nerve detail to the sturdy slow jam, nullifying the need for nods to R&B of the "rap and bullshit" variety.

With Light and With Love sounds bigger, though, more accessible, conceived with an ear toward top-down, tear-out-of-town FM anthems of summers past.

Under Color Of Official Right rumbles along with tense basslines and drums that feel like they're trying to stay out of Casey's way, as guitarist Greg Ahee slashes a path forward.

Lead vocalist/head louche Greg Dulli's dark obsessions and predatory narrators manage to sound as erotically entrancing as he pushes 50 as they did when he was courting 25, aging gracefully like a snifter of peaty scotch rather than a cup of flat beer.

EMA has crafted a wide-eyed, open-eared, reasonably horrified, digi-noise drone-folk treatise about the soul-sucking, privacy-wrecking qualities of online life.

It's no "High Enough," but it is a damn fine collection of selected ambient works.

Terje can make an aging gigolo's commentary on the folly of his misspent youth the centerpiece of his otherwise invigorating dance album because he's the rare crowd-pleasing DJ whose musical skills trump his proven ability to move butts.

The tunes barely let up until the Mann-led "Hummingbird" and "Honesty Is No Excuse" more than halfway through, and even then the usual boring singer/songwriter-isms become a nice resting place from the otherwise inescapable hooks.

Its lyrics, though often hard to discern in the mumbles, start to get to the core of what Mess is all about--trying to find some sort of peace in this anxiety-breeding world.

Beneath the arena-friendly sonics and the streamlined storytelling of Teeth Dreams lies the same old band that kicked off their very first number with a little bit of Mott The Hoople self-mythology, that fist-pumping Hold! Steady! chant within "Positive Jam."

Here Be Monsters sounds like a fleshed-out band, graced with Mekons-derived musical trademarks.

Buoyed by girlfriend and former Dirty Projector Angel Deradoorian and ex-Ponytail drummer Jeremy Hyman, Tare has plenty to bounce off of here.

While the band itself might still be metal newcomers, their music goes down like an aged mead, and Void Worship is an early contender to be one of 2014's most satisfying drams of doom.

Whether directly inspired by backpack rap or just embodying the raw energy of that era, the group has none of the preachy divisiveness that made that movement a half-joke.

Much like Bon Iver's output, Range of Light delivers a set of songs with a fixed sense of place and a nostalgic sense of time.

Baldi and Co. take the best bits from Albini's tutelage, apply them to lo-fi pop-punk structures and infuse all of it with tightly wound angst.

His patron saints appear to be Harry Nilsson and yacht rockers like 10cc, and rarely are either channeled with this little cheese and this much panache. He merges these influences with what's quickly become his signature guitar sound, an effortless style that can be playfully discordant. It's these dissonant bits that elevate DeMarco's easily digestible pop.

It sure does prove that Bob Dylan isn't bigger than rock and roll--while also proving that rock and roll needs ace songwriters more than many current rock and rollers think.

Get over Herring's Shatner-like earnestness like you did with Destroyer's Kenny G moves on Kaputt and you'll unlock the furrowed brows, baggy eyes and bulging veins beneath the metronomic perfection.

Their excellent new Bless Off, which careens even more crank-ably--not to mention somewhat less grumpily--than 2011's also very good Primitive Blast.

This wobbling between attempts to impress the dance music cognoscenti and to make songs as purely delightful as "Coast Is Clear" defines Recess, and occasionally bogs it down.

Boldly, My Krazy Life is in the vein of Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city, with a developed, knotty and, ultimately, deeply moral narrative.

From the lyrics to the beats, the pleasure of Piñata is in the details.

Graves' earnest lyrics are purposely mixed far beneath the caustic instrumentals here, but when a few words do surface, we're treated to thoughtful (if only partial) confessions.

There are the irretrievably cheesy moments.... [But] Therein lies the strength of Kiss Me Once: Minogue's ability to turn any contrived situation into something positive, magical, and utterly her own.

If Slave Ambient represented a breakthrough, this one is an out-and-out star-maker that should rank among the year's best albums.

Glow tries so hard to keep the mood pneumatic that it starts to feel over-stuffed, even at just 55 minutes long.

What's great about Atlas, the quintet's huge, intentional about-face of a third record, is that it most definitely didn't organically occur.

Though there aren't any clunkers, Tomorrow's Hits peaks when it achieves maximum speed and strives for the ecstatic repetition of eye-rolling, body-transcending gospel music.

The most booty-shaking, speaker-twinkling, glitz-intensive pop-soul record to come down the turnpike in years, out-dazzling even kindred efforts by Timberlake, Bruno Mars, and Miguel.

An inspiring “is this even rap anymore?” record.

Granted, 10 of those are just a minute or less (sometimes far less: "Yet Unknown" is nothing more than a nine-second sample from a news broadcast), and 11 more don't even break the four-minute mark. On the plus side, we're treated to some of the best songs from his recent, out-of-print releases.

