The Ugly Organ is greater than the sum of its parts, with tracks that flow into one another seamlessly in spite of the wildly varying tempo and stylistic changes, not surprisingly like a classical piece in that regard.

Built on acoustic guitars with little splashes of color like handclaps, tooting horn sections, and subtle strings, the record sounds remarkably large in its smallness.

Although listeners who found the first Broken Social Scene release a nice ambient pop treat may be put off by this one's all-over-the-map approach, it's certainly a much more accessible release overall and there's bound to be something in here that you'll enjoy.

The sheer joy of their music is undeniably persuasive, evoking the otherworldly brilliance of everything from Pet Sounds to The Soft Bulletin.

Picking up the ball right about where Air dropped it after Moon Safari, Röyksopp produced one of the most intriguing downbeat albums of the year.

If Once in a Lifetime does run out of steam toward the end, it has to be said that it doesn't outstay its welcome, and apart from a track or two at the very end, this is a compelling, entertaining listen from start to finish.

Like a long lost Fluid disc, Electric Sweat proffers primordial MC5 riffs with a healthy dose of soul as only four white guys in leather jackets with every Motown record in their collections could manage.

If Earthquake Glue isn't a masterpiece, it's as close as this band can be expected to get, and is the rare Guided By Voices effort that's imaginative enough for longtime loyalists and tight enough for dabblers at the same time.

Vespertine isn’t so much a departure from her previous work as a culmination of the musical distance she’s traveled...

A wonderful balance of beautiful indie rock and subtle country.

It's enough of a reinvention to suggest that Britney will know what to do when the teen-pop phenomenon of 1999-2001 passes for good.

30 Seconds to Mars has managed to record an album that breathes life into the empty shell that corporate rock has become, and in reanimating an avenue of musical expression that has for many years been on its deathbed, has quite possibly offered the single best rock experience of 2002.

With its subtle textural enhancement, the album renders the esoteric pleasures of Todd's compositions and highly individual songs considerably more accessible.

There's little doubt to Since I Left You's status as one of the most intimate and emotional dance records that isn't vocal-based.

Explosions in the Sky doesn't shift as suddenly or jarringly on Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place; the quartet has applied more structural predictability this time out, but is still quick about setting the sad butterflies in your stomach to fluttering.

Like both Radiohead and Foo Fighters, Cave In is a stylistic chameleon that rarely uses its freewheeling taste as a crutch to present self-indulgent material.

This may not be Mouse on Mars' most ambitious albums, but it's among the group's most successful -- it's not at all difficult to feel a connection to this truly intelligent dance music.

The ladies of Northern State deliver funky breaks and tight grooves on Dying in Stereo, and keep the hip-hop flavor without being vulgar and crass.

Franti and Spearhead almost made a deliberate attempt to stray from the typical hip-hop beats and go for something a bit more organic and acoustic than their previous efforts -- and the experiments more than pay off.

Haha Sound may not be Broadcast's most superficially perfect album, but it's a more challenging and exciting one because of its deliberate imperfections.

Where The Great Eastern was a fairly gentle and tentative record in a lot of ways, this one is bigger and demands your attention. The good news is that it's one of those rare records that actually deserves all of the attention it demands.

Never before has the singer infused more mainstream rock elements (prominent strummed guitars) into her music.

Half dance party, half political rally, Gotham is a rock record for a new era.

For those who have been waiting for Gomez to come up with something that truly rivals their amazing debut Bring It On, wait no longer. This one is great.

Steve Earle proves again and again that he is the original alternative to the glossy side of Nashville.

It may not be country, but that doesn't matter; When the Sun Goes Down is winning, sturdy mainstream pop.

Dear Catastrophe Waitress [is] the richest musical offering yet from Belle & Sebastian.

Warning may not be an innovative record, per se -- it's a pop album through and through -- but it's tremendously satisfying, finding the band at a peak of songcraft and performance. There hasn't been a better pure pop album since Supergrass' In It for the Money, another record by a young band that did it all and did it without a trace of self-consciousness.

Joan of Arc have once more surpassed themselves as artists.

Though Onoffon doesn't quite top Burma's 1982 masterpiece Vs., it manages to sound like the more-than-worthy follow-up they could have cut a couple years later ... only with two decades of experience and musical detours informing its nooks and crannies.

Keith is happy to be a dirty old SOB, cracking jokes, drinking beer, and flirting with the ladies, and that makes Shock'n Y'All a fun, rough, rowdy album that wins you over despite your better impulses.

