His guffawing voice makes him sound like every rhyme he delivers is a punchline.

The disc essentially finds the now-quartet cleaning up and living right and letting the world see them as they are; their tracks are marked by much clean-fingered guitar playing (the added guitar meaning there's six-stringing back-and-forth) and only a recreational use and abuse of wah.

It's a classic case of debut album as faux anthology of musical influences, but it's also a successful collection with a marked sense of individuality, massively helped by Murphy's dry sense of humor, which demonstrates a willingness to embrace the contradiction at the heart of his musical personality.

All too often, this new material fails to leave much of an impression.

It's a sound that doesn't loudly proclaim itself, but nevertheless insinuates its way in, until it feels quietly indispensable.

His weighty messages are duly noted. Unfortunately, they're delivered so acrimoniously that the overwhelming lack of fun in the music makes his albums a chore to listen to.

Todd... smartly allows her soaring, angelic voice to take the lead, leaving the sparse arrangement of strings and keys to take a delicate backseat. This also means her lyricism, poignant and wry, stands out.

Much of this dreary lyricism will be seen as English-as-a-second-language charm by so many -- and the album's lyric sheets, which put forth all the spelling-mistake-riddled broken English with pride, seem to be of the same belief. But loving that about this disc is like so much faint praise at best, and a pernicious kind of cultural condescension at worst.

As whole, the record is hardly notable for its special guests; the beauty of Antony's singing, the ferociousness of his delivery, the profundity of his songs, and the unflinching nature make the disc truly transcend such.

Combining brute force with melody, Worlds Apart is a stunning showcase for AYWKUBTTOD's mature sound, full of unexpected subtleties, musical wild-cards and detours.

As far as songs go, Barlow hasn't been this good in years.

Not as consistent as its de facto partner, Digital Ash still contains several euphoric highs.

Though this new political bent shows a heightened sense of maturity and substance, two of Morning's best tracks are poignant, unabashed love songs.

They still retain a unique identity even as they plunder and explore more generic alt-rock themes, and their particular skill is in making this transformation seem logical and welcome.

Often, it's all too much -- too many synths, too many drums, too much reverb; it's as if every subtlety of that first record was magnified in the production process, its once lithe and supple frame vulgarly pumped with steroids.

For all it lacks in the pop-song department, it's not a bad pop record.

Where their prettiness was once cloaked in a shroud of bashful melancholy, with [producer Joshua] Eustis on hand things get a little more grandstanding.

A gorgeous and moving collection of love songs.

This is simply some of the best guitar-driven rock I've heard all year.

An album that, despite all its misty melancholy, is filled less with lyrics of heartache, and more with words of warmth and romance.

Love. Angel. Music. Baby. has been acclaimed as a bright-and-shiny pop-music tour-de-force, but once the initial thrilling rush of the stylistic sheen and artistic conception has abated, the album seems too fragmented to be anointed as such.

She selects songs that are somehow special, and presents them with great playing and singing, in a way that clearly means something to her. My bet is that they'll mean something to you, too.

It's well produced and mixed, but lacks the edge to make it really interesting.

Brings together the best parts of metal, hardcore punk-rock and dance-y post-punk for a sound that would be otherwise useless if it weren't for one thing: The boys got "it."

The songs on his latest, often about political ambivalence and soul-searching alienation, are still catchy as V.D. But they lack the fiery complexity of past efforts.

This final record is neither focused nor infallible, instead a rarer glimpse at a man whose creative doorways, once the source of so much hope and inspiration, had become outnumbered by his demons.

A set of tunes blessed with melody but hardly immediately memorable.

Crimes is nothing but poetry, poetry in that way that song lyrics never are, profound both on page and in song.