Spanning three years but holding together as a single release

The ongoing Black Tar Prophecies sessions from Portland, Oregon, instrumental post-rockers Grails function like deep-space side ventures from their normal output. The first three prophecies came after the hypnotic, but monochromatic buzz of their second full-length album, 2004′s Redlight. The songs were culled from collaborations and rarities, and displayed the band working with elements of Krautrock, dub, ambient, psychedelia and classical.

The second batch, Black Tar Prophecies Vols. 4, 5 & 6, matches, and possibly exceeds, the potency of both the first Black Tar releases and their 2008 high-water mark LP Doomsdayer’s Holiday. The Vol. 4 tracks are from a 2010 EP, Vol. 5 from a split with Pharaoh Overlord and Vol. 6 is new and previously unreleased. Even though they span three years, the music holds together as if intended for a single release: From the wavering apocalyptic hum, ’80s videogame sound effects and bluesy electric guitar of “Wake Up Drill II,” the nightmarish samples and reverberating feedback of “New Drug II,” and the soft, steady beat, classical piano, strings and minor key bass melody of “A Mansion Has Many Rooms,” the collection has a fearlessly wide-ranging diversity that nonetheless folds into the anything-goes atmosphere Grails have cultivated through their career. Whether they are recalling early Pink Floyd, Can, Neu!, White Room-era KLF, Goblin, King Crimson and Guru Guru, or spaghetti westerns, Grails remain themselves, their only goals to enlighten themselves and their listeners.

A songwriting comeback that's simultaneously over and underdressed

“He’s so talented he can do anything!” That’s the gist of what’s typically said about Justin Timberlake, and for the most part it’s absolutely true. He’s an exceptionally nimble and unfettered singer/dancer, an extraordinary mimic with a drummer’s sense of timing. These gifts have helped him tremendously in comedy as well as drama, and despite the increasing maturity of his music and acting pursuits, he hasn’t let go of his ample boyish charm: This ex-Mouseketeer, ex-’N Sync-er still radiates mischievous yet all-American fun. And unlike so many stars who attain thoroughly mainstream saturation, he takes genuine risks that have actually increased his popularity: His last album, 2007′s FutureSex/LoveSounds, packs way more sonic, rhythmic and compositional quirks than most records that sell more than 10 million copies.

These are the stats that have empowered Timberlake to make a supremely — and, at times, foolishly — confident 20/20 Experience. The first of two full albums released six months apart is 70 minutes but only 10 songs long. Most are straightforward from a songwriting standpoint: “Tunnel Vision,” “That Girl” and several others see-saw back and forth between two chords for extended and sometimes relatively static periods with minimal contrasts between verses and choruses. But most are also complex in arrangement and texture, adding and subtracting rhythm and tempo as they smoothly groove along. Although some like “Don’t Hold the Wall” accelerate into dance tracks, the overriding vibe is more bedroom/strip club than dancefloor, as if Timberlake envisioned a Prince album almost entirely comprised of deep cut ballads. Aside from the singles “Suit & Tie” and “Mirrors,” which both draw from the opposing worlds of blatant chart pop and PBR&B, there’s little indication that anyone tried terribly hard to write hooks. Instead, this feels like a deservedly rich guy’s willfully anti-commercial fantasy of bohemian retro-futurist soul mother lode.

As such, Frank Ocean’s Channel ORANGE looms large over 20/20. But where Ocean employed complex chords and fearlessly soul-searched, this uncomplicatedly happy guy simply riffs on sex, status and his favorite records. He’s still in cahoots with Timbaland, the super-producer who practically invented these lurching, squelchy electro slow jams decades ago with Aaliyah and Ginuwine. Symphonic string swells and big band horn blasts may punctuate the otherwise slinky likes of “Pusher Love Girl,” but Timbaland doesn’t take Timberlake too far from Southern hip-hop: 20/20 is mixed to favor jeep-bumping bass that tends to blur the tony details that have been showcased far more successfully in the entertainer’s televised performances of this material. As such, it already feels more like a stepping-stone for multi-million-dollar tours, endorsement deals and general world domination than an entirely satisfying autonomous listening experience. Suit and tie aside, it’s simultaneously over and underdressed.

The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2 combines outtakes with newly-recorded material. That suggests that much of 2 of 2 is not a whole lot different from what came immediately before it, and in one way that’s true: Also created with Timbaland and his studio sidekick Jerome “J-Roc” Harmon, 2 of 2 is heavy on protracted, deluxe arrangements just like its predecessor. Featuring a slightly shorter average composition length, it is nevertheless still an album of jumbo cuts: 74-and-a-half minutes distributed among 12 tracks. Be sure to wait for “Pair of Wings,” the blissful acoustic ballad that’s hidden at the end of “Not a Bad Thing.”

But as its first single, the breezy, Off the Wall-flavored disco jam “Take Back the Night” suggests, 2 of 2 is faster and more dancefloor-friendly than much of the first 20/20, and therefore strikes with far greater instant impact: Opener “Gimme What I Don’t Know (I Want)” proves Timberlake remains the only superstar who can spit human beat-boxing ticks and tocks while keeping his tongue firmly in his cheek. He’s only a randy euphemism away from his SNL self-parodying self. A song about putting on a private show for one’s paramour, “Cabaret” boasts the naughtiest, most blasphemous line he’s ever dared sing: “I got you saying ‘Jesus’ so much it’s like we’re lying in a manger.”