ScHoolboy Q comes off like the dude who gives in to all the peer pressure, constantly on the verge of betraying his talents and smarts just to fit in and be one of the bros. The weirder he gets, the better.

It's a major work, one that confirms that she's only marginal in the sense that she's vibrating on her own wavelength, way out at the edge of the spectrum.

This one is lithe and liquid, shy of a masterwork but still a fucking great record, top to bottom.

No matter how enthusiastically some claim Beck as a zeitgeist-embracing pop chameleon of the Jean-Luc Godard variety, he's far more a craftsman of the Louis Malle school: sophisticated, assured, self-aware, and incessantly torn between competing genres.

Clatter arises from songs and songs from clatter, and it's maddening how so many of them seem to randomly end before committing to actual endings.

When she depletes her stock of declarative phrases, Olsen has little to say about these mercurial emotional swings except that she's feeling them. Or unprepared to commit to them. Still, the good songs on Burn Your Fire for No Witness suggest Olsen is figuring out how to sound--how to resound, actually.

A confident and assured debut proving that home address aside, he fits squarely into the Black Hippy aesthetic.

Voices flaunts the duo's expanded range.

There are odd nods on Somewhere Else.... But her full-throated attack and guitarist Todd May's twang-snarled guitar, which splits the diff between Tom Petty's Heartbreakers and Johnny Thunders', also recall a less-remembered version of that decade.

Ostensibly a supernatural tale, Hotel Valentine challenges the listener to reflect on life, death, and nothingness. Whether that inspires joy or terror depends on you, but it'll inspire something.

The lack of a hefty, definable, or easily digestible pop overhaul here means that Little Red probably won’t hit America as hard as even its predecessor did. But it does feel like the natural progression of an artist whose narrative is so wholly and convincingly embedded in club life.

They're career musicians active since the '90s, but here, they actually sound excited again.

This guy has written 40-plus albums of material, so it's saying something that Benji is one of his more challenging listens.

After the Disco is the rare, superior sequel--think Toy Story 2--to Mercer and Burton's seemingly one-off self-titled 2010 debut as Broken Bells.

Rough in all the right places but pleasurably smooth in others, Held in Splendor is less like the kitschy t-shirt quilt you made to remember your high school clubs and teams, and more like the perfect old blankets your grandmother used to sew: oversized, musty, and familiar even when you haven't worn them in years.

The money shot is still the original 13-track album, which stridently argues (and proves) the thesis that Uncle Tupelo were the Velvet Underground of '90s alt-country.

"R.I.P music," wrote Cunningham in the introduction to the album. As corpses go, this one is exquisite.

As with so much of Too True, it's more Flowers in the Attic than Flowers of Evil. But it's also part of a glorious art-goth tradition: bookish rockers chasing pop into the dark, deep within the Hong Kong gardens, where all cats are grey.

The growth is immense, occasionally breathtaking, and always immediate.

Once it all sinks in, the self-released approach, scrapped-together band, and 29-minute running time should only shock those who expected this to be a huge statement by Grace on anyone's terms but her own. This is no rock opera, no American Idiot, no novelty.

Lyrics referencing both Greek astronomy and the Old Testament, as well as guitar textures indebted more to Glenn Branca than Black Flag, reveal an art-rock ace up the band's tattered sleeve.

Despite the Dap Kings versatility--they were more hushed and drowsier backing Charles Bradley on last year's Victim of Love--and Jones' indefatigability, there aren't many new ideas here. That's not the point, though. The point is that music from another time can still thrill us in this one because of its practically tyrannical insistence on bliss.

Vanderslice's arrangements glide between loping acoustic strums, delicate picking, and stately piano chords, though for such a quiet affair, Kid Face has a surprisingly sturdy bottom end.

Both chilly and warm, soulful and soft, Post Tropical is an intricate ice sculpture of an album, and a fantasy come true for anyone who's ever misted up over Maxwell's version of "This Woman's Work."

Instead of reaching that precipice and seeming to over-stretch for some sort of tipping point into the mainstream, he's forged his own world, on his own terms, and invited like-minded artists to flourish there as well.

The contentment Malkmus expresses here is so cozy you might feel a little corny calling it wisdom. But you wouldn't embarrass yourself too much if you called it perspective.

As a work of scholarly revisionism, Purple Snow is peerless. How and why the Twin Cities helped transform Prince Nelson into the Artist remains a mystery. But this is a charming addition to the Paisley Park family.

What makes Re-Engineering worthwhile is that the odd blooms Warwick coaxes from that soil are so pleasing to behold on their own terms. It's critical theory as easy listening that you can actually cut a rug to, if you're so inclined.

The result is artistic click bait, and its genius and connective power is that it doesn’t treat music fans as factions. This one is for everyone, all at once.

