Even though this album isn't as immediately or showily brilliant as The Moon & Antarctica, Good News for People Who Love Bad News reveals itself as just as strong a statement.

This record is no fun at all, the tension is rarely resolved, and -- oh no! -- it isn't exactly revolutionary, though some new shades of gray have been discovered. But you shouldn't allow your perception to be fogged by such considerations when someone has just done it for you and, most importantly, when all this brilliance is waiting to overwhelm you.

Listening to the record makes you feel like it was 1993 again, in a good way. In a melodic, honest and jangly kind of way. In a way that makes you think "nobody makes records like this anymore".

The best record of his career.

Confronting doubts about his seriousness and squashing whispers about his talent, Skinner has made a sophomore record that expands on what distinguishes the Streets from any other act in music.

Louden Up Now is easily the best record to come out of the [new wave dance punk revival] movement; its ten tracks are filled with fervor, hooks, passion and power.

Madvillainy's strength lies in its mix between seemingly obtuse beats, samples, MCing, and some straight-up hip-hop bumping.

There's just no getting around how much stronger Sparta are than so many of their peers.

There's no crybaby posing here, no deployment of cliché. Even if SDRE had a hand in the popularization of the emo movement, the Fire Theft's music is much too personal to be anything other than a therapy session, both for Enigk and his musical co-conspirators and friends.

While Pink's peers take incremental, cautious artistic steps forward, she's slyly fearless, choosing the right collaborators that help her create pop music that has both style and substance to spare.

While it's likely that From a Basement is cleaner than what Smith... intended, it is much sparer than Figure 8, and it feels at once more adventurous, confident, and warmer than its predecessor.

One long angelic hymn for an insane world with the intimacy of a friend playing guitar in your living room and the grandeur of Sigur Rós.

The Drive-By Truckers are the best, smartest, and most soulful hard rock band to emerge in a very long time.

It's the group's maturity as musicians as well as songwriters that make Transatlanticism such a decadently good listen from start to finish.

Virtually every song on Up the Bracket is chock-full of the bouncy, aggressive guitars, expressive, economic drums, and irresistible hooks that made the Strokes' debut almost too catchy for its own good.

Prior to this album, we were more than aware that West's stature as a producer was undeniable; now we know that he's also a remarkably versatile lyricist and a valuable MC.

The young hell-raiser has grown to be one of modern country's most compelling and multidimensional artists.

Of Montreal's most focused and powerful sounding record yet.

Infectious and hummable, to be sure, and a remarkably unified, irresistible piece of pop music, but no musical watershed on par with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Wilson's masterpiece, Pet Sounds.

Tambourine is a remarkably mature, confident, and commanding release that defines then rides its groove with no low points.

Cinematic, fantastic, and essential to all who want their music larger than life and rambunctious, Thunder, Lightning, Strike is the kind of record that makes you glad to be alive.

Flow demonstrates that industrial music remains potent and vital in the early 2000s, and that one of its greatest pioneers is still one of its greatest innovators.

It’s their tightest, freshest, most contemporary batch of songs, weatherproofed to stand the test of time.

Highly recommended.

A vast improvement over the intriguing but rarely focused Let's Get Killed, David Holmes' third solo album benefits from his growing status as a producer to watch -- and specifically, from his ability to snag the talents of big-name vocalists.

A distinctive work.... it's a remarkably beautiful album.

A dense, plunderphonic kaleidoscope of an album with giant, noisy jazz breaks and groovy electronic synthwork.

Colossal and cinematic, the fourth record from the Herbaliser is a timely achievement in music, a genre-bending statement of creative poignancy.

Dave Alvin brings an authentic voice and extraordinary understanding to his chosen tracks.... This is the work of a scholar as well as a master craftsman.

On the surface, there's not much different between this album and its predecessor, but the songs are stronger, sharper, and the performances are lean, muscular, and immediate.