Everything here is in its right place, making Kesto (234.48:4) perhaps the only Pan Sonic album you'd ever need to own, for every style of music the group has ever recorded is presented at length and it's all produced as masterfully as ever.

This time out, Eitzel has built his arrangements around spare keyboard lines, atmospheric electronic samples, and percussion loops that blend with his voice and acoustic guitar to create an effect that suggest a more spare, organic version of Portishead, or a Jon Brion production that's stuck in a blue funk. But the new surroundings suit the songs quite well...

Carl Newman deserves every last bit of praise thrown his way. In a better world, he would be our Elton, our Todd, our McCartney, and Slow Wonder would be on everyone's iPod, rotating on M2 hourly, and his name would be on the lips of everyone from aged Royalty to teen-aged girls.

Not just the best album of 1999, The Soft Bulletin might be the best record of the entire decade.

Quality is proof that intelligent hip-hop need not lack excitement, soul, or genuine emotion; it's one of the best rap albums of a year with no shortage of winners.

Able to make the timeworn themes of sex, drugs, and rock & roll and the basic guitars-drum-bass lineup seem new and vital again, the Strokes may or may not be completely arty and calculated, but that doesn't prevent Is This It? from being an exciting, compulsively listenable debut...

What I Do feels like one of Jackson's most assured and best albums, proof positive that he's the best mainstream country singer of this decade.

A hallmark for the band, a culmination of their previous work, and -- upon its release -- their best album to date.

Songs that have grown overly familiar through years of play seem fresh and new because of these vigorous, muscular performances.

Best of all, it all feels effortless, from the production to the songwriting.

With Come to Where I'm From, Joseph Arthur shows a willingness to ease up on the stifling angst that dominated his previous efforts. To be sure, the album still has more than its share of gut-wrenching misery -- there's no shortage of lines like "I feel like taking a razor blade and on my wrist write an invitation" -- but this time out, the anguish is balanced by healthy doses of self-awareness and a winking sense of humor.

Simply the finest effort yet from the Bad Seeds; one which leaves the listener in awe, full of complex emotions and pondering the fact that they've just been in the presence of great art...

This is the Welsh iconoclast at his most elegant, energetic, and innovative.

Despite all the new assistance, Tasty is formatted much like Kaleidoscope and Wanderland, constantly swinging back and forth between bouncy pop and laid-back (not throwback) soul.

The icing on the cake is in the little details.

A tautly crafted, thoughtful album, Shine a Light more than follows through on the promise of their debut, and proves that the Constantines have the ability to be both down to earth and dramatic within their grasp.

It sounds exactly how an underground sensation's breakthrough album should: bigger and tighter than their earlier material, but not so polished that it will scare away longtime fans.

May well be the best album of her career.

An album that has all of the elements necessary to be a pop classic.

Like Aretha Franklin, Linda Jones, and Otis Redding, Staton's voice is the sound of emotion being ripped from the human heart and offered, bleeding and broken, pleading and yearning, to the listener.

This bold recording is a jazz record made with care, creativity, and a wonderfully intimate aesthetic fueling its 12 songs.

A switch in approach and sound definitely worked for them, and fans shouldn't be put off by Beulah's toughened confidence.

Harcourt experiments in more ways than one on this album, never overindulgent in the process.

A hypnotic, bittersweet, transcendental pop masterpiece.

Romantica charges out of the gate with a new vigor, brightness, and sensitivity that, in retrospect, hasn't really come together within one package for them since maybe Bewitched.

Another title that demonstrates what an awesome period the late '70s and early '80s was for music.

It ranks high among his finest albums.

"Out of the Shadows" is an indie dream come true. A dream like another great Elliott Smith record, or a Sebadoh record that isn't an embarrassment, or a Neutral Milk Hotel record that makes sense.

Moby shows himself back in the groove after a long hiatus, balancing his sublime early sound with the breakbeat techno evolution of the '90s.

Somber and smart, Decoration Day also manages to kick like a mule, and if isn't quite a masterpiece along the lines of Southern Rock Opera, it's strong enough to suggest the Drive By Truckers have another masterpiece in them.

After five years, the band has lost nothing, only gained.

What sounded austere on Fan Dance sounds simple on A Boot and a Shoe, and it's the differing inferences of those two adjectives that makes all the difference.

Before the Poison is poetic and unnerving; it stands alone in her catalog in the same way that Broken English did -- but this time, on the other side of the mirror.

Their most cohesive collection of songs to date...

