Music this laid-back but this deep, so full-bodied and yet so restrained, could only have been made by Lambchop.

Whether they came on board at Daydream Nation or Experimental Jet Set, true believers will relish this one.

The album's songs do not attack you with bombast but rather smother you in a slow burn, like gathering frost suffocating a mournful shut-in.

She retains her unique quality to marry upbeat, elegant melodies to witty lyrics that exhibit a disenchanted but honest take on life and love.

This mixture of revealing honesty and defiant self-confidence pervades the majority of You Are Free, an affecting and unforced 14-track album that stands as arguably her most diverse and rewarding effort to date.

Amazingly, the entire package coalesces without sounding tacky, no matter how funhouse-quirky the instrumentation gets.

Guided By Voices sound more assured than ever before, reflecting on the travails of life in a rock’n’roll band with uncommon honesty and power.

Many adjectives have been thrown around in reference to this latest album: lush, atmospheric, beautiful, summery, melodic. All apply. This is R.E.M.'s pop record.

A strong, cohesive and surprisingly soulful record.

The album has its share of enjoyable tunes, and more than a couple great ones.

Despite the presence of a few misses, When I Was Cruel will be well worth the purchase for anyone still trying to work their way through All This Useless Beauty. It's a straightforward, catchy, and of course smart record from the meanest man in the British Isles.

Once again defiantly demonstrates Ween's talent and versatility.

Blacklisted is certainly a high-water mark for Case; a statement, if you will.

After repeated listens, Title TK congeals into a beautiful little slice of fuzz-rock-pop.

This album is to Unwound what Daydream Nation was to Sonic Youth: the application of wild imagination and ruthless harmonies to a more mainstream format, while largely dispensing with their heritage and experiments.

Low's most accomplished album yet, if not its most creative.

On Pawn she chooses to rock, but in her own unique swinging way. Her songs are not ballads, but epics of rock, classical and postmodern music.

Blood Money should be heard as a complete piece of music -- like watching a play -- and some tracks that might appear thin on their own will be revealed as far meatier in context.

The record could quite possibly be one of the best of the year with a dash of self-control.

A major rebirth, relegating the chirpy melodies to expedients, relying less on Sadier's monotone singing, and reaching for new formats within the group's formidable compositional skills.

Un-inspirationality aside, Gorky's still exhibits glimmers of sonic uniqueness and loads of pop craftsmanship throughout the record.

It augments the band's traditional pop sound with string arrangements and baroque instrumentation, to varying degrees of success.

Unfortunately, the last third of the CD isn’t nearly as good as the first two-thirds.

The Rising somewhat falters in its middle third, as Springsteen struggles to make this a cohesive record.

Thanks to fresh melodies, a surprisingly effective voice, ever powerful rhythms, and burning guitar/bass workouts, Jason Loewenstein has coined a voice of his own.

Somehow The Ugly Organ has enough pop appeal and pseudo-uplifting sentiment to make it listenable.

The first Mouse On Mars album to truly surprise.

BLD is arguably Black's most straightforward rock album; his sound is becoming more and more "classic rock" with each passing record.