The big difference is that these rigorous and rhythmic cuts are better suited the substantial song size: The longest one, “True Blood,” pumps from start to finish with a slew of breakdowns, buildups, contractions and expansions. Aside from the hard-rocking grinder “Only When I Walk Away,” there are few surprises. “Amnesia” has a sweet symphonic left-turn after the song’s main body fades — just like some of the first half of 20/20. Mostly, this is just Timberlake and Timbaland doing what they do best: Laying down the heavenly beats, ramping up the devilish charm and trouncing most mainstream contenders.

Faster and more dancefloor-friendly than much of its predecessor

When Justin Timberlake’s last album, The 20/20 Experience, arrived last March, it struck many as both over- and underwhelming. Lengthy, with few songs under six minutes, but shorter on hooks and forward propulsion than much of the singer’s catalog, this languid, elaborate album has, over the last few months, aged rather well. It’s a meticulous record, rich with atmosphere, one that reveals the subtleties of its sensuality with repeated plays.

Now comes The 20/20 Experience 2 of 2, a sequel that combines outtakes with newly-recorded material. That suggests that much of 2 of 2 is not a whole lot different from what came immediately before it, and in one way that’s true: Also created with Timbaland and his studio sidekick Jerome “J-Roc” Harmon, 2 of 2 is heavy on protracted, deluxe arrangements just like its predecessor. Featuring a slightly shorter average composition length, 2 of 2 is nevertheless still an album of jumbo cuts: The standard edition features 74-and-a-half minutes distributed among 12 tracks. Be sure to wait for “Pair of Wings,” the blissful acoustic ballad that’s hidden at the end of “Not a Bad Thing.”

But as its first single, the breezy, Off the Wall-flavored disco jam “Take Back the Night” suggests, 2 of 2 is faster and more dancefloor-friendly than much of the first 20/20, and therefore strikes with far greater instant impact: Opener “Gimme What I Don’t Know (I Want)” proves Timberlake remains the only superstar who can spit human beat-boxing ticks and tocks while keeping his tongue firmly in his cheek. He’s only a randy euphemism away from his SNL self-parodying self. A song about putting on a private show for one’s paramour, “Cabaret” boasts the naughtiest, most blasphemous line he’s ever dared sing: “I got you saying ‘Jesus’ so much it’s like we’re lying in a manger.”

The big difference is that these rigorous and rhythmic cuts are better suited the substantial song size: The longest one, “True Blood,” pumps from start to finish with a slew of breakdowns, buildups, contractions and expansions. Aside from the hard-rocking grinder “Only When I Walk Away,” there are few surprises. “Amnesia” has a sweet symphonic left-turn after the song’s main body fades — just like some of the original 20/20. Mostly, this is just Timberlake and Timbaland doing what they do best: Laying down the heavenly beats, ramping up the devilish charm, and trouncing most mainstream contenders.

Spilling over with crisp, witty rock songs, punctuated by bonus noise doodles

Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss have now been recording as Quasi for 20 years and nine albums, outlasting nearly all of their contemporaries, which is astonishing for a band whose main lyrical themes are indignation and self-laceration. They’re still enormously creatively fertile as a duo (a format they’ve returned to after a few years with bassist Joanna Bolme) — Mole City is spilling over with crisp, witty rock songs, punctuated by bonus noise doodles. Weiss is a pile-driving drummer most of the time (she tones it down when the songs call for it, but it’s really fun when she cuts loose), and Coomes favors super-fuzzed-out instrumental sounds and massive riffs to set off his weedy smart-alec voice. And they’re as locked into each other’s sense of rhythm as any two musicians can be: Either “Blasted” deliberately includes an incredibly weird metrical shift or both of them impulsively threw in an extra half-beat at the same moment.

Quasi’s performance aesthetic is punk rock all the way, but one weird and wonderful thing about them is that their songwriting is totally grounded in the pre-punk era (the ending of “See You on Mars” is boater-and-cane music-hall, and the singalong tune of “Bedbug Town” could have appeared on an old Kinks record). Mole City reaches back to the early glam and metal era for some of its sounds — there’s a lot of T. Rex and Ziggy Stardust, and a little bit of Black Sabbath, in its grooves. As usual, though, Coomes and Weiss’s harshest critiques are reserved for their own impulses. One of the album’s centerpieces is an unhinged Big Star pastiche called “Nostalgia Kills,” and the climactic “New Western Way” skewers the culture of a generation raised on “Nestlé Quik mother’s milk/ Mickey Mouse plastic spoon.”

Creating another facet of their constantly evolving identity

If 2012′s Divine Providence was Deer Tick’s last-call bar-romp, Negativity is the Rhode Island quintet’s bleak morning-after. Much more introspective and subdued, Negativity largely ditches the group’s trademark drunken swagger for emotional and musical depth.