If anything, 7 Days acts as the inverse of The Chronic, wherein a famous hip-hop producer introduced the world to an up-and-coming MC weaned on P-Funk and George Duke; now, it's a pop-cultural hip-hop icon giving a bit of shine to an adept indie producer who can elicit all strains of funk in this 21st-century Zone of Zero Funkativity. It's not the dank, but breathe deep anyway.

The best mood music transfixes; merely excellent, Jetlag is sometimes too easily relegated to the background.

What's interesting about Saint Heron is that it trips giddily over the line between relatively conventional approaches (Aiko, Solange, Shawn) and more heavily processed, speculative stuff (Sampha, Iman Omari, BC Kingdom), but takes no pains to make an overarching statement.

These parts slide and slip through and around one another, creating a shifting matrix that consumes your attention for as long as the band wants to play.

It isn't just a celebration of the warm-up DJ; it's a self-portrait of an artist who wouldn't be who he is today without once having had all those empty rooms to fill.

Packed with these canny connections between music and lyrics, Cupid highlights Hynes' tremendous recent advancement as an arranger.

While there are mistakes and bum notes — and the group's enthusiasm about recording for the BBC had pretty clearly waned by the later sessions--the gorgeous harmonies from those legendary young larynxes sound as glorious as ever.

Ferreira is finally fully reveling in the swirling cacophony that is her sound and her life.

"Indie rock" has long since ceased to be either "indie" or "rock," of course, but Surfing Strange signifies on both counts, just when we desperately needed a refresher on the fundamentals.

Like its creator, Matangi is flawed, frustrating, and occasionally confusing, but it's also intermittently brilliant and completely unique.

This album will never top MM1 or even 1999's Slim Shady LP for the visceral thrill of watching a celebrity twist and distort his own identity like a comic strip transferred onto Silly Putty. But we get rhymes. So many rhymes. More rhymes than some rappers manage in a whole career.

Reflektor is long and weird and indulgent and deeply committed. It has three to five genuinely great songs; it also wanders off into the filler hinterlands for 20 minutes or so (out of 70).

Scales are Middle Eastern, obviously; tempos range from up to mid-plus; the programmed drums generate rhythms that few American tub-thumpers could map, much less replicate. There's far more variety in what Sa'id plays than in what Souleyman sings--flute sounds, an orchestra once. But Souleyman's intensity nails it.

Quickly working 11 tracks into 40 minutes, the album is visceral and unrefined, two qualities not often associated with Hebden.

Despite the full dismissal of punk roots here--the blended-in drumming, the lack of rollercoaster twists and turns in the tempos and time signatures--Uncanney Valley's only real stumbles are lyrical.

There's an exhilarating bleakness at the center of Virgins--the hollow at the heart of all things, nibbling inexorably away.

Get me out of here, take me back: That's breaking up in a nutshell, and Cults till this soil multiple ways.

While 2010 debut Treats was an exotic, overdubbed roar (Big Black-meets-the-Waitresses for people who give a shit about those references), and 2012's Reign of Terror winked through a heavy heart at Mutt Lange's scorched-earth sound field, Bitter Rivals is sly and sleek.

Here is another deeply considered collection of top-shelf beats and uncompromising-though-still-pop-enough raps that justifies the fairly awful personalities driving it, which, depending on your tolerance for wounded narcissism and a complete lack of insight, is either fascinating or frustrating.

With his first album for Warp, OPN proves his mettle amid labelmates like Aphex Twin and Flying Lotus.

It isn't traditionally enjoyable, and it isn't supposed to be.... It's the most daring record he could've made.

There's a hypnotic purity to Innocents.

The music is propulsive and upbeat, but executed with the almost blasé confidence of people who sound like they have nothing to prove.

Mazzy Star steadfastly stick to their dusty, psych-folk, dream-pop tableaux on Seasons of Your Day. Yet it feels nothing like a '90s hangover; in fact, the touches of organ and pedal steel that open the album hint at Beach House's hazy indie-pop.

CHVRCHES' debut is at its best on its revenge tunes.

The group embraces its status as a classic-rock band, and make no mistake, this is a classic-rock album--one that evokes the sort of denim-clad '70s-rock vibe that Guns N' Roses and Foo Fighters tapped into.

Even when they're shouting, they do so in a particularly musical and distinctive way, and although their smash is one of five This Is… songs the duo had no hand in writing, they nevertheless suggest a consistent sense of authorship through the intensity of their shared ecstasies and frustrations.

A steely affair that finds Drake and longtime producer Noah "40" Shebib pulling their sound and worldview further inward to increasingly murky results.

An amazing all-originals simulation, mostly of teeny-bop smashes by sundry Kasenetz-Katz-produced studio concoctions (plus the Archies) circa 1967-1970.

Dream River flows from one track to the next, with a similarity of tempo that makes it play like eight movements of one 40-minute song. But a few moments stand out.