[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.

A pleasure to examine at close range.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Jean's most satisfying post-Fugees music yet.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Highly recommended.

In the end, the disc is less odd than it is charming with more than enough twists and turns to keep it interesting.

The biting but insider-ish humor sometimes limits the potential audience, as Paul ironically marginalizes himself before the business and its politics can.

Newcomers will be shocked by his natural ability and old-time fans will just nod the same knowing appreciation and file the album next to the ever-growing mass of excellent if unspectacular releases.

Beautiful, sparkling folk-pop reminiscent of Velvet Underground's Loaded era, but with distinctive swooning melodies.

Even without Timbaland, who filled G's first two outings with some of his finest future funk, Ginuwine has a game plan as solid as his abs.

World Without Tears... is the singer-songwriter's rawest album to date -- it's often closer to all-out rock than it is to either alt-country or the singer-songwriter tradition -- and it's also her best release so far.

Not terribly exciting for a long-awaited comeback, but a sensitive collection of songs for people traveling down life's lonely highway hand in hand with themselves, for sure.

An elegant masterpiece of unabashed Anglophilia, all slow-motion shoegazer guitars chiming like beautiful bells of doom and icy, disaffected vocals that sound like the Psych Furs' Richard Butler minus the three-packs-a-day larynx damage.

Full of juicy hip-pop hooks in the grand P. Diddy tradition.

The group's innate intelligence and almost shocking ability to forge something new and thrilling out of typical garage-rock influences always shines brightly through the thick Guinness fog.

The older, wiser BLACKstreet rides a sweet suite of slow jams to a level no teen quartet has seen yet.

Occasionally, things are dumbed down by the naive politics you’d expect from any teenager.

An extremely organic sounding album that can stretch throughout genres (reggae, blues, hippie rock) without letting the bong smoke escape.

On Slow Motion Daydream Everclear proves that it's still quite capable of delivering solid, rocking songs with memorable hooks, and frontman Art Alexakis still has plenty to say.

Impossible to pin down to a single genre or slavish style, Echoboy references everyone from David Bowie to Thomas Dolby to Roxy Music to nu electro, yet its sound, at times basking in cathedral drones, other times rent with oddball choirboy humming, is its own.

Further indulges his penchant for meticulously-crafted songs, exquisite production, and (sometimes painstaking) personal and spiritual introspection.

Corporate radio won't touch this kind of overheated pop, but American Hi-Fi's slamming musicianship and party ready anthems should wow any college DJ worth his university-issue condoms.

This is a carefully nuanced collaboration, with stepping stones of surprising convention leading listeners slowly into deeper waters.

She's probably an EP artist at heart. Or someone for whom the 20-minute sides of vinyl would discipline everything perfectly. So slice the CD in half and enjoy.

Channeling greats from Gaye to Wonder, his stripped-down bangers bang harder, his ballads have more gospel bluster, and he sings with the desperation of a loveman who knows the cops are waiting at his bedroom door.

From the sound of Hammond’s latest it seems the swampy spunk of Wicked Grin has kept him fired up.

His latest rocks, boogies, swings and croons with a comfortable feel that's low on BS and high on integrity.

Is this Mezzanine lite? In a way, yes. There is nothing here as gripping as "Angel," "Risingson," or "Inertia Creeps." Womblike and seductive, this is make-out music for hibernating astronauts.

Taking a large step in expanding its lexicon, the group, singer Gaz Coombes in particular, has tightened up its songwriting and come up with tunes that rival the band’s first hit "Caught By The Fuzz."

At first listen a morose rumination on the many shapes of love, the album slowly unfurls as a grand, almost gothic epic of vast proportion and luxurious significance.