Singer John McCauley wrote Negativity in the course of a year in which he suffered a broken engagement and his father’s incarceration for tax fraud, all while alternating between smoking cocaine and trying to clean up. As such, the lyrical content of Negativity is appropriately abject: The quasi-ballad “Mr. Sticks” addresses McCauley’s dad and “The Wall,” “Just Friends” and single “The Dream’s in the Ditch” all depict various broken relationships.

The album is also the most musical in Deer Tick’s nine-year career, as the band employs keys and more melodic guitar lines for a fuller sound. Negativity is also punctuated by horns courtesy of Austin, Texass’ 11-piece Grupo Fantasmo on songs like “Trash” and “The Rock.” The emphasis on technicality and sobriety, unfortunately, take away some of what made Deer Tick special to begin with. They deserve credit for creating another facet of their constantly evolving identity; it’s just a bummer that negativity isn’t as much fun.

Rock's instrumentation, chopped so finely it stutters like R&B

The Los Angeles sister band HAIM — their last name, one that rhymes with “time” — employ rock’s instrumentation, but chop it up so finely it stutters like R&B. They’re not the first to do this, of course, but HAIM’s blend, a mix of bright, brittle percussiveness and soft sisterly harmonies, feels unique, a sound that’s both nervous and resolute. It feels like youth, that knowledge that everything’s already been done before, but that you’ve nevertheless got to make your own mark. Providing most of the instrumentation as well as the singing, Este, Danielle and Alana Haim do exactly that.

There are other precedents to HAIM — Tango in the Night-era Fleetwood Mac in the precision of the production and the assuredness of the hooks; the sunniness of the Mamas and the Papas or Wilson Phillips. But because the songwriting is as strong as the sisters’ delivery is nonchalant, there’s an immediate and assured identity here that’s striking, and it transcends its many influences.

Nearly every cut exudes the confidence of a single: There have already been four of them, and that doesn’t even count “If I Could Change Your Mind,” a soft-rock plea punctuated by handclaps and hi-hat from the disco gods. And yet there’s plenty of weirdness too: “My Song 5″ features not just Tom Waits-goes-dubstep moves and a righteous double-tracked fuzz bass solo, but also super-distorted virtual trombones that essentially fart along with the vocal. Wilson Philips never thought of that.

Ambitiously detailed tendrils of sound

Daniel Lopatin’s work as Oneohtrix Point Never has been evolving in recent years to a fine point. R Plus Seven, his ninth Oneohtrix album overall, is ambitiously detailed, each tendril of sound — whatever its source, human voice or digital static — seemingly painted onto the aural canvas with a fine brush. Maybe he was inspired by his December 2012 participation, with visual artist Nate Boyce, in a multimedia evening at New York’s Museum of Modern Art; there’s a fine-art quality to R Plus Seven‘s gradations. But there’s a public-spiritedness that it shares, along with a few compositional qualities, with the ’70s downtown New York minimalism in whose steps it proudly follows.

On the 94-second “He She,” Lopatin cuts and arranges a litany of vocal sounds into a tune that evokes both Todd Edwards (who cut up the vocals on Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” and “Face to Face”) and Meredith Monk. Sometimes it can get abstruse — “Inside World” stops and starts so much it can grow wearying, despite some lovely embellishments — but more often the trickery opens the music up wide rather than making it hermetic. “Chrome Country,” the closer, is an uplifting organ and choir chamber number. It’s a lift, and so is the album.

The reflective electro-auteur is back on sublimely sure-footed form

Since the release of 1999′s multi-platinum, zeitgeist-defining Play, Moby has largely been on a trajectory of diminishing commercial returns. Innocents, his 11th studio album, may be the one to reverse that trend. Recorded entirely in his home studio, it shows the reflective electro-auteur is back on sublimely sure-footed form, balancing the euphoric glow of headphones techno at its most acute with the melancholic ache that has undercut all of his finest work. Where Play famously utilized samples of long-lost Delta blues and gospel alumni and Alan Lomax’s field recordings, this time Moby turns to contemporary leftfield figures for his nap hand of evocative other voices. Cult Canadian singer and songwriter Al Spx of Cold Specks lends simultaneously spectral and powerhouse vocals to lead-off single “A Case for Shame,” which could be Adele fronting Mazzy Star, and to “Tell Me.” The Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne slyly insinuates himself among the choir-led cosmic gospel of “The Perfect Life,” a love pledge punctuated with the day-in-the-life confessions of a junkie peering from the blur of an opiate daze, while the ever-more guttural Mark Lanegan drawls like Lee Marvin enduring a long, dark night of the soul on “The Lonely Night.” Moby’s supreme achievement is to do to them what he did with the ancient, dust-laden voices on Play: weave them into his pulsing techno tapestry, vaporize them into ghosts in the machine of his sublime, atmospheric electro-reverie.

Simple, assured and funny songs smarter than most 17-year-olds

The New Zealand teenager Ella Yelich-O’Connor has had quite a year. She wrote an uncontrollable phenomenon of a song called “Royals” that bum-rushed her home country’s charts before wandering off in search of new waters — currently, the song is brushing up against monoliths like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Robin Thicke on American charts. She reportedly wrote the lyrics to the song in half an hour and now, to place something solid at the center of her whipping storm of hype, she’s produced a 10-song album.

