Deerhoof
Offend Maggie
Kill Rock Stars

With equal time devoted to Deerhoof's sweet, challenging and reflective sides, Offend Maggie is one of the band's most balanced albums. Shades of The Runners Four's sprawling experimentalism, Friend Opportunity's economic pop and Apple O's galloping riffs can be heard throughout these songs, but they never feel scattered -- they just feel like natural additions to Deerhoof's consistently interesting, and continually changing, body of work.

Bob Dylan
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs - Rare and Unreleased 1989-2006
Columbia/Legacy

The eighth volume in Bob Dylan's offical bootleg series focuses on the songwriter from 1989's Oh Mercy straight through 2006's Modern Times. There are many stops --and surprises--along the way. It offers a better picture of Dylan through the 1990s and into the new millennium than his released studio records suggest, and is, if anything, a new Bob Dylan record rather than an odds and sods collection.

Lambchop
OH (Ohio)
Merge

OH (Ohio), Lambchop's tenth proper album, finds the band in masterful form; Kurt Wagner and his seven accompanists (with two additional musicians helping out with horns and woodwinds) bring a dazzling sense of grace, balance, and drama to the melodies, and while one senses the size of the ensemble while listening to these songs, there's no clutter or waste in the arrangements, and Lambchop is able to generate a compelling emotional immediacy no matter how broad their musical canvas.

Margot & the Nuclear So and So's
Not Animal
Epic

Following a spat with Epic Records, Margot & the Nuclear So and So's were forced to issue two concurrent albums: Animal, the band's preferred sophomore record, and Not Animal, which featured enough marketable material to appease their label. Not Animal is anything but a commercially-minded album, however. While the band's debut effort drew parallels to Sufjan Stevens and Arcade Fire, this record is more introverted and melancholy, with the 8 bandmates rarely piling their instruments into lush musical heaps. Not Animal is a challenging listen, perhaps, but it grows all the more rewarding as the album progresses.

Oasis
Dig Out Your Soul
Big Brother/Reprise

Colorful and dense where Don't Believe the Truth was straightforward, Dig Out Your Soul finds Oasis reconnecting to the churning psychedelic undercurrents in their music. This is heavy, murky music, as dense, brutal and loud as Oasis has ever been, building upon the swagger of Don't Believe and containing not a hint of the hazy drift of their late '90s records: it's what Be Here Now would have sounded like without the blizzard of cocaine and electronica paranoia.

Jay Reatard
Matador Singles '08
Matador

Jay Reatard spent much of 2008 releasing singles for his new label Matador, six in all. Matador Singles '08 collects all the tracks and adds one song as a bonus. The songs find Reatard moving away from the frantic wildness of earlier records and into a more mature and tuneful direction. That said, there are still plenty of racous rockers mixed in among the acoustic guitar-driven and melodic mid-tempo songs.