Perhaps it doesn’t quite capture the magical energy of the band’s live performances, but again, that is a totally different experience that would be hard to replicate. Album of the year? Without a doubt, it will be a strong contender.

The band’s signature sound is obviously intact on Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs, but the songs are rendered with such immediacy and melodic intensity that the new wrinkles are amplified and any sameness rendered meaningless.

It shows that Herring and company know exactly who they are and what they’re capable of, and that makes it a quietly exciting and gratifying chapter of a band who are clearly in this for the long haul.

In spite of its pondering otherwise, Blue Raspberry is as real as it gets and in its most composed moments a confident step forward.

Los Angeles is a rollercoaster of twisting and churning tempos that frequently plunge headlong into a frothy mix of paranoid drums, bass, keyboards, and guitars with intriguing vocals at every turn. But sometimes it’s dreamier, slower, and more melodic, and it’s always done with a tuneful ear and is highly entertaining. Buckle up and enjoy the ride.

With the 10 tracks on the album, Sleater-Kinney have successfully captured the complex emotions of both our fraught present times and the delicate process of mourning, with taut songwriting coupled with energetic guitar textures, earnest vocals, and pop nuances. Some might even call it a return to form.

A record that can sit proudly at the top table of The Pretenders’ work to date.

This is a document of one man’s mission to highlight the imperfections, inadequacies, and injustices of right-wing policies, tell the stories of ordinary folk, and give voice to the voiceless; it’s a volume of solidarity, both political and personal—something Billy Bragg will always be the standard bearer for.

Cartwheel is a big, bright, beautiful album. It uses familiarity to bring you in, scratch those indie rock itches, then fires up the pleasure centers with its dedication to sonic satisfaction.

And the Wind (Live and Loose!) is not the on-stage retread of the familiar we’ve come to expect from countless, thoughtless live releases. It’s an expansion of Lenderman’s expression, an organic outgrowing of ideas from imperfect but beautiful seeds, come to beautiful bloom.

From a 1972 Carnegie Hall show to a spring ’74 performance with Tom Scott & The L.A. Express and an appearance the following September at Wembley Stadium, Mitchell reveals herself here during each period as a fascinating artist who was well worth returning to year after year, as she continues to be.

Superchunk remind us so often why they remain one of the greatest guitar bands of a generation with their insanely melodic, rapturously supercharged, endlessly loveable punk rock and this expansive set is testament to their continued majesty and mirth.

Overall, it’s another great record from a peerless band that, year after year, reinvent themselves. And, each time, they deliver the goods.

Live in Brooklyn 2011 is a great swansong with the bandmembers dragging all their pent up feelings of frustration, loathing, and distrust with each other onto the stage and playfully tearing it all to shreds.

For a record titled Action Adventure, it’s surprisingly short on excitement.

Medford’s willingness to reach into her most intimate moments and allow them to bloom within the context of gorgeous, memorable music and melodies make SUCKER a real experience.

The results are compelling, though a few cuts are more sound collage than song.

It’s a ray of sunlight which, even when it doesn’t totally stick the landing, is a plainly lovely listen. It mostly manages to avoid that saccharine positivity that a lot of grandiose indie-pop can succumb to, probably because the band have such a trustworthy history of making peppy, danceable music that it feels genuine, and the fact that plenty of the tracks are just irresistibly sweet.

Aside from the disappointingly ghoulish “Paint it Black” (The Rolling Stones) and “Ghost Town” (The Specials), on the whole, the other covers are strong interpretations.

It’s a Christmas morning of an album, each track a new gift to treasure. It’s a set of songs that bring you deep into them, a mist of musical vapor in which snapshot reminiscences can be made out as the fog wavers.

The bulk of The Great Escape is polite and pleasant, but lacks something indefinable. It would be foolish to expect Stamey to come on like a snarling punk-rock dervish, but this record, while having a certain charm, doesn’t really linger long in the memory.

Mountains is a decent album by an artist who, although having nothing to prove, still needs to create. And that is a very good thing.

Bird Machine is a strong album and never sounds as if it’s been pieced together posthumously. His brother has done an incredible job under what must have been difficult circumstances, to draw a line under a unique body of work.

The Gaslight Anthem’s new album is a tremendous success, its clever, tenderly relatable explorations of life and death especially relevant to the current moment.

Overall, Mike’s unique mix of toughness, vulnerability, and a brutal honesty that can be disarming for those not used to it, is something to marvel at. I hope he keeps making albums like this as long as possible.

A few weak spots notwithstanding, God Games shows The Kills are still on top of their game.

From the opening song and first single from the album, “Foreign Land,” to the slowly uncoiling closer, “I Will Love You,” Nothing Last Forever is a quiet delight.

What the record-buying public arguably doesn’t need is an EP that sounds a little rough around the edges, lasts for precisely 12 minutes, 4 seconds. ... But wait, there are moments of brilliance on the rest.