Argyle Heir is the Brooklyn-based combo’s most perfect recording, loaded with gently baroque, quietly cinematic tunes that leisurely melt away in your head.

If Alive to Every Smile doesn’t indicate Wratten is ready to move on thematically, it does show him evolving musically.

Cast in layers upon layers of aural intricacy, Toxicity charters new frontiers, yet it’s still grinding rock at its most deafening.

A wonderfully warm recording, Silver & Gold is country-folk soaked in co-producer Ben Keith's crying pedal steel, Neil's harmonica, fiddles, acoustic guitars and even Emmylou and Linda for good measure on one cut.

There?s a magical sound potion that can cure lovesickness, and it?s called Parachutes, the first full-length CD by Coldplay.... Every song sounds like a hit.

Come With Us is too much of a mixed bag to induce a full-length journey; it’s best experienced in short walkabouts.

Yeah, it's a party. And it's great rock music. Those who claim Manson "went back to Goth" and reclaimed Antichrist's noise after Mechanical proved too subtle for kids are only partly right. Okay, he virtually cloned his hit "The Beautiful People" in "Disposable Teens." And there are several familiar yell-and-stomp numbers on Holy Wood. But even those almost all contain a double-take chord change or a textural overdose or a mind-blowing bridge, and they'll be terroristic in concert. More important, there are a bunch of plain brilliant tracks where Manson anoints bits of rock history into his own church.

It's all very precious stuff, sounding like some of Sebadoh's best material. Kids who've eaten up the whole indie-rock thing thus far will go bananas over Pedro the Lion.

Hands down, this is one of the best-produced albums of the year...

Remedies some problems and amplifies others.

Now, it’s the chilled tracks that seem limited and generic... The fortunate tradeoff is that the album’s three strobe-lit tracks definitely bring it on.

Music as kitschy, joyful and grand as it clearly intends, a tongue-in-cheek soundtrack to the James Bond movie we'd all like our lives to be.

Scorpion propels her into pop stardom’s embrace, smartly blending party anthems with thug themes.

For Solaris, Photek sticks to his signature style of clinical percussion etching a variety of danceable rhythms. Of the 11 tracks, only "Terminus," the disc?s opener, is truly jungle. The rest of the album features a technophile's gift bag of futuristic dance cuts... Most all of it's gorgeous stuff, and high praise is in order.

His best effort yet.

Iron Flag owes its lack of cohesion to some simply dull songs, plus the growing disparity in lyrical ability among the Wu’s members.

A 38-minute spoonful of slop, the sound of a band pissing it all away.

The sound of a band blissfully uncoiling under the sun of self-assurance.

The group's lack of growth has begun to make their well-established talents wear thin.

The resulting mélange doesn’t always work, but the songs on 10,000HZ Legend still succeed often enough to override the record’s occasional shortcomings.

Anchored by moody, mid-tempo songs enveloped in pop-washed trip-hop..... a stylish collection of well-tailored backdrops for Boyle's mournful soprano.

The clean-cut Stereophonics are the Black Crowes you could take home to your mom, only with stronger songs and without the high school histrionics.

The new set lacks Kingdom's cathartic exuberance, not to mention the myriad bouncy sing-along hits that made Gwen Stefani to the '90s what Madonna was to the '80s.

A 12-song mess that veers unsteadily between the fuzztone freak-outs of his original concept and panicked-sounding rewrites of older Monster Magnet material.

Wyclef seems to reinvent himself for the worse on his sophomore effort. In place of his trademark iconoclasm, he delivers some good old-fashioned conformity in a bid to renew his street-credibility card... Thankfully, 'Clef strikes a balance with some outstanding selections, starting with the acoustically driven ballads "Diallo," "911" and "Something About Mary", which show that Wyclef armed with a guitar is still more powerful than an army of producers strapped with drum machines.... It's enough to make The Ecleftic a good but not grand album, one that finds Wyclef's vision falling short of his abilities.

Mellow, dramatic and bathed in atmosphere, Exciter is the sound of a band at the height of its powers.

On Vanguard, the same basic formula is employed, only the emphasis is much more on reggae influences, and the experimentation with genre boundaries is considerably toned down. There’s still much that shines, however.

Their sound is steeped in rare grooves, enhanced with hip-hop electronics and designed for lighthearted dancing. If the pair occasionally turn their rhythms on autopilot and rely on algorithm, you can't really hold it against 'em.