1989 is the record on which the onetime country star fully embraced electro-pop—vocal reverb, ice-cold drums and all. Excitable opener "Welcome to New York" is as big and shiny as the city's skyscrapers on a summer morning. It has zero chill, but Taylor Swift insists she's in on the joke with the haters-be-damned "Shake It Off," a spinning cartwheel of horn skronk, drum splashes and Motown backing vocals. That self-awareness continues on the slinkily baroque "Blank Space" (which cheekily addresses the singer's man-eater reputation) and "Bad Blood" ("still got scars in my back from your knives," she slings at a rival). But at a certain point, it's better to stop analyzing and dance. "Style" and "All You Had to Do Was Stay" sparkle with disco-ball shimmer. With its Minimoog hum and vocal loops, "Out of the Woods" could be an '80s movie soundtrack gem. The last few tracks wind down like the end of a long night, and it's closer "Clean," that offers the biggest surprise of 1989 with its lush, Roxy Music sprawl. The deluxe version adds three new originals and three voice memos of Swift discussing her songwriting process. © Qobuz

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The debut EP from the combustible yet melodious Rochester Hills, Michigan-based post-hardcore outfit, the independently issued Heart vs. Mind offers up seven slabs of punk/emo/hardcore goodness, including the punishing, breakdown-heavy title track, the defiant punk-pop anthem "Crossroads," and the emotionally charged, largely acoustic ballad "My Heart I Surrender." Fans of like-minded noisemakers such as Bring Me the Horizon, Between the Buried and Me, We Came as Romans, and As I Lay Dying will find much to love here.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo

Composer James Newton Howard (Batman Begins, Sixth Sense, The Fugitive) has helmed his fair share of action films, but none as daunting as director Peter Jackson's gargantuan remake of King Kong. Not only was he rescoring the life and death of one of cinema's most beloved icons; he had to do it in less than two months. Longtime Jackson collaborator Howard Shore, who took home an Oscar for his work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, left Kong in a flurry of "creative differences" with the director, scoring just over an hour of material. Keeping that fact in mind, Howard's compositions are nothing short of remarkable. While they lack Shore's epic scope and his myriad of complex and highly melodic character cues, Howard manages to pinch-hit his way through with the confidence of a starting player. Using the Depression era as a launching pad, he deftly whips jazz motifs, thunderous brass sections, and wistful choirs into a stew of "silver screen"-meets-"blue screen" harmony that may not yield any memorable themes, but manages to illuminate the film's terror, humanity, and tragedy with irrefutable professionalism.© TiVo

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When she announced 1989 a few months prior to its October 2014 release, Taylor Swift called her fifth record her first "documented, official" pop album, explicitly severing herself from her country roots. Truth be told, Swift already made the leap from country to pop with 2012's Red, a nominally country LP distinguished by three songs co-written and produced by Max Martin and Shellback, a team that returns for twice that number on 1989 (Martin has one additional non-Shellback co-write with Swift). Taylor is rarely without co-writers here: only "This Love" belongs to her alone, with the other major collaborators being OneRepublic's Ryan Tedder, fun.'s Jack Antonoff, and Imogen Heap. This busy kitchen is typical of modern pop albums, as is the incessant gleam of 1989's steely productions, every element of which blinds when caught in the sun. Swift claims she patterned the album's sound after the MTV-ready sound of the year 1989, and while some cuts are conceivably anchored in the era of Debbie Gibson and George Michael -- "Shake It Off" is giddy on the momentum of its own pom-poms, the bonus track "New Romantics" effectively conjures the ghost of 1983 new wave, "Out of the Woods" veers into territory previously pioneered by one-video wonder T'Pau (their big hit "Heart and Soul" arrived in 1987, two years before Taylor's year zero) -- this is a modern album through and through. The heavy presence of Martin, who wound up producing all the vocals along with half the record, is something of a feint. Swift tailored 1989 after Tedder's patterns, constructing nearly every one of the album's 13 tracks as a glassy, imposing skyscraper that deliberately casts its shadow upon on its predecessor. Considering that this album begins with the fanfare of "Welcome to New York," an anthem for carpetbaggers reaping the spoils of rampant gentrification, that progressive escalation in size is something to behold, even if the towering scale winds up slightly overwhelming. Warmth, which previously was a hallmark of Swift's, has largely been substituted by belligerent ice: 1989 emphasizes its reflective surfaces, the hyperactive rhythm tracks -- dance by definition but rarely danceable in practice (the effervescent "How You Get the Girl" is an exception) -- functioning as an aural accent to the surging synthesizers and processed vocals. Underneath the digital clatter lie some sturdy songs because, at her core, Swift is a canny songsmith, but 1989 isn't a record about songs, it's all about sonic style. Taylor telegraphed as much when she called it an "official pop record," and its problems lie in the details, not the big picture. Undoubtedly, she has the charisma and chops to be convincing on both bubblegum and ballads, but 1989 is something else entirely: a cold, somewhat distant celebration of all the transient transparencies of modern pop, undercut by its own desperate desire to be nothing but a sparkling soundtrack to an aspirational lifestyle. © Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Connecticut indie-emo rockers the World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die bring their particular brand of post-rock-informed emo songs to their debut album Whenever, If Ever, evoking the same sentimentally terse dynamics of '90s hardcore offshoots like Sunny Day Real Estate, Cap'n Jazz, and Mineral. While staying pretty true to the blueprint of the early emo genre with obtuse yet jangly guitar lines and urgent vocals, tracks like "Flightboat" blend in post-rock elements like buoyant trumpet and airy synth lines. © Fred Thomas /TiVo