His best effort yet.

Kid A may feel cold and ahuman at first, but stick with it for the full 50 minutes: Listen long enough, and a fragile, flickering glow becomes apparent amid the chill. It?s the sound of human warmth flooding into a formerly alien space -- of Radiohead finally going exactly where they wanted.

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

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

Tortoise have finally integrated their influences and discovered how to do more than mimic...

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

In a just universe, Nikka Costa, with her near-perfect American debut, Everybody Got Their Something, would become the ‘00s answer to Janis Joplin, Teena Marie and Like a Virginal Madonna.

A beautiful album that even non-Harvey fans might relate to, Stories is an undeniable, unrelenting triumph.

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.

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.

An early contender for album of the year.

Not as consistent as The Coup’s outstanding Steal This Album from 1998, Party Music still manages to be one of 2001’s best.

Propelled by her aggressive but seductive voice, Haunted walks the line between dark, beat-driven trip-hop and warm, melodic pop. What separates the album from its competition is Poe?s smart and emotionally charged songwriting, rife with raw energy balanced by gorgeously understated hooks.

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

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

Blueprint is his best since debuting with Reasonable Doubt in 1996.

Eitzel’s written with genuine warmth before, but it’s been several albums since he’s backed it with sounds that stand on their own this well.

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.

Sure, the songs are short, fast and catchy, but Clinic isn't filling prescriptions for ear candy; the music cuts into you with a desolate, sarcastic, scalpel-sharp edge.

Remedies some problems and amplifies others.

The fly in the ointment is the lyric content, which plumbs depths of misanthropy that make labelmate Bill Callahan (Smog) sound like Bobby McFerrin.

The recipe has changed little; if anything, it?s only become more articulate. Hauntingly beautiful backing tracks that could easily stand on their own float along, barely moving.

Point is even weirder than previous Cornelius records, even if its emphasis on acoustic guitars makes it seem uncharacteristically mellow at first listen.

There’s more going on here than mere escapist fare.

There isn't the slightest pause between any of the tracks on Thirteen Tales, just one big schmeer of good-rockin' vibes cresting and troughing for the length of this ode to, well, hipness.

If I were suddenly appointed Minister of Improving Music, my inaugural act would involve sending shock troops to ransack the CD racks of every would-be cookie-cutter punk in, say, Orange County, replacing all recordings by Social D. and Suicidal T. with copies of Dizzy Spells.

His latest finds the Jamaican lyrical wizard working Rasta magic on a humorous pastiche of sexual posturing and socially conscious manifestoes, all nailed down on a canvas of ass-shakin' ragga, hip-hop, reggae and dancehall jams.

Devoid of the cartoonish cabaret crooning of 1997’s breakthrough Cassanova, Regeneration is more down-to-earth, with less grandstanding and more adventurousness.