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.

As vision, still somewhere between narrow and ignant. Yet not a boho archetype for nothing.

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.

Only a talent as major as Lewis could half bring it off.

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.

Listen to your body tonight. They made themselves up, and they're strictly for real.

How many great songs about rock and roll can one man write before he gets tiresome? We may find out.

They sure are spry, and Nelson is so delighted to be singing them that the band's expertise lights up.

White's drums duke it out with Dean Fertita's guitar, mostly below the belt. Alison Mosshart doffs her s&m drag to suffer and yelp. Jack Lawrence plays bass. Fierce.

These guys sure can rap and rhyme, and they do.

After what K'naan has been through, bless him for trying--the ebullience he extracts from a life much tougher than North Americans can know is worthy of soukous, mbaqanga, the highlife of Ghana's most punishing inflationary spiral.

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]

One wonders whether 4AD has thrown his critical followers off with its line about how this one abandons autobiography for "mythical creatures" etc.

Still a band that improves everyone in it, and more forthcoming this time, though they really ought to risk despoiling their precious graphics with lyrics.

They're brainy about their alienation, they're funny about their alienation, and when they bitch about their relationships their post- or pre-alt normality is exceptionally refreshing.

If you can't get with this expediently excessive piece of rich-get-richer, commercial rap albums are beyond your ken.

Though smarty-pants Lemony Snicket fans may get references I miss, in between there are times when Stephin Merritt's monotonous low baritone seems merely inexpressive.

They're too good to be true and plain as the nose on your face.

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

None of it means a damn thing beyond what it is. Which is just what they were trying so hard to achieve.

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

The fourth Dolls album and second of their second life is the first one that's less than epochal. Not all the tunes are surefire.

At least when the bassist ruled they livened up this overworked dynamic with beats. Now they tax it with tunes.

Only one thing's certain -- his songwriting.

On this reassuring piece of big-bottomed exotica, the "Sahara swing" they concocted with Karl Hector is the tipoff. They love the continuity bass-and-drums lay below; I love the content koto and flute and malletophone add on

Low-tune for a pop band, low-momentum for a rock band, they stand a chance of evoking bad Elvis Costello when they take you by surprise or emote on in the background.

Unlike "Guero" this one really has some war in it.

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.