Despite all this noise, Pure Heroine feels unhurried, just like that breakout hit. The vibe is simple, assured, minimalist. Her voice is an instantly striking and likable instrument, ear-catching and conversational but odd, like someone assuming a difficult-to-place accent. It’s throaty and purring in places but mostly just undemonstrative, fitted sleekly to the demands of her songs. Her delivery is declarative and rhythmic, and her melodies offer a stripped-down version of the cellular hook-writing technique that, over the last half-dozen years, has rewritten pop music’s genetic code.

The songs themselves are funny and legible and shrewd, sketching out a sharp framework and shading it in expertly. If she weren’t a solo performer, she’d make a successful behind-the-scenes hit writer. “Royals” starts out with the economical couplet “I cut my teeth on wedding rings in the movies/ And I’m not proud of my address” and relaxes into a chorus that is both a mockery of catchy singsong choruses dripping with name brands and an expertly deployed version of same. On “Ribs,” she streaks the song with details so specific that they take two or three listens to absorb: “The drink is spilled all over me/ ‘Lover’s Spit’ left on repeat.” Wait — “Lover’s Spit,” the late-album track on Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot It in People?

One of the repeated lines of that song is one that should be funny coming from a 17-year-old: “It drives you crazy getting old.” But a great pop songwriter, like Ray Davies or Carol King or Taylor Swift, can dial in on pretty much any emotion, even one they only have a kind of dress-rehearsal acquaintance with in their own life, within the clean confines of pop song. O’Connor’s songwriting is more subdued and low-key than the radio chart pop of the moment — “Royals” is mostly a fingersnap of percussion, and “Ribs” is a rainy-windshield blur of synth pads and muted drums — but it’s blessed with this same supernatural acuity. These songs are smarter than any 17-year-old I’ve ever known, and smarter than a lot of 40-year-olds I know now.

A retro-futurist opus with too many cameos to count

When ordinary hip-hoppers get famous, they usually bring along their new-money friends and strike while the iron’s hot. For Dan the Automator, producer of Dr. Octagon, Cornershop, Gorillaz, and other unconventional acts, success means waiting 13 years to issue a follow-up and recruiting Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Deltron 3030: Event II, the long-delayed sequel to Dan Nakamura, turntablist Kid Koala and emcee Del tha Funkee Homosapien’s 2000 debut, opens with a spoken monologue by the star, and features cameos by fellow actors David Cross, Amber Tamblyn, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and the Lonely Island. Oh, it also includes restaurant entrepreneur David Chang; MCs Black Rob and Casual; and vocals by Rage Against the Machine’s Zach De La Rocha, Awolnation’s Aaron Bruno, Faith No More’s Mike Patton, Pillowfight’s Emily Wells, Blur’s Damon Albarn and, lastly, jazz smoothie Jamie Cullum.

That kind of talent roster would be utterly top-heavy in lesser hands, but Nakamura’s finely finessed aesthetic specializes in off-the-wall excess: It’s everywhere on this retro-futurist opus. It’s unclear if the jazzy cop-show grooves that appear throughout out are sampled or freshly orchestrated; they sound like the former, but feel like the latter.

Nakamura presides deftly over the affair, keeping all of its disparate parts moving without colliding. Del is similarly dexterous: His flow is easier to follow than his ornate sci-fi superhero story, which is high on details and low on narrative arc, yet his diction and drawl always remain as distinct as Nakamura’s fanciful arrangements and Koala’s equally flamboyant scratches. All three brothers, despite the long hiatus, are right on time — even if it’s more than a little warped.

A singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist bursting with creativity and expressiveness

Three albums into a career that was initially boosted by her ties to fellow Canadian act Arcade Fire (members of the Grammy-winning band have produced or co-produced each of her records), Basia Bulat has rocketed past any need for such big-name associations. Tall Tall Shadow reveals a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist bursting with creativity and expressiveness, one who belongs in a league with recent rising talents such as Sharon Van Etten as well as longer-term indie mainstays such as Neko Case.

Bulat’s versatility with guitar, piano, autoharp and charango (a lute-like Andean instrument) allows her to compose on a broad canvas, allowing the tone of her material to range from haunting balladry reminiscent of classic English folk (“Five, Four,” “Paris or Amsterdam”) to moody explorations (“The City With No Rivers”) to the instantly engaging urgency of “It Can’t Be You” and the title track. Binding it all together is Bulat’s spectacular and singular voice: She draws you in as if you’re privy to an intimate conversation, then suddenly soars high with sweetness and grace, seeking a revelation somewhere in the astral plane. She’s a brave singer, not one to hide her voice in a glaze of sound; the words stand out and cut deep. “Burn it till you’re set on fire/ Tell me when you cut the wires/ Talk me out of this time/ Open this heart of mine,” she implores on “Wires.” That deed is done: On Tall Tall Shadow, Bulat’s heart is wide open.

House music for the ears, not the body

Now on his fourth album, Sweden’s Axel Willner, aka The Field, occupies a unique niche in electronic music. He’s signed to techno label Kompakt, but his sound is informed as much by rock — the ear-bending, sensual feedback of My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus and Mary Chain, for instance — as electronic music; the only thing missing are lyrics, though his songs are full of carefully textured vocal samples.

