[Tweet] offers more mature and demure R&B this time out.

The band builds on the power of the previous Thirteenth Step, applying hypnotic arrangements, brooding melodies, and droning rhythms to a collection that sounds absurd on its surface, but is woven together by A Perfect Circle's heavy and dark-lidded instrumental approach.

An album that sounds vital and immediate.

One of his best.

An album meant to enrage, amuse and enliven.

The basic ingredients are delicate, minimal, well-conceived songs that utilize instruments ranging from guitars and analog keyboards to melodicas and chop sticks.

The Thrills continue to crank out buoyant melodies that keep singer Conor Deasy from downing in his bittersweet lyrics and brokenhearted vocals.

This is an astounding body of work--and definitely one of the year’s best.

For those who missed Nico’s erotic darkness the first time around, Midnight Movies have found the recipe.

Weightlifting is stellar TCS, expressing everything great about the band.

Straight Outta Cashville is simply the same, moderately catchy collection as Beg For Mercy or The Hunger For More, made inferior by the addition of a few tuneless crunk trunk-rattlers.

Happy People [is] a featherweight collection of midtempo, Marvin Gaye-influenced tunes... The sacred material on U Saved Me, by contrast, is more exciting--and troubling.

A pleasure to examine at close range.

Roughly half these 19 songs burn themselves out on first listen, but the rest are sublime.

Certainly a tougher and more traditional album than its two predecessors.

What gives Afrodisiac its allure are the confident club jams that mask B-Rocka’s vocal limitations without overpowering her.

Kiss Of Death is certainly an improvement on its predecessor... However, what continues to bar Jada from the inner MC circle populated by Jay-Z, Eminem and even Kanye West is his lack of a broader vision.

Wait a minute... you mean this isn't a Duran Duran album?

Skinner has often been declared the Eminem of British rap. But on A Grand..., he proves that if anything, he's British hip-hop's answer to master storyteller Ray Davies, or maybe idiot savant Brian Wilson.

Sonic Youth sound like their cover band in comparison.

Unfortunately, the spell breaks down and the songs grow tedious as the album nears its end, practically running out of a steam like an emotional rollercoaster stranded at the bottom of the tracks.

These dozen songs, which swing with the organic, old-school funk Prince began embracing in the late-’80s, also avoid his ‘90s excesses, combining rock and soul as effortlessly and succinctly as he ever has.

Not quite jazz, not quite electronica, and not quite indie rock, Tortoise continues to define and evolve their own compelling cosmology.

Honkin’ On Bobo is a big bruiser of an album, with heart, soul, and fury to spare.

No matter the song, from the stumbling “Me And The Devil Blues” to the murmuring “Come On In My Kitchen,” Me And Mr. Johnson sounds rehearsed and controlled.

A smartly schizophrenic solo debut filled with the anything-goes dancefloor abandon of the ‘80s.

An album that’s simultaneously stimulating and crappy.

Sure, it's nothing that hasn't been done before.... Still, there's no denying that She's In Control is one helluva bad-ass, booty-shakin', funky-fresh party record.

Recalling Come Away With Me only for Jones’s sultry voice, the album has its share of pleasant throwaways, but those are balanced by a handful of starkly beautiful and excellently arranged songs.

West is at his best the higher the lyrical stakes get, and the more they contradict hip-hop orthodoxy.

The album carries a compelling intensity among the varied and evocative songs.

The good humor and easier tempos also make Twista’s forays into Guinness World Record speed more effective, even if manic window-rattlers like “Kill Us All” seem a bit predictable once you’ve heard his latest, slowed-down twist.

A shimmering example of wistful chamber folk-pop.

He hasn’t made a great album, but even Tupac never managed that; the bombed-out landscape of Boy In Da Corner burns instead with all the anger, confusion and messed-up desperation of youth.

The band attempts to continue to deliver the hits on its seventh album, Splinter, while retaining its punk roots, and the Offspring succeeds on both counts.

Tito Puente meets Daft Punk!

This Is Not A Test isn't perfect.... But it's plenty close enough.

While the kiddie trance and dirrty hip-hop are as blatant a bid for credibility as young Brit's moans upon discovering the joys of all-night raving and her own hand, the pop princess of old keeps peeking through the steamed-up windows, and ultimately saves the disc from disaster.

There are better storytellers, there are better battle rappers, there are undoubtedly rhymers with more on their minds. But there isn't a better MC around, if you're talking about the art of sheer mic domination.

Over-sentimental country-rock posing, limp rapping, and turgid AOR classic rock are only where this young man gets started.

Armstrong... gives it a welcome sense of cohesion.

Jean's most satisfying post-Fugees music yet.

Eventually the piano-based songs grow repetitive, while retaining their lush romanticism.

This reviewer wishes he could tell you that Skull Ring is as good as his best past highlights--but it just ain't.

While, lyrically, Keith's material aims for the lowest common denominator, even songs like the shameless arena-rock ballad "American Soldier," are a pleasant change from Nashville's typical assembly line product.

Both accessible and fun.

Dead Man Shake is a kick in the pants that shouldn't be missed.

A funky good time from two house music smarty pants with a future.

Their rhythms jump all over the place and their vocals are so determined to land that punchline that it all ends up sounding like one smarmy mess.

At the very least, it's the best album of Paul Westerberg's spotty solo career.

His singing is a bit improved and the playing throughout is heartfelt and strong.