By turns breathtakingly radiant and heartbreakingly melancholy... the record is both comforting and challenging, its placid surfaces masking poignant meditations on resignation, dislocation, and loss.

Wilderness is another absolute gem.

It's breathtaking and essential listening for all fans of electronic music.

Like just about everybody else these days, Murphy's more skilled at creating isolated tracks than making full-lengths, even though this particular full-length has few weak spots and unfolds smoothly as you listen to it from beginning to end. The bonus disc, containing all the stray single tracks, adds a great deal of value.

An utterly mesmerizing and magnetic album, almost unfair in how incredibly ambitious and impressively pulled off the whole thing is.

Woman King is too short to be considered the high point of Iron & Wine's career -- it certainly points in that direction, though.

Perhaps the only match for the cerebral weirdness and eventual beauty of Mars Volta's lyrics is their music itself.

Somebody will really have to pull off a miracle to top Nashville as far as intelligent, honest and entertaining guitar pop goes in 2005. Or any other year.

It's the best kind of pop album imaginable. It can be enjoyed on a purely physical level, and it also carries the potential to adjust your worldview.

Perhaps it doesn't have the kinetic energy or sense of adventure that mark the genre's true classics from No Dice till Girlfriend, but Alternative to Love also exists in an era that's enamored with the past and doesn't take many risks, and on those terms, it's the perfect power pop album for its decade.

Out Hud have, in a roundabout way, developed into the most original dance band on the planet.

They are so good, so natural on Lullabies to Paralyze that it's easy to forget that they just lost Oliveri, but that just makes Homme's triumph here all the more remarkable.

From the songwriting to the production to the performance, the whole package that the Books present with Lost and Safe works wonderfully and makes for a very rewarding listen.

If hip-hop had existed in the days of the Filmore, Woodstock and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Edan would have been right on the bus.

There's less brooding menace and more giddy insanity -- without ever giving way to total chaos.

Everything on In Case We Die, from the intensely sweet melodies and vocals to the widescreen production, delivers the kind of playful pop majesty that Fingers Crossed's best moments hinted were within Architecture in Helsinki's grasp.

It's a gloves-off catharsis occurring in real time for the gifted singer/songwriter, and it leaves a mark on the listener as well.

The mix of the old, the new, and the unexpected... makes Live at Earls Court one of the most successful albums of Morrissey's career.

The First Lady is terrifically balanced in its distribution of club tracks, midtempo grooves, and slow jams.

Wedding might not be Oneida's most way-out album, but it's as satisfyingly restless as anything in their catalog.

It's personal, it's cryptic, it's hilarious -- it's Laughter's Fifth, and Sam Jayne is definitely some kind of genius.

Celebration Castle confirms what anyone who heard Laced With Romance suspected -- that the Ponys are growing into one of the best and most powerfully pleasurable rock bands of their generation.

Madlib has formed a tighter frame around his productions than ever before.

Mezmerize doesn't fail to be unique.

It not only eclipses the first Gorillaz album, which in itself was a terrific record, but stands alongside the best Blur albums, providing a tonal touchstone for this decade the way Parklife did for the '90s.

This may be the band's most self-assured sounding work yet -- their music has never lacked confidence and daring, but now they sound downright swaggering.

This is her finest moment yet.

A vibrant return to form... thrilling and rewarding.

One of his very best records.

As great as Alkaline Trio are at relating their booze and blood-spattered lives to listeners, it does get a little tedious. But Skiba and Andriano's interlocking harmonies never flag, and the band's rhythms are just too catchy throughout.

As cunning as it is, Anniemal is also deeply affecting.

It's confident, muscular, uncluttered, tight, and tuneful in a way Oasis haven't been since Morning Glory.

Though it runs out of steam slightly (at least in comparison to the pop art brilliance of the band's best songs) on its second half, Bang Bang Rock & Roll is a terrific debut, and Art Brut is smart, catchy, and fun.

Most of A Certain Trigger's album tracks sound like singles waiting to be discovered.

