In the wake of three questionable albums, shtick is a relief, not just because it's really great shtick but because after all these years we're happy to be clear about whether she's performing or expressing herself.

Slowed down and keyboarded up, these tunes make what cares they do bear seem lyrical--carefree.

I'm moved nevertheless by what can pass for a concept album about the romantic life of an uncommonly-to-impossibly strong and gifted teenage girl, starting on the first day of high school and gradually shedding naiveté without approaching misery or neurosis.

True, Green spends more time supplicating than celebrating, and probably fabricated the whole scenario. But he knows his subject, and he doesn't need Jesus to lay it down.

The sound is bigger too, strengthening a band that's all guitars-drums-vocals sonics -- including Molly Siegel's yelping vocables, without which the sound's faux-tween soul and wise-ass tempo shifts would evanesce into abstraction.

Just when you're ready to give up and apply to graduate school, along comes a simple band who get everything right.

If opulence can signify liberation in this grotesquely materialistic time, as in hip-hop it can, then Beyoncé earns her props with a bunch of songs she says were inspired all in a rush by her "Dreamgirls" character. [Feb/Mar 2007]

Once again its vagaries are its distinction. Doherty makes a case for flat-on-your-ass alienation in an insane wartime culture.

Altogether as slow, sad-ass and self-involved as reported, this is a breakup album there's no reason to like except that it's brilliant.

The tunes are consistently fetching, and a few standouts have clever lyrics.

Through almost as many producers as Mary, this album has a single identity, a contour and a groove that suits its well-inhabited breakup concept.

She remains a nice kid whose knowledge of her own limitations doesn't interfere with her self-respect. That's not just because the knowledge helps her make catchy music out of it, either. But the music helps.

Actual musicians help -- world-beating T-Pain more than world-weary Julian Casablancas. So do other actors.

Hood is too inclined toward dark-side thoughts and the world too inclined toward dark-side realities for the newer songs to come off complacent.

Very minor, rather lovely and it rocks.

The best music here is so deep it's more powerful than the rhymes.

The fun comes easier when he fools around with the title conceit, and even sometimes when he thinks about it.

It's also the rare work of art that captures the dizzy infatuation that is dedicated infant care. All that's missing is a song about sleep deprivation.

The musical construction is so jaunty that they can't be serious even if they're cutting their alienated fans out of the joke. [Feb/Mar 2007]

What lyrics there are mourn absence and loss, and many of the effects are achieved by fabricating and then calibrating dirty sonics both electronic and organic.

The album belongs to the hip-hop hippie. And an album it definitely is.

Mostly it's the tunes that do the slamming. And though their lyrics may be too sincere for sophisticates, they're not sincere enough to suit the Avetts, a disconnect they'll tell you about.

Right now her main message is just to do all this. If enough people like it, she has the aura of someone who might push the envelope.

Once a punky brat, Jemima Pearl now sounds like a punk broad -- like she might join the Donnas if that was a better job. But listen through the bigger voice and louder mix and you'll hear someone who's thinking all the time.

Polysyllabic and self-aware, this is the best political punk in years.

On his third solo album, the thematic focus is intense enough to ignite kindling.

Affecting a clarity and delight that pleases the many and confounds the some, their lyrically alluring, structurally hop-skip-and-jumping songs aren't deep. They're just thoughtful fun.

Tune and tempo conquer all even if love doesn't, and soon, if you listen up, you'll hear her toss her head and move on, jubilant in her capacity for jubilation.