A work of real substance, brimming with honesty, humor and beauty.

Boy in da Corner defies genre in a defiant manner, refusing to be defined, refusing, even, to be dismissed.

Even the grand indulgence in artistic artifice on A Grand Don't Come For Free -- its self-contained narrative -- seems like it's forsaking a long shelf-life, the downside of the story's "mystery" being that, once you've heard the yarn once, it's a little like you've heard it all, and all it has to offer.

What matters, what it all boils down to, is The Strokes write incredibly powerful songs, and those who allow the media -- or better yet their reaction to the media, what I call the anti media -- to influence their opinions are missing out.

In the midst of its 14 tracks, there are a couple that, if taken on their own, would qualify as throwaways. But the way the album should be heard, as a whole, each piece works with the others.

Luckily, the album has an easy-going air that lifts it out of the realm of smart-guy assemblage and into sexy, summery territories.

Record of the year.

Seems to be the culmination and synthesis of a solid musical progression from good, yet uncertain and unchallenging, pop music to better, more confident, but still unchallenging, pop music.

Listening to Hypermagic Mountain is like picking up the live end of a downed power line.

Whichever way you look at it, as avant-pop or cubist soul, Return to Cookie Mountain remains an intoxicating, intriguing but accessible album.

A dizzyingly crafted explosion.

This is one of the best albums of 2000.

This is the defining Destroyer work because of its size and scope, because of its melodicism ("Painter in Your Pocket" the hottest pop song Bejar's authored yet), because of the caliber of its musical chops, and because of the shots Bejar continues to fire.

The combination of timeless songs, superb production and Banhart's often mesmerizing performance make for a very strong album.

Björk continues to mine the fine line of minimalist lushness that her last album gave birth to; with tiny, crackling, skittery beats weaving open-toned ambient beds in which her breathy, pushed-forward vocals lithely lay, the closeness and drama of her every syllable commanding attention.

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.

Moonlight, which grows more and more likeable with repeated listens, is Spoon's strongest effort yet, topping 2001's Girls Can Tell and even 1998's A Series of Sneaks.

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.

Even in the record's most strung-out moments of tension and distortion, Unwound sound nothing more than soft and sweet.

Musically, The Argument represents Fugazi's best collection of songs from their 13-year career.

It's a disc in which Dizzee diz, lyrical wiz, is more forthright as lyricist, using the blank canvas of an "album" to sketch together a thoughtful, carefully-sequenced set in which his voice, and its elastic accent, ring clear.

She remains utterly, excessively self-involved.

Things We Lost in the Fire finds Low enamoured with harmonies, drawing from such disparate sources as Swans, the Beatles, Wire, and Simon & Garfunkel.

Immersed in beautiful, stirring string arrangements, heartfelt melodies and an all-around warm and welcoming down-home folk feel, the new album is sincerely soothing.

Ágætis Byrjun is one of the most sublimely immersive albums to come along in ages.

YHF is a fierce record.

With Phrenology, The Roots have finally made an album that lives up to their potential.

One Word Extinguisher doesn't shock the way Vocal Studies... did but, if his debut drew the vivid hip-hop/electronic blueprint, Herren convincingly takes his plans and constructs something big with the follow-up.

Time (The Revelator) is ostensibly a solo album, but gives every evidence of being a near-telepathic collaboration between Welch and Rawlings, in which every element is carefully balanced to give the songs maximum impact.

One of funniest, smartest, truest, saddest and flat-out rockingest (in the very best way) albums I've heard in a very long time.

Finn's masterful lyrics can't be ignored. And the music, stopping, starting and crashing with wrenching enthusiasm, is equally undeniable. But the way Finn understands the human condition in all its glory and contradiction is, simply, brilliant.

While some of their songs deliver nothing more than noisy twaddle, British Sea Power are a formidable band when they choose to simply stop making sense.

The Super Furries have indulgently embraced a collision of musical elements; what we hear is a jarring, yet surprisingly seamless, mix of sounds and exceptional songwriting.... Their best work to date.

