Throughout, Santigold never stops playing spin-the-globe, and she also never loses sight of her mission to keep listeners moving.

He continues to impress and regress.

Most of the rest of the material is classic Strait-style lite country, his eminently easygoing tenor effortlessly handling songs that skim the surface rather than plumb the depths of life. In doing so, at least he keeps the promise of the album's title.

Boosie might not be at their [Michael Jackson and Marvin Gaye] caliber yet, but for this moment in American life and hip-hop, he's as visceral a voice as we're going to get.

The handsome arrangements only emphasize the vulnerability of Campbell's vocals, which flirt with a sense of exploitation that's difficult to shake while listening to this undeniably moving album.

Paradoxically, in reassessing and even shunning aspects of her success, Shakira may have found a way to sustain it. [26 Nov 2005]

This is no more a perfect album than "Come Away With Me," but its highlights again carry the stamp of a singer whose talent is strong and whose vision is true.

Newman's weakness for melancholy melody washes over everything on the Canadian confab's fourth album.

The music is leaner and more concise than we're used to from Pearl Jam, the performances brisk, frisky and light on their feet. [30 Apr 2006]

She makes time for more gentle numbers, like the misty empty-bed ballad 'Keep Me Warm,' but the general mood is a tough pirouette--a party album where staying out is your best defense from going home.

It's not a masterpiece, not a groundbreaker, but it's going to be somebody's favorite.

Far from a scorched-earth rebranding a la Cyrus’ 2013 raunchfest “Bangerz,” Revival turns out to be surprisingly modest, from its midtempo pacing to its thoughtful introspection.

On Valtari it's back to the essentials: oceanic buildups, flickers of treated orchestras and falsetto vocal lines that yank heartstrings, even though you know exactly when they're coming.

Not everything is worth making the journey; indeed, it's hard to know why the band bothered adding five new songs to the superior nine-track version of "All You Need Is Now" that Duran Duran released through iTunes late last year. But with their sleek keyboard lines, trebly guitar chatter and frontman Simon Le Bon's swooping vocal melodies, taut neo-New Wave gems like "Being Followed" and "Girl Panic!" make a strong argument for the lasting utility of these hitmakers' original formula.

Vestiges & Claws seldom seems cloying. Mostly, it sidesteps the mush factor to land on solid ground.

Meow the Jewels deliver emotional depth befitting nature’s most psychologically elusive creature.

Now there is some varied texture to her beats, where there once was just turbo thrusts. [9 Jul 2006]

Trampin'... is not a flashy album, and sometimes what's meant to be stately is sluggish instead. But though the revolutionary jolt of her early work is in abeyance, her fire still burns.

Some are engagingly innocent, some are gently sexy, as the trio members weave together '40s pop vocalizing, '50s doo-wop, jazz, folk and country elements in a seamless mélange.

McCartney's bottomless well of melody ensures that none of it gets too far afield, even as the songs turn more amorphous as the album unfolds.

Suck It and See (English slang for "give it a try"), slows the pace but ultimately feels even more detached.

Lacks the usual innovative spice. [10 Jul 2005]

As often as not here Amadou & Mariam seem crowded out of their own music.

Playing with a band of her own (an alt-country collective dubbed the Siss Boom Bang) for the first time in a couple decades, Canada's sometimes strings-besotted crooner has found her guitar groove again.

At times the minimalist compositions expose her limited range, but no one should be listening to Peaches for the pitch-defying melismas.

An impressive and revealing new album full of expertly crafted pop songs with clear-cut commercial goals.

Here is a man unafraid to rep for the drippiest balladeer ever, Dan Fogelberg--and no one will call Edmonds on it, because his restraint and care eliminate any sense of the maudlin.

Merle Haggard may be 74 but he sounds utterly playful in the title track of his new album, one of his strongest collections in a couple of decades.

A couple of songs (including the goofy "Condi, Condi") seem out of place, but the heart of "The Revolution" carries the stamp of an artist and a patriot. [22 Aug 2004]

Anchored by Glasper's masterful, hypnotic work on piano and Rhodes, and filled with cameos by the likes of Bilal, Lalah Hathaway, Yasmin Bey (a.k.a. Mos Def), Lupe Fiasco and more, it's a sensuous and smoky affair.

Once a groove machine that favored the warmth of live instruments, N.E.R.D has roughed up its sound to match these themes; No_One Ever Really Dies is full of heaving beats and harsh digital textures that catch the day’s chaotic spirit in the same way that Williams’ and Hugo’s flashy production work as the Neptunes reflected the prosperity of the post-bling era.

Amid so much rewarding yet familiar ground, Covered sounds more like a step sideways rather than forward.

