Bill Callahan – Dream River
Callahan’s learned to use negative space so well that there’s even poetry in the pauses. Take “Summer Painter”, an instant addition to his canon of great songs; for what else can be said of a song that begins, “I painted names on boats…/ For a summer” and then unfurls, glacially, like an elliptical yarn spun by a leathery old shanty-dweller who has, without question, seen some shit. Callahan’s learned how to use his voice like a camera (“When the hurricane hit some found it suspicious/ That I’d just since left the frame”), and here he’s shooting a wryly funny mock-epic. “Rich man’s folly and poor man’s dream,” he sings, and then pauses for effect, “I painted these.” It’s a masterful little zoom-out, and it only heightens the sense that Callahan’s playing director here, a feeling furthered by guitarist Matt Kinsey’s torrential freak-out when a storm rolls in. Read the full review on Pitchfork

Forest Swords – Engravings
Having said that, the focus on Engravings isn’t narrow, and, as on Dagger Paths – a record adorned with an eerie image of a Japanese geisha – Barnes dots his tracks with flourishes that evoke a wider, perhaps dreamlike, world. On opener ‘Ljoss’, for example, a flurry of Spanish guitar segues into slaloming notes that appear to be performed on an electrified koto. Similar unexpected flourishes creep into pretty much every track, in the form of distended woodwinds on the gorgeous ‘Thor’s Stone’ (a reference to a stone slab local to Barnes that was supposedly used for Viking sacrifices) or bursts of sampled choir and orchestra on ‘Irby Tremor’, which are distorted in a manner redolent of The Caretaker, only with a focus outward rather than into the recesses of the mind. Read the full review on The Quietus

Elvis Costello & The Roots – Wise Up Ghost
Bitterness and Elvis Costello, how sweet the sound. On “Wise Up Ghost,” the musician’s powerful new collaboration with the hip-hop group (and “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” backing band), the artist offers a dozen songs that tackle war, peace, dishonor, disappointment and strife. A record that pops with urgency, it’s a journey into the world of big-picture alienation, one that highlights the little lives trying to survive amid the chaos. Read the full review on The LA Times

Neko Case – Worse Things get,the Hard I Fight…
Neko the sonnet-puking miracle. There is no end to her grace, even among messy, jagged ephemera that constitutes Case’s lyrics. It’s very much like she’s purged her pretty packages of words to make room for the breathlessly world-weary poetry that clings to every melody for dear life. No time for sonnets when there’s wasp nests in your idyll. And while a line like “I remember the 80s/ I remember its puffy sleeves” honestly comes off a bit trite, that honest detail in the end is there as a dare. She’s not talking about easy things, and she’s blazing toward the sensory, sacrificing simple rock tropes and perhaps “cool” itself. Read the full review on Pretty Much Amazing

Janelle Monae – Electric Lady
With The Electric Lady, [Monae] finds a way to give us more of herself. Together with her tight-knit Wondaland collaborators– Kellindo Parker, a magnificent guitarist who singlehandedly gooses several songs into transcendence; her college friends Nate “Rocket” Wonder and Chuck Lightning, and Roman GianArthur– Monáe supervises and synthesizes a parade of golden touchstones (Sly, Stevie, Marvin) into a show-stopping display of force and talent. Read the full review on Pitchfork

Nine Inch Nails – Hesitation Marks
The first sound you hear are these little pulses. They’re little beats, that tease. Beats that creep quietly. Beats, made by a man (a sampled first beat of a babies heart? Or the snap-crack of a bone?) and processed by his evil machines. And then, before the prelude reaches any kind of climax, ‘Copy of A’ bursts onto the scene and you find yourself riding these green pixelated horses into battle… Read the full review on Drowned in Sound

Kanye West – Yeezus
“9.5” – Read the full review on Pitchfork

Sigur Ros – Kveikur
Short of a Scott Walker-esque turn for the bleakly absurd, Kveikur (“Candlewick”) will probably be as dark as Sigur Rós will ever get. Melancholy and anger aren’t foreign concepts to the ethereally beautiful world of this Icelandic trio, whose lineup was shortened by one with the departure of keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson in 2012. On their career peak ()—known commonly as “The Bracket Album”—the group channeled their orchestral style into an exploration of the somber side of beautiful. The grey introspection of the 2011 live CD/DVD Inni further added to the undercurrent of gloom in the band’s music. Though Sigur Rós will be perpetually known as the guys who wowed the world with the otherworldly gorgeousness of Ágætis byrjun, the broad brush strokes the group is often painted with by critics ignore the threads of the morose that run throughout their discography. Read the full review on Pop Matters

Bill Frisell – Big Sur
There’s not a whole lot of soloing or Frisell’s notorious excursions to the edge, but for those who dig that side of him, he does bare a little teeth against a bluegrass backdrop on “Hawks.” Frisell lets his hair down again, but in a distinctly California way on the backbeat driven, beach rock of “The Big One” and the presence of three orchestral stringed instruments does nothing to water down that feel. The same goes for “Highway 1,” where Royston’s swampy rock pace is exploited by everyone else, conjuring up something of a chamber version of the Beatles’ “Come Together.” Read the full review on Something Else