The most shocking aspect about You Forgot It in People is just how easily everything seems to be accomplished. Every note and transition is smooth and effortless, and there is such a wealth of brilliantly executed music.

What makes Thunder... such an easy-to-love affair is the schoolyard exuberance they ply their tunes with.

This is exactly the album that should be blasting from car radios all summer.

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.

It's like Bright Eyes -- urgent, personal, pent-up -- but better; less focused on the individual ego of the "creative genius," more about the group dynamics.

Chávez Ravine works because, ultimately, it isn't a history lesson or museum piece. It's the sound of musicians, now on the periphery, playing and singing the music they love.

Little Sparrow proves that 1999's The Grass Is Green was no fleeting burst of inspiration; Parton hasn't been so consistently exciting since the '70s.

A sturdy reminder of why Warren will be missed.

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

A work of thematic and dramatic constancy.

Spoon's most ambitious album is also their best.

The Magnolia Electric Co. succeeds where other albums of a similar nature fail because it has the courage to point towards what is wrong with itself and the medium through which it is presented.

Sprawling, overwrought, unkempt rock music.

What really puts the album over the top is the way Edan manages to twist the DNA of two distinctly throwback styles, '60s psych-rock and '80s golden-age hip-hop, into a 2005 mutant plaid platypus.

In danger of hitting the point of "OK, we get it" -- when that zap of newness wears off and a successful band suddenly feels less than essential -- the New Pornographers instead come up pretty big on Twin Cinema, transitioning to a sound just as catchy as their old stuff but with more space for the tunes to breathe.

Their finest record to date and the most blistering, blissful album to be released by anyone in years.

So while not breaking new ground -- a near impossible expectation given the amount of ground The Fall has already broken -- The Real New Fall LP is a strong indication that Mark E. Smith is nowhere near finished.

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

Where The Blackened Air sounded haunting, Run to Ruin sounds downright haunted, and, indeed, it's got moments filled with menace and chords written to make you feel uncomfortable.

With all four members taking the mic, cohesion should hardly be expected. Yet, for all the different styles the band employs on this album, all but the closing number seem indelibly stamped as this band's work, uniquely The Wrens.

The difference this time is that the Hold Steady consistently kick ass, nailing both Paul Westerberg's Teenage Yearning/Angst and Bruce's Common Man to a cross of Pure American Rock, unafraid of cliché, undaunted by the task of making the familiar exciting again.

All of One Beat is strung loosely together by a common plea: for awareness, for understanding, and, most of all, for holding onto hope.

The Last Broadcast is big, intelligent, irony-free music that demands an open mind -- and rewards the heart quite well. Magnificent.

O's seductive, cooing/shrieking contributions to the power of the Yeahs are immense, but they are no bigger than those of guitarist Zinner or drummer Chase.

The only real problem with Hearts of Oak is that the band still can't make their less immediately compelling tracks sound as electric and urgent on record as they do when the Pharmacists tear up the stage.

Across Old Ramon's sprawling 70-minute set, Kozelek is still a master of his sly charade, disguising sprawling webs of complex guitar chords and considered narratives as humble, simple acoustic ditties.

This disc may have a wilder sense of love-and-adventure about it, and may offer the thrills of an unpredictable ride, but, in its capriciousness and incongruousness, the thing Medulla rarely feels like is an album.

Although surprisingly self-conscious at moments, Feels remains rife with a triumphant beauty, a bucolic sound that stirs and entrances the listener like a happy secret.

Lyrically Black Cadillac is exquisite. Musically it's far more than a country record, expanding into those mighty rooms of roots music and pop-rock where Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind and Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road shine and burn against their own dark palettes.

Sigur Rós piece together breathtaking orchestrations that sound like they're singing to you from another world, telling you why your world is not so bad, that even in all the miserable monotony, something beautiful perseveres.

The Black Album is a spectacular farewell if that's what it turns out to be.

The Crane Wife is an impressively realized song cycle.