Luke Jenner's vocals may drive you insane, but he is to be ignored anyway. Echoes is all about perp-walking bass, funky white-boy cowbell, and enough brain-goring good guitar riffs to make Keith Richards collapse in amazement.

Weighted with tunes that approach middle age with tension and caution.

In austere style and apolitical theme, it's similar to Ndegocello's 1996 outing Bitter, but this is the work of an older, wiser woman who can view that album's romantic failures within a bigger picture.

The album never shifts into angular or faster textures but maintains its overall coasting level with clarity, precision and charm.

The songs are extremely accessible and instantly compelling.

While political manifestos are never something attractively wedded to song, Jones keeps humanity on the record, mostly with supportive grooves and her tantalizing way with twisting a note.

Gibbons is a charismatic presence, her golden howl and misery-inflected tone recalling a cross between Billie Holiday and a demented Edith Piaf.

Track after track of colorless bounce sabotages the memorable verses.

There is some real grime and songwriting grit in these songs, that while outfitted in lush production, faux-soul effects and banal duets, rock harder than anything Sting has offered in ages.

Life For Rent breaks no new ground, and while the publicity machine proffers a failed Dido romance as its inspiration, the album retains her debut's style yet without its wonderfully miserable substance.

Rockist textures and lush dreamscapes that could very well be the Cocteau Twins take on heavy metal.

Rufus is self-effacing and clever enough to keep the music from becoming totally insipid.

Grace includes lots of atmospheric touches that are two steps beyond country and miles too ethereal to call pop.

While Elvis is quite the crooner, an entire album of achy-breaky heartache is too much for the casual Costello listener to bear.

No, Fred, the results don't vary. The results are consistent throughout your new album--consistently crappy.

Slogging through this stuff is so soul consuming that by the time you get to "Too High," with its pompous rock opera orchestral arrangement and portentous drums, you'll just surrender and let Dave have his way with you.

Combining the two discs might have insured an unbeatable follow-up; however, the flawed, fascinating separation reveals what makes this partnership so special.

Stellastarr stand out from 2003's even-newer-new-wave-of-new-wave pack in that they manage to borrow from the suddenly-cool-again decade of Pacman and parachute pants without sounding like they've spent the last six months sequestered in a loft watching VH1's I Love The '80s documentary series in a constant loop.

Hard rock that is neither hard nor rock.

Offering musical redemption for the New South's old hang-ups, Deliverance delivers.

This time around, she and her collaborators have also figured out how to blow away the incense without losing her mystique.

His big voice and big, good-vs-evil themes now need the gold lame beats of Grand Champ to deliver one last howling high.

Permission To Land is actually good enough to motivate more than a few curious, intrepid listeners to give their dusty old Dokken albums another spin.

Reality is easily one of his most emotionally transparent albums.

By muting Tool's over-the-top attack, Keenan has more time to devote to deepening the textures throughout.

Horn's work is so effective that it takes several listens before you notice how often Seal's songwriting depends on it.

The elements of free-jazz, mopey techno, and hypnotic riff rock find familiar combinations as Pierce's peace, love, and drugs philosophy takes on a perfunctory turn.

This is still an excellent band composed of three excellent musicians who can produce one hell of a noise.

This is 33 minutes of pure pop bliss; there isn't a bad song or a missed opportunity anywhere here.

You'd be hard-pressed to ask much more from a record.

The album often revisits the troubled vibe of her early days, in sound if not lyrically.

Features a more worldly sound and outlook.

What Clones proves, beyond its certain hits, is that the Neptunes have to be considered alongside the handful of great artists (Bowie, Prince, et al) who kept pushing boundaries as they pushed up the charts.

Always undervalued as a songwriter, Franti reassembles his familiar building blocks of rock, reggae, and vintage R&B into the funkiest, most inviting neighborhoods he's yet created.

This is classic underachieving at its peak.

There's absolutely nothing revolutionary about what these guys are pulling, but they synthesize a gritty staccato new wave attack with the arrogant, swaying machismo of old school boogie with an authority far beyond their few years.

Perhaps the formula is wearing just a tad thin. Nevertheless, it's always foolish not to celebrate melody.

While they still tackle the same young person themes you expect--girls, loneliness, girls--they do so with professional aplomb.

Gray's idiosyncrasies are sometimes buried beneath the syrupy strings (which may have been the intent), robbing the album of unpredictable highs as well as lows.

Lose the skits and a couple of ballads Ashanti may never be ready for, and her summery second outing delivers on the limited promise of her first.

Recall[s] both Fugazi's punk slam and early Santana's psychedelic sheen.

The pair simply revert to the beats and concerns that made them an institution in hip-hop's golden age; except for the occasional cameo (Snoop Dogg, Jadakiss), The Ownerz could have hit the streets a decade ago without raising eyebrows.

Everything Must Go is another great Steely Dan album, a hardy inclusion to their splendid canon.

The album may not improve on 2001's Sophtware Slump, but its pleasures lie in accepting reasonable underachievement, and knowing that speed kills.

Unfortunately, the album is a bit of a downer from a lyrical standpoint, making something like Jackson Browne's Late For The Sky seem almost upbeat in comparison.

There just is a real feel of lightweights here--be it in the band's often balls-less bottom end (a real problem with so many rock bands these days) or just in the overall music itself.

It's better than Souljacker, though not quite as good as Electro-Shock Blues and Daisies Of The Galaxy.