Rites is already locked into my Top 10 of the year, though admittedly, this is one of those records that will divide people. In anyone else’s hands this stuff could come off as hippie-dippie fluff, but in every fiber of their being, Lights are the star-children pictured on the back cover. And though Rites is their second album, it feels like a new beginning, with the addition of underground-superstar Andy Macleod (Howling Hex, early White Magic) helping crystallize the cosmic vibrations of singers Sophia Knapp and Linnea Vedder. The resulting nine songs make up a glimmering sky-spire of tribal psychedelic love disco. Seriously! Technicolor sparkle-bursts will go off in your mind and heart to the swirl of “Heavy Drops,” the escapist fantasy “Can You Hear Me?” and the louche disco-funk of “Fire Night.“ Macleod takes the closer, an achingly sweet cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Save Me a Place.“ Lovers 1, Cynics 0. (M.L. Thrope)

Viewing the second album by the young San Franciscan Ty Segall as merely a part of some non-trend, say the new wave of lo-fi garage-scuzz, does a disservice to him, you, me, and Don Van Vliet. Segall is a genuine rock artist, someone who displays the range of human emotions in a form that also happens to get you jumping up and shaking your hips in a pre-apocalyptic shimmy. Lemons is flush with informed garage rock, meaning that strains of 60s punk and a certain pubby R&B sensibility (he is on Goner, Memphis’s choicest indie) color the proceedings. Sounding at times like a less disdainful Dan Melchior, Segall shares that British ex-pat’s keen yet omnivorous taste in influences: the one cover here is of Captain Beefheart’s awesome “Dropout Boogie.” Alongside Thee Oh Sees and the Intelligence, Segall is proving that rock is anything but a dead language in 2009. (M.L. Thrope)

Two guys from Vancouver with a guitar, a drumkit and a bottomless sack of hooky, huge-sounding indie-rawk — what’s not to like? More than anyone else, Japandroids will make you think of Superchunk, not in a soundalike sense but more in the way they take up one corner in the general pop-rock party room and just keep serving up one good tune after another. Guitarist Brian King has a nicely raw tone that helps the band sound like more than just a duo, while drummer David Prowse is a basher of the highest order, capable of matching King’s intensity every step of the way. The rock, she is good! (M.L. Thrope)

Style counts. And this L.A. septet has it in spades. They probably also have a set of spades with which to dig you a grave in the cracked earth of the Southwest desert. A swinging mass of Morricone-esque allusions clad in psychedelic-cowboy garb, The Legend of God’s Gun (a soundtrack, I believe) is a great rock record because Spindrift knows that you can take this kind of endeavor seriously and still maintain a sense of humor, wry like a cocked-gun though it may be. Frontman Kirpatrick Thomas — with a name like that he was pretty much destined to form this band, make this record — is the hangman/grave-digger/carnival-barker leading his troops from one nameless town to the next. It’s myth-rock American-style, and it’s not hard to imagine Spindrift’s name carved onto dozens of tombstones in the imaginary Old West. Really good fun. (James)

Mulatu Astatke (born 1943) is a giant of Ethiopian music, a multi-instrumentalist pioneer of African jazz and one of the great arrangers. Reputedly the first African student at Berklee, he has blended jazz, Latin, and Ethiopian music into a truly distinctive, personal style. Sound Fix has already turned people onto his artistry via volume 4 in the great Ethiopiques series and a pair of LPs; now comes a brilliant compilation with Los Angeles groovemeisters The Heliocentrics, who give Astatke some of the funkiest beats of his amazing career. At the London recording sessions, Ethiopian masters who live there were also called in to make this multi-cultural creation even more authentically amazing. This darkly modal music just might be the best album of 2009 in three genres: soul/funk, jazz, and world music. (Steve)

Jónsi and Alex, a.k.a. Riceboy Sleeps (this is one of those confusing name situations), are partners Jón Þór Birgisson of Sigur Rós and Alex Somers of Parachutes. This album, which is connected to their 2006 book of the same name, has been in the works for five years, and it’s easy to imagine that it finally saw completion because Sigur Rós’s recent move towards more straightforward pop leaves less room for the gentle soundscapes found here. The music sits somewhere between composer Johann Johannssen’s indie-friendly minimalism and Sigur Rós’s quietest moments, with a tunefulness that develops over longer time spans. The string players of Amiina play a big role, and a choir intones (apparently) wordlessly on occasion. Birgisson sings, at least by himself, only once, it seems. When the keyboards predominate, Max Richter and, inevitably, Eno also come to mind. The way the droning, slowly percolating textures are electronically treated is redolent of the fuzzy friendliness of laptop ambient, but the arc structures sound completely composed and their long, slow crescendos will sound familiar to post-rock fans, only with mirroring decrescendos instead of pounding climaxes. There’s a good chance this will end up being the most beautiful album of 2009. (Steve)

Old fans who complain of not being able to keep up with the best sibling-band around may have an easier time with I’m Going Away, the Fiery Furnaces’ eighth album. (Eight albums. Man.) Without abandoning the anarchic way they sometimes tumble into tangential reveries, the Friedbergers nonetheless turn in their most focused-sounding collection since their debut, Gallowsbird’s Bark. The Furnaces remain stylistically nimble though, offering a pair of brilliantly jittery tunes in “I’m Going Away” and “Charmaine Champagne,” and blending endtime fear-creep with 70s-piano-pop on “The End Is Near” and “Cut the Cake.” And that’s not even the first half of the album! Every utterance from this band remains contextually unique, a particle accelerator of styles and emotions that should be an explosive mess yet, once again, comes together in perfectly odd harmony. And they name a song for Adirondack “twig-furniture” maven Ray Bouvier. Wotta band. (Edgar)

If we told you we had a white indie-rock guy who was going to make a solo reggae record, you’d be one foot out the door in a hurry. (Me, I’d be reaching for the cyanide.) But wait — Sean Bones, a.k.a. Sean Sullivan, guitarist with local band Sam Champion, is that very guy, and with Rings he has done that very thing. And not only does it not make me want to kill myself, it’s actually quite nice! Bones succeeds by simply not trying too hard; his reggae has a light touch (which is different than “lite”), and in truth is really just crafty pop music that sneaks and snakes along on rolling one-drop (sorta) rhythms. Summer hits, no waiting: “Sugar in My Spoon,” the slightly Specials-y “Visions” and “Smoke Rings,” which has particularly killer backing vox. (For those who care, Bones also gets Norah Jones to join him on one track.) (M.L. Thrope)