Lacking both the musical and counter-cultural thrill of the Brion recordings, this album turns away from a certain artistic "rawness" in the original recordings, razing away counter-melodies and acoustic decay for a well-polished delivery that presents the photogenic songstress in a more "flattering" light.

While appreciating Yoshimi for its merits poses little problem, actually enjoying it is more difficult.

Ghosts of the Great Highway is one of those albums that you want to have around for when life gets you down.

What's impressive is the way they bring all these elements together, the natural world leading seamlessly into a brighter landscape of surreal otherness.

For those devoted to this rock band's increasingly artistic gear, Gibbard's a bard spinning pop-song sonnets that cause such constituents of fandom to reel real deep in some crooning-along swooning induced by the lithe lyrics.

The instant pop buzz Pulp have concocted in the past is largely missing, but each listen reveals another layer, another level, another reason to love it. Highly recommended.

Unwinds slowly, slipping between ghosted noise-and-field-recording passages and the sustained explosions of big, bombastic caterwaul that have become Godspeed's signature sound.

Spine-tinglingly great.

This is pop music pushing the boundaries of what pop music should be, without having to resort to overproduced and mass-marketed gloss.

Meloy's words stir your insides like good poetry, his imaginative tales climb into your mind, set up camp and stay awhile. But without the enchanting, heart-wrenching and totally affecting power that is the consequence of The Decemberists' music, the words would not have ever found life.

On Out of Season, Gibbons' voice takes the spotlight. There's a quivery sound, similar to Billie Holiday's, which gets lost amid Portishead's stops and starts.

Yes, it's fun rockin' pop. But, unlike a lot of today's pop music, Guided By Voices keep their depth.

From the first few seconds of the album, you're hooked.

Idlewild are rapidly outgrowing their influences as they forge a unique identity that leads me to suspect that they may soon be inspiring a slew of like-minded new bands.

Whatever the lyrical content, though, the pleasures of N*E*R*D ultimately come down to their exhilarating production, flush with the breathless energy of rock and starry-eyed with the psychedelic potential of the studio.

Like so many great singles of the past, this is the sound of a good band getting great. Don't miss the moment.

She sounds as distant as much of the Anthology of American Folk Music, and yet there is an intimacy to her songs. This is a singer/poet who really feels things. And this is the new, weird America, and Holland is singing its woes with a wisdom far beyond her age.

By the time the longplayer finishes playing, you realize, whilst the acoustic guitars and harmonized vocals and that awesome table-tennis-ball-bouncing-beat may've made you think this was some easy-to-love pop platter, it actually hasn't stumbled all the way towards getting-it-together.

While the album is not as cohesive a vision, many of its songs are more focused.

Ultimately the album is bolstered by the risks he takes, and though it trips a bit and never quite achieves the direct vision of previous efforts, it's rewarding nonetheless, for the perspective it brings to Darnielle's body of work.

The record spans time and genre, reinterpreting everything from ska to country-tinged folk as if it were the product of a whimsically inaccurate translation device from another planet, and in the process creates a new musical language altogether.

A collection of slow, sad, stately songs whose obvious studio smarts are dwarfed by a big bleeding folkie's heart.

An album that is both emotionally powerful and truly beautiful.

The album coheres; it's a full body of work intended to be heard holistically, not simply as a collection of songs. But it takes some work. You must be an active listener to appreciate it fully.

Despite dozens of listens, much of Whatever People Say congeals together like so much spent gravy, with only the clever couplets sticking out.

Pyramid Electric Co. is a vast step forward for Molina. It provides ample evidence of his spiritual growth and shows him once again evolving as an artist.

Blacklisted proves that Case's musicianship has evolved alongside her songwriting skills.

Sturdier production and straightforward songwriting make a strong backbone for someone once lauded for his mysticism.

Ultimately, Woman King promises remarkable things to come for Iron and Wine, especially if Beam continues to expand his musical palette.

Throughout, there's little doubting Malkmus's charisma as a performer...

It's easily the least convincing album from the three Banhart's offered thus far.

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."

You aren't free after all, because once you've let the album in, you may never shake it off again.