The Music is an incredible effort and a brilliant example of where rock could be headed.

The album is not the flawless statement against complacency the band seemed to strive for, but it succeeds at tearing heads off, shooting fascists, and quickly asking questions later with unbelievable fury. For these reasons alone, it easily serves as one of the band's highest marks.

While Everyone Is Here lacks the brightness of much of Woodface, it's the Finn Brothers' strongest collection of songs since that masterpiece, and arguably their most emotionally resonant album to date.

She has winnowed her dueling personas -- brilliant techno-inflected DJ and haughtily self-aware vocalist -- into a fantastically complete, wildly inventive package that offers the lunatic best of both badass sides.

Though their words suggest such weighty topics, the album remains sonically airy. It might get tense, but it's never dense.

Layer after layer of preconceived notions and excess noise are stripped away to unveil both soft-spoken charm and intense newfound confidence.

The most exciting and best rock & roll record of 2004.

Our Endless Numbered Days is very subdued, thoughtful, melodic, and downright beautiful album and the new sound is more of a progression than a sudden shift in values, production or otherwise.

The harshest and most consistent album of their career.

The level of punk fury and torrential modernization is high all throughout this record.... Undoubtedly, hardcore jungleists will scoff at such a high-profile, sometimes flashy presentation of drum'n'bass ethics, but this is an album full of such militant energy that it deserves to be seen as one of the strongest saving graces of jungle in years. Reprazent sounds like a band trying to make jungle's sonic equivalent to the mutinous Xtrmntr.

An aesthetic watermark for Cave, a true high point in a long career that is ever looking forward.

The attention to detail in the production, the punchy melodies, and the sympathetic performances by the group -- along with Kasher's writing that is nothing less than gripping and often head-shakingly brilliant -- make this record an indispensable artifact for anyone who likes indie rock with a real emotional punch.

If Showtime isn't the equal artistic success of Boy in da Corner, it's slightly superior, stunning for the facts that it arrives so swiftly after the debut and is far from a retread.

Both records are visionary, imaginative listens, providing some of the best music of 2003, regardless of genre.

The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads is not only a vital document of an important, groundbreaking band on their way up, it's one of their best albums, easily surpassing Stop Making Sense.

It is more than the sum of its many parts, as the Warlocks whip up a '60s of the imagination, making you hear the sounds anew while resurrecting the old before your very eyes.

Thirteenth Step is the sound of a musical and lyrical maturity that normally doesn't occur until a band's third or fourth albums.

While it's not perfect -- occasionally the album's heady, indulgent feel tends to make it drag -- Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes is still an impressive expansion of TV on the Radio's fascinating music.

There's so much effort, Holy Wood winds up a stronger and more consistent album than any of his other work. If there's any problem, it's that Manson's shock rock seems a little quaint in 2000.

Though club-phobic listeners may find it difficult placing Skinner as just the latest dot along a line connecting quintessentially British musicians/humorists/social critics Nöel Coward, the Kinks, Ian Dury, the Jam, the Specials, and Happy Mondays, Original Pirate Material is a rare garage album: that is, one with a shelf life beyond six months.

Funny, beautiful, and moving, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots finds the Flaming Lips continuing to grow and challenge themselves in not-so-obvious ways after delivering their obvious masterpiece.

A skillful synthesis of classic rock and modern sensibilities that's pretty irresistible.

M83 is a keyboard band of the best kind: one with nuance, tone, thrash, and color.

The brilliance of Van Lear Rose is not just how the two approaches complement each other, but how the record captures the essence of Loretta Lynn's music even as it has flourishes that are distinctly Jack.

Easily one of 2000's most accomplished albums, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out may not be as immediately appealing as some of the group's more upbeat albums, but it's just as enduring, proving that Yo La Tengo is the perfect band to grow old with.

Startling, tirelessly powerful, and full of unlimited dimensions.

It's an album that kills with catchiness.

Song for song, this is better-written and harder-rocking than Cocky.

Bright Eyes has mixed badness with beauty for a sonic storybook that relates to everyone.

[A] majestic soundscape.

Put Pretty Girls Make Graves on the short list of bands that matter and make sure you get this record.

Tyrannosaurus Hives might be a little more complex and polished than the Hives' earlier work, but it's not overthought at all; even though they've evolved, they know how to keep it simple, stupid.

In its musical muscle and sweeping, politically charged narrative, it's something of a masterpiece, and one of the few -- if not the only -- records of 2004 to convey what it feels like to live in the strange, bewildering America of the early 2000s.