Even if you already have all the EPs, you'll want to get this disc. It is reasonable priced, housed in the usual attractive package, and hearing all the songs back to back reinforces what an amazing group Belle & Sebastian were and are.

Get Behind Me Satan may confuse and even push away some White Stripes fans, but the more the band pushes itself, the better.

Chavez Ravine is easily the most ambitious thing in Cooder's catalog, and it just may be the grand opus of his career.

Between the perfect production and the genius batch of songs, [it] makes a case for the Pernice Brothers as the best pop band on the planet.

The album comes out as their most organic since 1998's Good Humor; even the tracks driven by programming are warm in comparison to vast chunks of both Sound of Water and Finisterre.

Here Come the Tears is what Coming Up would have been if Butler had stuck around: it's cinematic and bright, lush and passionate, halfway between the incessantly catchy pop that wound up on Coming Up and the sighing romanticism and larger-than-life sweep of Dog Man Star.

Humming by the Flowered Vine is an album that's a joy to listen to without sounding simple or hollow, and resonates with an evocative beauty comprised of both compassion and intellect.

The gravity and changing tides of this engaging self-titled effort help David Pajo warm up, if not transcend the post-rock tag.

This is inspired stuff from a rebel who still has plenty to offer.

It's a bracing and welcome return to form for an important artist.

Alternative rock hasn't seen anything like this since the release of Turn on the Bright Lights. The catch: not only is The Back Room better, it holds promise for even better things in the future.

China is terrifically rewarding.

Maritime might be a light, almost frothy album, but that's exactly where its power lies.

Front Parlor Ballads is built from modest stuff, but the finished product is as strong as anything Thompson has recorded in the past ten years.

While that may disappoint some waiting for a masterpiece, there's no shame in mining the same ground as long as they make records as tight and tuneful as this.

Knitting Needles & Bicycle Bells is the 2005 American indie rock equivalent of the kind of records the Kinks were making in the Village Green era: parochial, intimate, painfully literate, and pretty close to brilliant.

Cole's Corner is glorious, magical, and utterly lovely in its vision, articulation, and execution.

The Weight Is a Gift is Nada Surf's most honest and earnest record to date.

They have never shown such control on a record before -- previously, their best albums were exciting because they went all over the place, and did it well -- and it's quite intoxicating to hear them ride one groove, finding different variations within it, for an entire album.

An album that's not just one of Yearwood's most entertaining albums, but one of her richest records, in both musical and emotional terms as well.

Extraordinary Machine may be more accessible, but it remains an art-pop album in its attitude, intent and presentation -- it's just that the presentation is cleaner, making her attitude appealing and her intent easier to ascertain, and that's what makes this final, finished Extraordinary Machine something pretty close to extraordinary.

The 14-song set is as bright and moving as the band's previous efforts, but Broken Social Scene holds more charisma, more depth, and surely more complexities.

Z is intuitive, intensely creative, classicist-minded, nearly flawless.

Classic without being too traditional or contrived, Tournament of Hearts is the sound of the Constantines operating at the peak of their powers.

The best album of the year in the hip-hop underground.

Like the best Depeche Mode, almost everything on the album will make an initial wowing impact while remaining layered enough in subtle details to surprise and thrill with repeated listens.

At its most chaotic, Hypermagic Mountain could tear open a wormhole into Comets on Fire's Blue Cathedral.

A uniquely powerful and moving set of songs.

An impressive 13-song set that's reliably original and streamlined.

System of a Down confound and irritate even as they rock.

If you haven't heard Jens Lekman yet, you're missing out on one of the true pop geniuses of the early 2000s.

One of her best studio albums.

From a Compound Eye winds up standing apart from the pack of Pollard projects even if it doesn't stand that far apart.

This album is extraordinary. It is brave, difficult, and honest. It is utterly moving and beautiful. Because it so successfully marries all of her strengths as a songwriter, singer, and musician, Black Cadillac may be the crowning achievement of her career thus far.