If Cobblestone Runway's surfaces may initially puzzle a few fans, the heart, soul and hard-won wisdom of these performances confirm that he's finally mastered the recording studio, and it ranks with his best-realized work to date.

While there are come similarities to their previous efforts Bedside Drama and The Gay Parade, Coquelicot is more ambitious in its concept, arrangements, lyrics, and even artwork.

Beet, Maize & Corn is a dramatic reinvention of the High Llamas.

This soundtrack is a powerful tribute not only to the time-honored but commercially ignored genres of bluegrass and mountain music but also to Burnett's remarkable skills as a producer.

An album that shares a spacy sadness with Sparklehorse's Good Morning Spider and Radiohead's OK Computer. Though it's a little more self-conscious and not quite as accomplished as either of those albums, it is Grandaddy's most impressive work yet and one of 2000's first worthwhile releases.

Sparse, noir-tinged melancholia... If David Lynch should ever film a TV series in England, here are the soundtrack composers.

The band is making the finest music in the history of its collective.

Pretty, brittle, subtle, full of surprises, and disarming in its ability to set moods, Life Is Full of Possibilities is a masterpiece that places Dntel near the top of the heap of electronic artists working in 2001.

These days music fans will be hard-pressed to find an album so satisfying.

Stephin Merritt's most ambitious as well as fully realized work to date, a three-disc epic of classically chiseled pop songs that explore both the promise and pitfalls of modern romance through the jaundiced eye of an irredeemable misanthrope.

By shedding the smirking artifice that served Casanova so well, and hiring producer Nigel Godrich, the Divine Comedy may be treading dangerously close to the sounds of countrymen Radiohead, but the Divine Comedy are smart enough to give listeners just enough lyrical bit to throw them off the scent.

Panda Park is uplifting, mesmerizing, glittery, and unapologetically psychedelic while sounding rooted in both '70s prog and skewed latter-day punk rock.

This is a remarkable album; it sets a new water mark for Frisell's sense of adventure and taste, and displays his perception of beauty in a pronounced, uncompromising, yet wholly accessible way.

With Fan Dance, Sam Phillips has made an album that proves modesty is one the rarest and most welcome virtues in pop music today.

Wanna Buy a Monkey? shows off Nakamura's ear for a great track as well as his deft turntablist skills.

While the appealing rawness of their early material is occasionally missed here, the strides forward that the group makes on this album more than make up for it.

While the Rapture and to a lesser extent Radio 4 made off with all the headlines, !!! was making the best music of all the retro-punk-disco dancers.

It's the first album of hers that's a sheer pleasure to hear.

Showcases a band testing themselves by going down an untravelled road while still maintaining their identity.

A work of beautiful, desolate fragility.

The bottom line here is that Kozelek's aesthetic with Sun Kil Moon may not be radically different than his RHP project, but it is moving, graceful, and consciously beautiful.

Underscoring the songwriting skill he's been working at since age eight and over the course of 11 songs, he plays acoustic, folk-rock, alternative, power pop, and straight-ahead rock; his lyrics are consistently heart-sung but they aren't lite (he's got weight and bite too).

Shows a serious artist crafting his medium.

The depth of his production sense and the breadth of his stylistic palette prove just as astonishing the second time out.

It is simply the bravest, most emotionally wrenching record she's ever issued.

You Are Free may take awhile longer than expected to unfold, but once it does, its excellence is undeniable.

It's difficult to imagine how Badly Drawn Boy could've improved on The Hour of Bewilderbeast any better than this astonishing work.

Despite all attempts to sabotage his songwriting and production with innumerable experimental tidbits, songs within a song, and (seemingly) tossed-off arrangements, Damon Gough has to face the fact that He wrote and produced over a dozen excellent songs of baroque folk-pop for his album debut, and the many gems can't help but shine through all the self-indulgence.