Rarely does a single album capture so much of what's right in a country's current moment in pop music.

The fables and fantasy lives they depict are rendered in fairly understandable terms. Yet Far still shows the range that Spektor can travel within her dreamy world.

It's a candlelit record, a 3 a.m. record. Turn it up loud and melt into the couch.

As is the case with most Pollard releases, it's hard to pick a best moment, because catchy new favorites pop out with each successive listen, timed to explode in incremental bursts.

Most of the 16 tracks on Heroes don't disappoint, but there are a few that should've stayed on the drawing board.

Most songs here emphasize Lynn's signature feistiness, but Williams zeroes in on the deep heartache she's also adept at, choosing her 1976 hit "Somebody Somewhere (Don't Know What He's Missin' Tonight)," one of 16 singles Lynn took to No. 1. There's a full record of this soul-scorching facet of Lynn's music lurking somewhere, for somebody.

Standing so close to cuteness is dangerous, but these two keep their noses clean.

By the time the band rumbles into album-closer “Glendale Junkyard,” its engine may be glowing and the radiator overheating, but somehow the wreckage has stayed intact, no worse for the wear.

On its new album, Wrath, the Virginia band roots its best songs in a Motorhead swagger that makes the growly moments stickier and gives the stadium-sized choruses a hint of righteous evil.

Producer T Bone Burnett and his ace crew of musicians help Earle with masterful skill and deft subtlety.

On occasion the band feels as if it's slipping into cruise control, but the musical scenery is so gorgeous you really don't mind going along for the ride. [5 Dec 2004]

The young songwriter lacks enough artistic weirdness to follow in the deified footsteps of [Michael Jackson] or... Prince.

While fans looking for a classic, none-too-jarring soundtrack for a romantic evening surely will follow this record happily into their good night, Krall has offered us more than that in the past.

Thanks to Beam's songwriting and his uniformly pretty singing, the music's familiarity doesn't take away from its loveliness.

You'd be right to call Haih scattershot and exhausting. But the group aims to sound like everything, and most of what it comes up with is fantastic.

Fitz & the Tantrums is the kind of band that communicates best in concert, but this album serves as a fine proxy and party-starter.

Shaolin Vs. Wu-Tang is his successful quest to return to the days when it was simple, blessed with the wisdom to know which philosophies work.

There's nothing here as catchy as last year's hit "Hate It or Love It," but there's no shortage of good hooks or vigorous rhythms.

Her most adventurous by far.

As impressively specific as those sonic ideas are, though, Deschanel's songwriting here is less distinctive than it was on "Volume One." Too many of the tracks bleed together in a well-appointed mush of major-minor melodies and hand-me-down lyrics about the inevitability of heartbreak.

It's... a more writerly exercise than typical of his concise and straightforward Heartbreakers hits. [23 Jul 2006]

The Wack Album feels awfully short on fresh ideas.

It overflows with the kind of music the Chili Peppers do best: a physical, often psychedelic mix of spastic bass-slapped funk and glistening alt-rock spiritualism. Only they've never sounded this good as musicians.

It's the way Springsteen injects his American bible stories with the air of disbelief that makes Magic a truly mature and memorable album.

His latest presents James as a futuristic R&B seducer, and if the crisp electronic production doesn’t always flatter his behind-the-beat phrasing, it’s still a kick to hear him go for it in the Prince-indebted “Last Night” and “Ladies Man.”

Seeds We Sow is thornier than Buckingham's material for Fleetwood Mac, with an emphasis on his percussive, sometimes-discordant acoustic guitar playing and on his intimately recorded vocals, which in a stripped-down rendition of the Rolling Stones' "She Smiled Sweetly" push intriguingly at whatever border separates passionate from creepy.

The lived-in uplift of Write Me Back finds him at a perfect sweet spot of nostalgia and modern skill.

Williams sings tunes... with such openness and character that it's like hearing some of them for the first time. [22 May 2005]

There's a hesitating beauty to the nightmares explored on "Dark Night," from the keyboard symphonies of "Revenge," featuring a calmly paranoid vocal take from the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne, to the carnival-like haunt of "Everytime I'm with You," led by a leery Jason Lytle (Grandaddy).

Even this far into his career, McGraw can't blunt the impression that he's a country singer who wishes he were a '70s rocker.

“Iconology” is a brief reminder of the performer’s genius. Across the five tracks here — four new cuts plus an alternate, a cappella take on one, “Why I Still Love You” — Elliott offers a crash course on what has made her a vital voice in hip-hop and R&B and an in-demand collaborator in the years since she delivered her last project, 2005’s “The Cookbook.”

