Beyond the music, X's sincere subject matters keep the album enticing.

Whatever its negligible shortcomings, Golden State at least serves to inject a depth of vision to what formerly was a rather one-dimensional musical entity.

On Atomic, the band unveils a sharper pop-rock sound, one that's so infectiously catchy that you'll feel like an inoculation is in order.

Cuttin' Heads whizzes by in just under 40 minutes, with ridiculously charming acoustic pop, Latin-flavored sizzlers, and menacing love songs.

Gandhi Khan is full of the dark, dirty production Van Helden has championed recently.

This is the stuff of pure comic genius.

His most ambitious collection of songs to date.

Let It Come Down, might well contain the most potent feel-good music he's yet crafted.

An angular art-punk record that twitches as if in the throes of electroshock treatment.

A truly superb and definitive record...

Love and Theft is a strange trip through Dylan's personal relationship with the blues, whether it's the silly story-song "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum," the mandolin lament "Mississippi," or the solid blues-rock of "Lonesome Days Blues" and "Summer Days."

Built around mellotrons, bowed saws, and other odd sonic devices, All Is Dream's arrangements often recall the prog-rock heyday of bands such as Can and Yes, albeit with more somber hues.

On such ballads as "Corner of the Earth" and "Black Crow," Odyssey seems to come up short.... But when the intention is to make you move, Odyssey shines brightly.

Like the best of BF5, it's both plaintive and punky.

13 tracks of the kind of confident, effortless wordplay that made him a household name in the first place.

Sounds like a tighter, more focused version of past glories.

Listener-friendly, surprisingly short songs that walk a thinner line than usual between tired and inspired.

A reaffirming celebration of small details.

An optimistic-feeling, playful record that recalls the jazzy-edged sunshine and beat pop of the '60s.

With Vespertine, Bjork has constructed a whispering wall of wonders, and instead of forcing everyone out, has invited the world to look through the cracks.

Iowa boldly follows up, notching maximum body blows in its unyielding production, while maintaining an odd grandeur in its professed pain and anguish, its struggle for individualism.

Quasi's only mistake might be that it made this album too long; it clocks in at over 50 minutes. Such tracks as "Seal the Deal" and "Little Lord Fontleroy" show the limitations of a duo, and, at times, Quasi's basic keyboard and drums approach lacks a sense of wholeness and tends to meander.

Whatever the source, each song is given a finely detailed treatment that gets to its emotional core, and the exquisite engineering allows each nuance to add to the total effect.

When Maxwell sings songs cultivated to melt a girl's heart ("Silently"), it sounds more like grand, fervent gospel than a cheap, fevered move.

There are a few winners here among the brick-and-mortar alt-flak -- which the band is wholeheartedly capable of as well...

The only caveat toward Two? The Saints still rock, but they don't rave quite as hard.

Tweekend certainly isn't mind-blowing or revolutionary, but it's abundantly clear that the Crystal Method has found its sound: the hard rock and hip-hop influences that inflected Vegas move to the forefront, and the tempo comes down a few notches, thus emphasizing thunderous bass and hardcore head-bobbing.

Framed in delicate, candlelit arrangements that beckon like distant ghosts, Phillips addresses matters of faith, love, and spiritual connection in such a way that questions are as important as answers.