A record for the creeping darkness of a hot summer night in which the night seems to last forever and the heat, the same.

Out Of Season is both a remarkable record of beautiful music, and an outstanding, awe-inspiring performance inducing near-irresistible feelings and sensations. This album is a sublime example of the art of the singer, and of the art of music.

Fiasco is actually an absolutely dazzling emcee and a genuinely nuanced personality, and both of these things are incredibly rare in hip-hop in 2006.

With Game Theory, the Roots have finally delivered on nearly every once-broken promise.

They’ve cleaned up their grungy guitar lines (thank you Sub Pop), reworked a few of the best songs from their early EPs, and the result is undoubtedly the best contender for the Arcade Fire/Broken Social Scene-helm of 2005.

Figuring out where each part is originally from will be fun for the fanatics, but isn’t necessary to enjoy the mix.

The songs here are superb, the arrangements and production nearly perfect, and Jackson’s singing is the best of his career.

They touch greatness at several points, if never truly digging their nails in and grabbing hold.

So sure, yet another band of bombast, largesse, room-sound gone cathedral, but either way the Besnard Lakes have mastered their songcraft with this psychedelic oddity, which fits all too well with other wintry early-year indie releases.

The most wildly inventive, exploratory, unafraid, surprising, nonsensical, and flat out funkiest single I’ve heard all year.

Musically, Holland could be considered the more eccentric and authentic second cousin of Norah Jones.

On Sung Tongs, the group has deftly combined all the traces that ran through their earlier work into a vibrant and beautiful collage that flows as smoothly as Here Comes the Indian, with all the mood of Campfire Songs, and even more pop hooks than Spirit.

Gone is pretty much everything they’ve learned in the last eight years or so, ditching all the progress they’ve made in favor of just making another Modest Mouse record. The results, needless to say, are disappointing.

So frustrating then, for such a multitalented rapper, to have his supposed magnum opus weak, stale, and far more aged than we’d expect.

Strongly, boringly decent.

True, Think Tank is flawed. There are many, many things wrong with this album.... But the record’s peaks are extraordinary.

It doesn’t matter how well you can thrash or shred if it doesn’t sound good, and rarely does a section of Bang Bang Rock and Roll sound as if it wasn’t well thought-out and created with the intent to entertain.

It’s mostly top-flight crudity, though admittedly the album’s intensity wanes over its second half.

You Could Have It So Much Better... is plagued by the same averseness to surrender that hamstrung their breakthrough eponymous debut.

My Morning Jacket has come into its own here, transcending underground fetishizing to become the kind of band that can make jaws drop and tears fall anywhere it damn well pleases.

The Sunset Tree is one of the most volatile, affecting and coherent records he’s made yet.

A good and often great debut.

Morph the Cat is too complacent, too enamored with its own lacquered contours.

The squeaky-clean production of Misery Is a Butterfly has been smudged, sanded, and weathered.

Snaith’s newest album, Andorra, merges "Milk’s" heady sense of immediacy with a clear and consumable swiftness.

Enjoyable rather than revelatory, and quirky rather than profound.

An album of many highlights but not much visceral or emotional impact.

More inventive song writing and a less antagonistic stance could have helped Sigur Ros create something as equally stirring as their previous album.