Beyond her playing, Spektor holds together the music on Cheap Seats with her singing, which even at its most intricately melodic (as in "Oh Marcello") retains an improvisatory feel.

Ultimately, it's admirable that Ne-Yo felt the need to take listeners on an out-of-this-world ride, but he's at his best when sticking closer to home.

Where Does This Door Go feels like a once-promising OK Cupid date that's gone off the rails.

If Bob Dylan has been for years our best guide to exploring the complexities of human experience, Young may be the songwriter who expresses most eloquently the simple ties that bind us all. [18 Sep 2005]

These 13 songs waft between nostalgia and realism and unfold at a stroll's pace.

[Ronson] crafts solid, instantly catchy pop songs, the kind that strive for an everyman universality while acknowledging a rich past of soul-inspired pop music.

For his part, Kingdom continues his exploration of experimental R&B.

“Painting a Hole” piles on more, including a stomping drum beat and a vaguely Middle Eastern synth line, while flavors of 1980s new wave crop up in “Cherry Hearts” and “Rubber Ballz,” each a vivid reflection of the deep record-nerd knowledge that Mercer played down on “Port of Morrow.”

But for all the steps forward, Folie a Deux also seems to contain a microchip for its own destruction.

This is their third collaboration, but neither the casual, light-bodied "Mutations" nor the intimate "Sea Change" anticipated this kind of flowering. [24 Sep 2006]

Unlike Nine Inch Nails' big radio hits, the majority of the songs here don't brandish catchy hooks or compact slogans designed to grab you in passing. They start out quiet and often stay that way, forcing you to lean in and immerse yourself.

Dylan's images are sharper than ever and his vision more focused. [22 May 2005]

Too many of the songs feel more obvious and slight than bold and revealing -- as if Edwards' true muse is really Sheryl Crow. [6 Mar 2005]

Treated with the same suspension of belief accorded a summer blockbuster, Deeper Than Rap succeeds in its baroque but basic goals.

The twining vocals of Adele Bethel and Scott Paterson may even remind you of X at times, but with Bethel's seductive urgings out front most of the time, This Gift hints at the spunkiest of American female-fronted popsters.

Yet for an album that promises revelation, Meaning of Life is full of generalities.

There's little studio sweetening applied to Campbell's boy-next-door voice, a smart move that gives his age and condition the honest respect he's earned in what's been a difficult but brave fight.

Thomas presides over a sleekly produced, constantly undulating mixture of sounds that seems designed to appeal to all of the people all of the time.

The Avett Brothers have hit upon a winning approach, and this album is another step in their taking it beyond the obvious.

On Melophobia they're in a class of their own among big, unit-shifting rock bands who can play with the scrap and imagination of van-tour vermin.

The most musically direct and down to earth of the band's six-album career.

If Braxton, 50, collaborates more broadly on Sex & Cigarettes, she's still zeroed in on the rich emotional territory she explored on "Love, Marriage & Divorce."

Epitaph Records owner (and co-founder of Bad Religion) Brett Gurewitz returns to the producer's seat for this one, wringing a thrashy but precise performance out of the well-seasoned quartet.

The sounds are largely tepid arrangements that fail to generate much excitement.

At times there's an almost U2-like expansiveness in lushly atmospheric settings ("Night Drive"), while "Pain" and the closing "23" have a classic power-ballad feel, without pandering to mainstream tastes. [31 Oct 2004]

Eleven songs that hit the mark where last year’s overwrought "Born and Raised" mostly missed, Paradise Valley is a more lyrically restrained and less generically reflective affair. And musically, it’s bigger, more accomplished and more approachable.

Parks proves an ideal partner for George, who grew up studying Shakespeare and is married to a film director, Jake Kasdan.

And musically, at least, that journey paid off. ... Martin can be awfully simplistic in these songs — a problem in any context but especially on an album otherwise marked by some of his most nuanced words.

Whatever the arrangement, though, Nicks’ voice--that signature drone that’s gotten only more appealingly imperious with age--defines the music here. Her singing dominates as easily now as it ever did.

The boy next door has definitely left the building.

A Different Kind of Truth is actually not bad; in fact, it's pretty good, all things considered.

Brandy has always tended toward blandness and is either unequipped or too restrained to unleash the soulful vocal flights that give R&B its distinctive stamp. [11 Jul 2004]

Points are docked for including the half-realized noise experiment 'Endless Sleeper,' but Reviver captures one of L.A.'s most promising new bands beginning to come fully into its own.

Elemental guitar riffs knock around the noisy yet balanced mix like grenades in a Maytag full of crankcase oil, as electronic beats launch forward, clash hand to hand, spit automatic fire....It works.

At its best the music's hybrid of country roots with pop and rock strains is lively and enjoyable.