Too much of Hesitation Marks sounds tentative.

Its fourth studio album keeps the glitter ball spinning.

The album’s more reflective tone cuts deepest in “Low F” and “What Can We Do,” and they’re both among the most intensely personal songs in the band’s long, distinguished history.

The 10 tracks breeze past in 29 minutes, and the singer-songwriter doesn’t waste any of them.

It’s an album that discourages sitting still. Too bad the icky lyrics ruin the mood.

His first album in four years and one of the best of his storied career.

There’s nothing musty about his arrangements, a sharp melding of pop melody and new-classical harmonics. Parks also brings a wry and pointed flair for political and social commentary.

Mostly, this overstuffed album is about Jay-Z and the self-congratulation of his high-powered friends.

El-P has never sounded more scathingly unhinged as an MC. Killer Mike, who brought an urban philosopher’s mind set to “R.A.P. Music,” conjures that same level of intensity when he rains down insults alongside his new sidekick.

Staples is reaffirming her place as one of the great voices of the last half-century.

On the surface, he’s created a polarizing album that practically demands to be loved or hated. But with West, it’s never quite that easy.

Wilk does an adequate job on these extended tracks, but it’s the vitality of Iommi on guitar and Butler on bass that impresses.... Butler’s lyrics find their perfect match in Osbourne. In these songs, the singer wrestles with demons--psychosis, self-abuse, existential dread--with which he’s had considerable personal experience. It makes 13 something a bit more credible than just a souvenir for a reunion tour.

Whereas “10 Day” burst with callow exuberance, Acid Rap is a deeper, more emotionally complex work.

...Like Clockwork is the best and most focused Queens album since “Songs for the Deaf” in 2002.

It's almost impossible to screw up Fogerty's sturdiest numbers, but some of his collaborators sound like they're trying too hard to put their thumbprints all over them.

In many ways, it is the least forward-looking Daft Punk recording, but also the most ambitious--a concept album that plays like an alternative music history, with an emphasis on styles and sounds that don’t usually fit into the Baby Boomer-dictated pop/rock canon.

Overall, the band has sacrificed the immediacy of the earlier records for something knottier and stranger. For those who once found the band a pleasant diversion at best, Modern Vampires of the City represents an intriguing left turn.

The album could’ve easily done without the first two [moodier pieces], and been even better for it. No matter. Silence Yourself is still a disquietingly brilliant debut.

Ready to Die holds up as an unexpectedly sturdy late-career coda.

Though the instant hits are lacking, Bankrupt! is more cohesive than its best-selling predecessor.

The payoff is the trio of reveries that closes the album: “Always,” “Despair” and “Wedding Song” build on the disarming vulnerability of “Maps,” and deepen it.

It sounds like it was made by the last survivor on a dying planet, a final transmission from an underground bunker.

It’s slower, dreamier, with songs that prize atmosphere above immediacy.

The production on most of Comedown Machine is off-putting in its chilliness.

The trio again puts a premium on space and intimacy in the arrangements, which works especially well this time because of the uniformally high quality of the melodies.

It’s his most consistent and rewarding work since “Scary Monsters and Super Creeps” in 1980.

With its exotic instruments and spacious arrangements, this is a first-rate pop album that doesn’t sound quite like anything else on pop radio.

Rhye’s debut album, Woman, is a beautifully sequenced song cycle of soul music with the flame turned low. It’s sexy, but not overheated