Cupid’s Head continues Willner’s exploration of the fertile common ground between shoegaze and the wide-open spaces of Manuel Göttsching, or the post-acid house Wild Pitch mixes from Chicago’s DJ Pierre. Pierre, in a way, provides Willner’s template, with his layers of subtle keyboard sounds, treated vocals and percussion, the overall effect being an ever-ascending aural illusion of spiralling sounds. Willner’s samples, however, are microcosmic, sometimes less than a bar in length, and they stack up to provoke a sense of dizzying abandon and release.

On “Black Sea,” Willner creates an unrelenting pulse out of a wheezing latticework keyboards, glued together by kick drum and a jagged bassline. The harshly-affected female vocal sounds simultaneously angelic, triumphant and pleading on “No. No…,” with the visceral church organ — hellish rather than heavenly — adding to the assembly-line percussion to create music that is truly unsettling.

While remaining anchored to the traditional house tropes — kick-drum, hi-hats, snare drum, bass — Willner has built a baroque, 21st-century aesthetic. This is house music, alright, but for the ears, not the body.

Nailing the zeitgeist with enduring, hook-focused songcraft

Chvrches singer Lauren Mayberry and synthesizer/production team Iain Cook and Martin Doherty knocked around the Glasgow indie scene for years in bands like Twilight Sad, Aereogramme and Boyfriend/Girlfriend — respectable and oft-underrated outfits that often hewed close to the Scottish stereotype of cathartic mope-rock. Having finally scored a hit that makes people sing along happily (“The Mother We Share”), they’ve decided they’re not going to blow it. Their debut, The Bones of What You Believe, is subtly ambitious in the same way their arena-aspiring heroes (Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears) were: Mayberry’s laser-guided melodies cut through glass, the synthesizers are rendered with pristine neon clarity rather than the imploded fog that marks the “synth-pop” of today.

The trio also shows their old-school roots by making Bones a true album experience. Sure, the hit singles (“The Mother We Share,” “Gun” and “Recover”) are included, but they’re sequenced perfectly throughout so that new favorites can emerge, whether it’s the jet-propelled “Night Sky,” “Tether”‘s moody balladry or even the two Doherty-fronted songs, which show that Chvrches aren’t just “Lauren Mayberry and the two dudes in hats.” The result nails the zeitgeist on pretty much all fronts — the stylization of the band name, the anonymity blog hype to quasi-major-label-signing to presence in what will surely be a ton of ads for high-end consumer products. With all that said, it’s almost certainly going to sound as good in 20 years as it does now because Chvrches’ attention to enduring, hook-focused songcraft ensures it would’ve sounded great in 2003 or 1993 or 1983.

Vulnerable, life-affirming and acutely self-aware

Ha Ha Tonka’s music has always been richly steeped in Americana, folk and bluegrass. But on Lessons, the Southern Missouri quartet’s fourth and most diverse full-length, these genres are starting points. The familiar stylistic signifiers — four-part harmonies, prickly mandolin, stomping acoustic guitar — merely add texture to songs that, at various points, conjure Shearwater’s strummy introspection (“Staring At The End Of Our Lives”), Spoon’s compact pop (the bass-heavy, wrinkled title track) and Wilco’s rugged alt-country (“Pied Pipers”). Whimsical piano, plush organ and jagged electric guitar contribute additional color.

Alongside this sonic progression, Ha Ha Tonka continue to broaden their songwriting voice. Lessons is a vulnerable, life-affirming, acutely self-aware record that addresses both personal foibles and strengths. (The band members come by this wisdom — and the album title — honestly: Frontman Brian Roberts says the record was jumpstarted by an inspiring 2011 NPR interview with the late author Maurice Sendak.) “I can’t keep learning the same lessons over again,” Roberts pleads wearily on the title track, before contradicting himself in the very next line: “I keep learning the same lessons over again.” Yet despite this frustration spiral, he’s committed to self-improvement and figuring out his lot in life, as well as staying positive. “No, I don’t want to be dead to the world around me,” the frontman cries over and over again on “Dead to the World,” as majestic strings pirouette around his words, buoying his pained optimism.

A set polished as brightly as their breakout hit

When Swedish singers Caroline Hjelt and Aino Jawo, aka Icona Pop, performed at Seattle’s Showbox during the beginning of an electronic-pop showcase — part of the city’s annual Decibel Festival — in September 2012, they played to fewer than 100 people. But those people were into it, bunched at the lip of the stage and chanting hard with every word. There was something appealingly scrappy and ready for anything Hjelt and Jawo exuded, even as the music itself prides itself on sheen. More than just an electro-pop group, they came across as electro-pop purists, the way a garage-rock band might be a different kind of purist.

Few songs have gotten to prove their own inexhaustibility in an extended space the way “I Love It” has — a hit that keeps bubbling up in the charts, not to mention in DJ sets via an endless array of remixes. It kicks THIS IS… ICONA POP off just right — a thrill ride you’d have to be Scrooge to resist. The rest is polished just as brightly, albeit to greater degrees of resistibility. The faster stuff — shock — is better overall; the Vegas-jaunt-ready “On a Roll” and the fizzy-lifting new wave synth hook of “Then We Kiss” are particularly spirited. Thirty-three minutes is plenty; they make Red Bull cans small for a reason, too.

