The album sounds cool, but it also sounds cold.

Thursday's Epitaph debut melds the band's hardcore influences with shoegaze and atmospheric elements, with mixed results.

"The Listener" is a low-key, early morning album, perhaps something Lou Reed would have created had he spent his career playing saloons in Tucson, Ariz.

At times compelling in its eccentricities, this record emphasizes experimentation rather than tunefulness.

While over-produced and quite sentimental, this is a very sweet record.

"Compound Eye" is difficult as a complete listen but works well in smaller chunks. [28 Jan 2006]

It's a very sexually explicit R. Kelly who greets fans on this outing. [2 Jun 2007]

On 'High Price,' where she takes her vocals to an opera-like pitch, and her collaboration with the-Dream, 'Lover's Things,' whose faint tenor would seem like an ideal match, Ciara seems to go almost unnoticed. Thankfully, 'Work,' featuring Missy Elliott, has Ciara showing fly-girl antics over a house-like, clap-laden production, and the breakup song 'Never Ever,' featuring Young Jeezy, which samples 'If You Don't Know Me by Now,' pick up the slack.

Enigk's vocals here are as translucent as ever.

Sweet and pretty. [25 Nov 2006]

There aren't enough original ideas here to know if Rooney can shine as a relevant, modern rock band.

Son Volt may be playing it too safe on American Central Dust, but the songs are still woven together with a feeling of comfort and familiarity.

The Coral's trade has made them less rumbling and more meandering, more coherent but less mysterious.

"Shut Up I Am Dreaming" is a grower, and doesn't grab you by the ears like Wolf Parade's debut did.

A respectable effort.

The new set goes just far enough beyond the call of duty to warrant repeat listens.

"The Mix-Up" is thematically sound and feels like a comprehensive piece instead of a self-indulgent scheme. [30 Jun 2007]

While superbly recorded and at times a hoot to crank (largely for the shameless rips of Kiss, Joan Jett and Def Leppard), Bitchin' is too light on hooks.

Mobb Deep often sounds like a guest at its own party.

There are potent moments like the rise-and-fall ballad 'Kristy, Are You Doing Okay?' and the fierce 'Nothingtown,' but 'Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace' sounds more like a tentative step in the Offspring's new direction.

"Machine" is ultimately flawed when the Kahuna boys abandon uptempo techno for atypically hymnal pastures.

Much of "Drukqs" sounds like two different albums competing and thus canceling each other out.... An ambitious but ultimately failed experiment.

If parts of "Shock City" shudder under the weight of seeming too cool for school, much credit is due Beans for being one of the producer/MCs desperate to stretch out the rubbery boundaries of the genre.

The Americana is first-class, be it on crunchy, boozy romps with stinging solos or the slow-burning acoustic fare, but this batch of tunes proves far less memorable.

[It] works best when he's rapping alongside guests.

Often falters distressingly.

On the synthy, Darkchild-produced 'So Over You,' Ashanti croons about getting past a former relationship, while the Jermaine Dupri-mixed 'Good Good,' featuring elements of Michael Jackson's 'The Girl Is Mine,' finds her confidently belting about her abilities to please in bed.

The band's first new set since 2002 is full of these well-intentioned attempts to recapture some of that '80s pyromania (or in the case of the absurdly large power ballad 'Love,' herculean '70s prog-rock balladry), but without producer Robert "Mutt" Lange, who left for the much more profitable world of country years ago, the results are solid if unspectacular.