Boards of Canada – Tomorrow’s Harvest
Tomorrow’s Harvest opens with dissonant arpeggios and a heap of fuzz—what John Carpenter might record if he took a job soundtracking a Michael Mann film. This theme sticks for the album’s duration, like a steady drizzle that doesn’t let up for weeks. The clouds only part sporadically, but when they do, we get some of the most unabashedly gorgeous music in Boards Of Canada’s discography. “Cold Earth” has the kind of wandering melody and head-nodding beat we’ve heard innumerable times from this group, but the space they leave in the mix brings clarity to its strange chords and rhythmic nuance. Driven by a ghostly piano and strings filtered down to little more than a high-frequency scratch, “Nothing Is Real” provides some rays of sunlight. Mostly, though, we’re left sifting through chilly ambience and tangled drum patterns, driven by the lingering sense of some greater meaning. Read the full review on Resident Advisor

Deafheaven – Sunbather
Though there are plenty of heavy riffs and betwitched screams a la early ‘90s Norway, there’s plenty on Sunbather that’s bound to piss off those wishing to tag this group as black metal. The LP’s sleeve art is a striking, gorgeous pink, far from the imperceptible black-on-white band name decals that black metal is so famous for. Soft instrumental passages like “Irresistible” recall Explosions in the Sky, whose placid guitar technique (see the blueprint established by The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place) is not privy to harsh tremolo picking. Meanwhile, on the other end, there are those who are drawn to this album for its take on shoegaze and post-rock, i.e. the avid readers of indie e-zines. For all the things they might find appealing, they probably won’t bee keen on George Clarke’s vocals, which never fall below a piercing screech. Read the full review on Pop Matters

Black Sabbath – 13
Ozzy Osbourne has stated multiple times that ’13′ could possibly be the most important album of his career. With such a fabled discography preceding ’13,’ both with Black Sabbath and his solo career, Ozzy’s claim is not one to be taken lightly, and although ’13′ may not be the greatest album to ever be attributed to Ozzy’s name, the disc is a definite success for Black Sabbath. Read the review on Loudwire

King Tuff – Was Dead
It’s a tight, consistent, and unbelievably catchy rock album that quickly and effectively defined who and what “King Tuff” was, stuffed with killer guitar solos, infectiously sunny hooks, and lyrics that come off like personality-defining mantras. If you were at all familiar with Thomas’ other work, the immediacy of Was Dead probably came as a surprise. But this was the album he’d been hoping to make all along: “There’s been a few diversions into other types of music, but I’ve pretty much always had a rock’n’roll heart.” Read the full review on Pitchfork

The National – Trouble Will Find Me
With every new album the band continues to mystify with their amazing presence and spirit and it’s no different with Trouble Will Find Me. A repetitive verse that reads more like poetry than lyrics, the narrator is disappointed by a lover that got away and how petty arguments always were the distraction. The music is pensive with a chorus that features choir-like backgrounds and a bass line that permeates throughout. And the whole time, you’re left with this vision of the narrator, alone, with nothing but the lost memories of what could have been. And like beautiful The National fashion, each ensuing song is a vivid recounting about some kind of love that might have been and the lesson learned. Read the full review on Delusions of Adequacy

Queens of the Stone Age – Like Clockwork
Though there has been plenty of buzz about ‘…Like Clockwork’s’ all-star contributors, the core four-piece has ample room to shine. The album opens with the darkly intoxicating opener ‘Keep Your Eyes Peeled,’ an experimental track with Homme offering falsetto as Scissor Sisters singer Jake Shears contributes backing vocals. But things venture into more accessible territory with the standout track ‘I Sat By the Ocean.’ This traditional rocker features an infectious ‘Good Times Roll’ guitar lick and a swagger that just swings. Read the full review on Loudwire

Phoenix – Bankrupt!
If it sometimes seems that Bankrupt! is bursting at the seams, it’s because it is. A song like album highlight “SOS in Bel Air” has no less than three different hooks running rampant through its breathless structure, while “Trying To Be Cool” pokes fun at itself and the band with a breezy, gleaming bit of ‘80s trifle that is decidedly uncool for 2013 – and that’s before the R&B breakdown that ends things without a hint of embarrassment. Read the full review on Sputnik Music

Flaming Lips – The Terror
After resisting for so long the miniaturization of rock—the entry in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series on Zaireeka aptly describes that album’s synced-up, four-disc experience as “the anti-MP3”—The Terror is The Flaming Lips record that fits in your pocket. Not that this detracts from its potency: This is a lonely record, epic in length and intimate in scope. Read the full review on The AV Club

Iron & Wine – Ghost on Ghost
Ghost On Ghost is the fifth Iron & Wine full-length, viewed by Beam as “a reward to myself after the way I went about making the last few.” This is a curious statement, as the record doesn’t initially feel or sound too far-removed from 2011’s Kiss Each Other Clean, nor The Shepherd’s Dog. The instrumentation is lush and expansive, song titles like ‘Grace for Saints And Ramblers’ are quintessentially Iron & Wine, and the sinners, naked boys, morning birds and country fairs that appear on the opening ‘Caught in the Briars’ are lyrical staples for Beam at this point – ones he has contemplated plenty across his discography. Read the full review on The Quietus