An impeccable encapsulation of their strengths

The songwriting gifts of twangy Canadian rockers the Sadies are often overshadowed by their musical collaborators — a list that includes Neil Young, the Band’s Garth Hudson, Neko Case and Jon Langford, to name a few. But Internal Sounds, the quartet’s 16th studio album, is an impeccable encapsulation of their strengths. Produced by vocalist/guitarist Dallas Good, the full-length touches on familiar sounds: barnstorming garage jangle (“The First 5 Minutes”), elegiac folk (the mandolin-aided “So Much Blood”), cowpunk (“Another Tomorrow Again”) and the kind of nostalgic alt-country that flourishes in the U.S. Midwest (the fiddle-augmented, Bottle Rockets-like “Another Yesterday Again”; the Uncle Tupelo-esque harmonies and ragged heart of “The Very Beginning”).

Still, Internal Sounds isn’t afraid to take chances: The 90-second “The Very Ending” is an ever-so-brief foray into prog rock, while the album-closing “We Are Circling” is a heavy psych drone that boasts mesmerizing interlocking vocals from Buffy Sainte-Marie, who unearthed lyrics she wrote in 1971 for the occasion. Lyrically, the Sadies are just as brave; songs touch on past indiscretions and heartaches, but feature protagonists who are self-aware enough to overcome these struggles and push past regret (“I can’t change what’s done is done/ I won’t fight for anyone but me”). This indefatigable mindset gives Internal Sounds an optimistic edge that’s inspiring and age-defying.

Their most clear-headed and well-rounded album to date

The make-or-break moment on Kings of Leon’s sixth LP is “Comeback Story,” a grandiose, slow-burning arena-rock anthem built on lonely guitar twang, a ghostly choir, and (what?) pizzicato strings. Depending on what kind of fan you are, it’s either the band’s syrupy tipping point — or their maximalist masterpiece.

Really, it’s both. The Followill boys aren’t the same scrappy backwoods teens who once earned the title “Southern Strokes,” haphazardly garnishing their power chords with hormonal rebellion. Their evolution has been subtle, but substantive: They’ve embellished their sound with bits of fractured art-rock (2007′s Because of the Times), glossy pop-rock (2008′s Only By the Night), and honest-to-gosh country (the mellower bits of 2010′s Come Around Sundown). But with Mechanical Bull, they’ve managed to synthesize all these elements (and some unexpected new flourishes) in ways that feel fresh and vibrant.

The main catalyst is a practical one: Bull arrives after a three-year interim, their longest to date. Following his now-infamous drunken stage tantrum in 2011, frontman Caleb sobered up and started a family. It can’t be a simple coincidence — Mechanical Bull is their most clear-headed and well-rounded album to date. First off, it’s richer sonically. Where Come Around Sundown sounded stifled and squashed, Bull is a full-blooded beast. There’s added muscle to Jared’s bass and brother Nathan’s reliably dextrous drums; Matthew’s psychedelic guitar spasms now reach an Edge-like grandeur only hinted at previously.

More impressive is the album’s sprawling breadth. For the first time in years, they sound liberated from the expectations of what a “Kings of Leon album” should sound like. Instead, they seem to simply be enjoying the process of crafting their songs: From the blistering power-punk riffs on “Don’t Matter” to the atmospheric power-ballad “Beautiful War” to the funky, swampy blues strut of “Family Tree,” they’ve hit a bull’s-eye on every target.

Shouting her newfound confidence from the rooftops

Since striking out on her own in 2009, former Vivian Girls/Crystal Stilts drummer Frankie Rose has sounded more self-assured and willing to take risks with each album. Herein Wild, which follows last year’s excellent Interstellar LP, is no exception. The album features more polished production, emphasizing the emergence of ornate instrumental details like cinematic orchestra shivers (“Cliffs As High”) and muted trumpets and strings (on the otherwise acoustic “Requiem”). As a singer, Rose is more confident in her ability to express varying depths of emotion; in particular, her slightly mysterious vocal delivery turns an electropop remake of the Damned’s “Street of Dreams” into something closer to a spy movie theme.

Despite these additions, Herein Wild feels like a logical progression from Rose’s past work. Like Interstellar, the record contains plenty of lush, keyboard-gilded indie-pop — highlighted by the lilting Sarah Records homages “Sorrow” and “Into Blue” and the burbling, Stereolab-like “Question Reason” — and textures influenced by the Cure’s bleakest early days (the frantic drums and deep-cutting bass line of “The Depths,” cyclone-like synth spirals on “Minor Times”). The difference is that Herein Wild‘s more deliberate approach adds gravitas to Rose’s longing and melancholy, and lightness to her more optimistic moments. Both ends of the spectrum are evident on the fuzzy opening salvo “You for Me.” The song alternates between quiet verses and stomping choruses, creating intensity that mirrors the self-awakening described in the lyrics. By the end of the song, Rose sounds positively giddy as she repeats the phrase “Can you see?” as if she can’t wait to shout her newfound confidence from the rooftops.

