It’s a testament to how much Callahan has evolved that an album under his name can exist with his vocals largely absent. The productions have become as much of the imagery as his songwriting.

Emmaar finds the desert-blues group returning to the crackling electric sound that is their trademark, but here the implicit knowledge of conflict lingers like a fog.

Every instrument, including the vocals, reverberates and interplays with the next in order to create a meandering backbeat that refuses the rhythmic decorum of rock and roll and hip-hop. The girls are onpoint.

Written in part after Dee Dee was put on vocal rest, Too True infuses the band’s eyeliner-heavy songs with moments of quiet reflection that bite almost as hard as those delivered with snarl.

It can be, and often is, dizzying to unpack the poetry, but it’s probably exactly the point from a brilliant, grieving mind full of verses, desperate to release them.

It all combines to form a truly sublime album of heart-wrenching, heart-warming beauty.

Although it perhaps lacks the wasted acrobatics and distracting volume that populates today’s popscape, Give The People What They Want nevertheless reminds us that it’s both range and heart that helps compelling soul music survive both a century of cynics and existential close calls.

This solo outing from Gang Gang Dance’s Brian DeGraw strips away some of the darkness that inhabited his band’s previous records and creates a more blissful, pop-driven place to play.

Slipping into a pleasant indolence, out-of-focus piano ballads and back-masked tape loops populate this miniscule album.

Shearwater’s selection of covers is as diverse as their own discography.

With Harlem River, Morby shuffles forthright, his sanguine tone assuredly focused on the cathartic inertia of travel.

The heavy chords of the album-opening title track are a surprising jolt, yet maintain the same breezy Laurel Canyon harmonies for which the band later became known.

This is another great move by a revered musician, but the delivery isn’t always as exciting as the idea.

It’s fun, it’s derivative, it’s about 30 years too late, but it’s also rock solid.

The duo of Pete Nolan and Elisa Ambrogio are back with John Shaw (enlisted as permanent member) and holy flaming feedback does this album take off--simultaneously into deep space and murky waters.

The band members’ talents rise to the top, making Nothing Is Real a serious mark for Crystal Antlers, if it’s not their high-water.

It would all be a bit of cosmic chicanery if it weren’t for Fulvimar’s cool-ass melodies, which might seem detached on first listen, but he’s got a rock-and-roll heart that makes the songs pulsate and bleed.

Even if it’s not McCartney’s most engaging record outright, New is a breath of fresh air for what could’ve been a frustrating sigh.

Turner is clearly a sensitive, thoughtful and probably pleasant man whose musicianship is way less pretentious than is being advertised.

It’s a love odyssey, it’s psychedelic free-jazz, it’s whatever Mockasin wants it to be.

In addition to Hadreas’s wavering vocals, Le Bon also received instrumental contributions from Nick Murray (White Fence), Sweet Baboo and H. Hawkline to help create her most experimental and impressive album to date.

Aheym is a moving work but it is also challenging: The quartet saw and slide with impeccable skill with Dessner as their captain.

The Argentinian electro-folkie has kept her sense of play and lusty experimentation intact while mulling over time (“Eras”) and tides (the title track), in both English and Spanish, with a rusty (not as in unpracticed, but of the oxidation process), organic vibe brushing against its wheezy, clean sequencers.

Fade Away reminds us of how infectious Best Coast can be, and its short length ensures that we hold on. While Cosentino is still learning, listening to her music doesn’t get old.

Though “subdued” is a dirty word that’s thrown around a lot, in the case of the collection that comprises Get There, the duo shines bright when they pick up the pace.

Groundbreaking, this ain’t. But then again, are you trying to raze a barn or get your groove on? Album-specific flourishes don’t surprise.

Capped with a couple of covers of songs by San Francisco punk jokesters Pop-O-Pies, Tres Cabrones finds the three stooges keeping the ghost of Mr. Bungle alive.

The overall affect is to transport us back to that pre-9/11 decade when “alternative music” really was an apt descriptor. Thankfully, it’s OK to give in to a bit of nostalgia on occasion.