At the top of his profession, but still checking the kids who dissed him in high school

The Game, the self-proclaimed guide to “penetrating the secret society of pickup artists,” tells the story of Style, a nerdy kid with a bad clothes and worse hair who studies all the great seducers before ending up under the tutelage of an eccentric genius who would be the best in the world, if only he could reign himself in. As it turns out, Drake, the child star-turned-rapper Lil Wayne’s Young Money imprint, has followed nearly the same path, and while his new Nothing Was the Same doesn’t hide who else he learned from — across the album, he quotes Ma$e, remembers standing at a Bun B concert, calls one song “Wu-Tang Forever,” and raps over Kanye-influenced chopped-vocal beats in a sing-song style that might best be described as “sad Nelly” — the result is almost sui generis.

As big as any of those artists but still rocking that same chip on his shoulder, Nothing is something like rap’s version of Jordan’s Hall of Fame induction speech, the point where our hero stands at the top of his profession but still checks the kids who dissed him in high school and girls who turned a shoulder shortly thereafter. Where on “Tuscan Leather,” he’s “rich enough that I don’t have to tell ‘em that I’m rich,” on lead single “Started From the Bottom” (my mom’s favorite rap song since “Day ‘N’ Nite,” incidentally), he brags that “just a reminder to myself/ I wear every single chain even when in the house.”

Here and elsewhere, the contradiction is meant to imply depth, but more often it disguises bitterness. “No help that’s all me,” goes the hook to one of the bonus tracks, a brooding banger that could be this album’s “The Motto,” but actual emotional depth comes, most memorably, from convos Drake has with the ones who created him, his dad telling him that he and his girl should try to work it out and his own mom worrying that she might end up 70 and alone. Reviews, so far, have been mostly positive, but should we be surprised? Style, after all, began his career as a music critic.

Elton at his most serious

A new Elton album that sounds like an old Elton album is by now ancient news: The guy has been releasing implicitly nostalgic, explicitly self-referential discs for a dozen years. And although this is yet another installment in that series, The Diving Board deviates both from its relatively recent predecessors and his golden era output in ways both emotional and musical.

As its artwork and song titles like “My Quicksand” suggest, this is Elton at his most serious, like the world-weary elements of Blue Moves without comic relief, or The Big Picture without synths. Continuing the T Bone Burnett alliance that began with 2010′s The Union, Elton generates beaucoup ballads here but few pop tunes: His keyboard melodies are consistently far more finessed than what he’s singing. His voice is at its most ragged, but his classical piano work has rarely been better, and there’s little to distract from those facts. Soul star Raphael Saadiq plays bass on some cuts, but you wouldn’t know it without the credits, which also include Burnett regulars Jay Bellerose and Doyle Bramhall II, and veteran Motown percussionist Jack Ashford.

Although there are relatively simple declarations like “Can’t Stay Alone Tonight,” Bernie Taupin elsewhere reverts to wordy, allegorical fantasias, and so it’s difficult to fathom if “Oscar Wilde Gets Out” is about the writer, or criminal injustice in general. Despite its skeletal sound, this is not at all a relaxed album. It’s not always pleasant to hear the pair strain, but their effort is admirable: What superstars of their vintage and astronomical success try this hard?

A so-called difficult album with moments of near-transcendence

Nirvana’s third album was burdened with expectations almost as soon as it was even an idea; the success of Nevermind, their 1991 breakthrough, thrust them under a high-performance microscope, onto the gossip pages, and into the rumor mill. Stories that In Utero, recorded by noise king Steve Albini, did not please the band’s label (because it was uncommercial) abounded in the months leading up to its release; Kurt Cobain told SPIN he felt like he was “stuck in a void” because of its tormented birthing process.

“Teenage angst has paid off well; now I’m bored and old,” Cobain drawls as the record opens; he had turned 26 during the album’s recording sessions. This slyly-expressed weariness defines much of In Utero; Cobain’s screeched “Get awayyy!” as Dave Grohl bashes behind him on the grimacing “Scentless Apprentice” could have been directed at any number of people lusting after his newfound fame, while the defiantly downcast “Rape Me” is a wide-eyed challenge for people to do their worst to one another, from the repurposed “Smells Like Teen Spirit” riff on down.

What much of the chatter about In Utero‘s rawness misses, though, is the moments of intricate beauty hidden underneath the self-loathing and yowled lyrics. The low-in-the-mix harmonies on the chorus of “Pennyroyal Tea” undercut Cobain’s clenched vocalizing of the title’s abortion-inducer; the album’s closer, “All Apologies,” has a haunting cello counterpoint (played by Kera Schaley) that gets increasingly frenetic as the song sways toward its resigned conclusion. “All in all is all we are,” Cobain groans to close out the track, one of his band’s most lasting radio hits. In Utero‘s reputation as Nirvana’s “difficult” album is undercut by moments like these, when Cobain’s pain and his bandmates’ musicianship create moments of near-transcendence.

A dichotomous work of art and a sonic primer for first-time parents

What they don’t tell you in books like What to Expect When You’re Expecting is that once babies are actually born, they cause monumental life shifts. While newborns provide a joyous new beginning for everyone in their circles, they also bring about symbolic and genuine endings. There’s the death of absolute freedom, a fundamental transformation of the relationship once shared with the infant’s mother and the realization that your selfish needs are suddenly far down on the list or priorities. On a deeper level, there’s the acceptance that you’ve continued the cycle of life and that hopefully after you die your memory will be kept alive by your offspring.

Jesu frontman Justin Broadrick (also the main man of recently reformed industrial sludge masters Godflesh) understands this dichotomy and has drawn from the sensations he experienced as a first-time parent to create the band’s fifth full-length album Everyday I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came. “[It] deals with the existential drain that is early parenthood,” Broadrick stated. That explains the abundance of melancholy, soporific soundscapes that billow around the shimmers of life-affirming light. It’s those shimmers that makes parenting tolerable and Everyday so satisfying.

Not that listeners enthralled by the concise and conventional songs on 2011′s Ascension will be disappointed. The new album strikes a balance between the sprawling epics of old and the organic shoegazer rock of Jesu’s last couple of records. Motivated, perhaps, by a near-complete lack of sleep, Broadrick crafted, surreal, multi-layered songs that abound with ethereal sounds, yet hold together as concrete, multi-dimensional tracks. “Homesick” expresses the duality of being away from loved ones with a monochromatic drum machine beat, a droning down-tuned riff and a simple, celestial guitar line.

“Comforter” is more hypnotic, filled with backward sound effects, multihued guitars — some crushing, some feather light — that wash in and out of the mix, and barely audible vocals reminiscent of Chapterhouse. Keyboards and falsetto vocals nod to Sigur Ros as Broadrick mumbles, “Did you wish the sky would open and the rain would come and wash them all away?”

The longest composition, “The Great leveler,” is alternatively wearily reflective and densely oppressive, cinematic music for late nights without a cinema and only bottles (of liquor and milk) and a crying baby to keep your company. The 17-minute long number is the only one to feature a guest — string composer Nicola Manzan — who provides enough contrast between the hazy, delicate guitar figures and the slo-mo demolition riffage to keep listeners glued for the duration.

Everyday is a both a dichotomous work of art and a sonic primer for first-time parents; it’s a piece filled with friction, disorientation, wonderment, exhaustion and ultimately the sheer delight of creation.

A far more cohesive and dynamic style of post-everything hip-pop

With his debut album as Ghostpoet, London MC and producer Obaro Ejimiwe declared his love of not only hip-hop, electronica and trip-hop, but also of blues, jazz, electro and straight-up indie pop. Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam heralded the arrival of a fresh, young voice that chimed well with then current enthusiasm for Jamie Woon and James Blake, but spread itself rather too thinly, its rampant diversity signaling a fuzziness of intent as much as broadmindedness. Nonetheless, it bagged a Mercury nomination. Now, the follow-up.

Some Say I So I Say Light is not only a more focused and purposeful record, but also a braver one, yet t sacrifices none of the strangely sun-dappled anxiety or quotidian, small-hours doubt that is Ghostpoet’s trademark. Leaving his bedroom for a studio has seen his production talents mature, too and he strikes a smart balance between vocal intimacy and textured electronic cool. His voice — equal parts Gil Scott-Heron and Tricky – is the album’s heart. Warmly cracked and with an oddly alluring, catarrhal thickness, his sprechgesang deals with everything from the gradual growing apart in a relationship to spending too much money on Amazon. It’s offset to fine effect on “Dialtones” by Lucy Rose’s distanced cooing and on “Meltdown” by alt.folk singer Woodpecker Wooliams.

Gone are the Beck-ish blues, electro and indie elements of Ghostpoet’s debut; he’s now opted for a far more cohesive and dynamic style of post-everything hip-pop. It’s one that allows for chip-tune freneticism with strings and heavily treated vocal loops (“Comatose”), surging and euphoric Afro-beat (“Plastic Bag Brain,” which features drumming don Tony Allen, and guitarist Dave Okumu of The Invisible) and an adventure in pulsing synth house (“Dorsal Morsel”). All represent the confident and considered pushing of his parameters by a distinctive talent who’s in it for the long haul.

Merging goodwill spirit with a neo-soul vibe

Having broken through on 2006′s Moonlighting and reinforced their name on 2009′s Brooklynati, Tanya Morgan have hit that point in their still-evolving career where their biggest task is to simply maintain, especially now that they’re down to two MCs after a four-year lull. Even though it’d be easy for a group of their stay-posi caliber to coast off the easy goodwill they gained from emulating the brighter moments of circa ’93 Native Tongues rap, on Rubber Souls Tanya Morgan merge that spirit with a neo-soul vibe a decade ahead of their more direct lyrical influences. That live-band sound, provided by producer 6th Sense and a cast of sharp session players, switches things up ably — deep slow-ride bass murmurs and airy guitar strums on “The Day I,” mellow g-funk synth bounce on “Never Too Much,” funkadelic dark-alley foot-chase tension on “Pick It Up,” and snapping-tight snares throughout. Von Pea and Donwill’s softbatch-ducking earnestness radiates outwards in the service of romantic appeals (“All Em”) and hopes of leaving the next generation with the resources they didn’t grow up with themselves (“More”), lyrics that sound comfortable not only in their ease of mind but in how fluidly they ride.