While Encyclopedia has some redeeming moments, it ultimately mirrors this complex in its many wavelengths.

The sloppily played garage rock riffs complement the slapdash nature of the lyrics, and--as you might expect--it’s that loose, under-rehearsed and under-written methodology that is both the album’s strength and its downfall.

Although the slower 1 Hopeful Rd. likely won’t affect Vintage Trouble’s exuberant live performances or reputation, they’d do better to return to their high-energy recordings.

What's not much in evidence is distinctive or memorable material. [Apr/May 2005, p.141]

Taken as a whole, PlectrumElectrum is a fantastic rock and roll party record (although there are some more serious lyrical themes sprinkled throughout). But when you really pick apart some of the pieces, it becomes a little less interesting.

Coldplay is always going to be warm, nostalgic, melancholy, pleasant, innocent and good. They’re as much a warm word and an arm around the shoulder now as they were when they first showed up.

If Love Notes is their best album, it's because it's also their most emotionally conflicted.

Ringleader Alex Ebert produced the album and sonically, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros feels slick and compressed.

Burning Mountains plays like a kind of indignant opus, composed within proximity to the epicenter of a psychotropic maelstrom.

Comfy isn’t always what you want, though. And while Meteorites walks that line, we can at least take comfort in the fact that McCulloch and Sergeant are still doing it, and doing it well.

The album would truly shine overall if it didn't contain too many songs that are less songs and more experiments in sound. That's not to say this is a major problem, but instrumental, orchestral arrangements seem strange when they come 12 songs through a 15-track LP.

When Le Bon and Cox take traditional approaches, they nail it, just as they did on both their most recent albums. When they venture into less familiar territory, though, they drive a bit too far off the rails, but graciously, the train never quite crashes.

At times convoluted, Solarized can be a bit of a puzzle, but there are precious few pieces missing from this set. [#14, p.115]

Wilson's fake tales of Middle England lack the sharp observational focus of the Arctic Monkeys, the bratty cleverness of Blur circa Parklife or even the sexy swagger of Franz Ferdinand. [May 2007, p.61]

Push and Shove is still a welcome return, even if it's a tad exhausting.

If you don't mind a little old-fashioned leering misogyny and plenty of lobotomized choruses, the power chords and snarling vocals will shake you all night long. [Sep 2006, p.81]

A personal manifesto, WWRS falls somewhere between the Pogues at their most urgent and Tom Joad-era Springsteen at his most feverish.

With Birthmarks, Born Ruffians bring us a deeply personal album.

An efficient and insistent hunk of modestly effective dancefloor candy. [Oct/Nov 2005, p.125]

Cruel Runnings is full of upbeat and catchy songs with melodies that’ll stay with you long after hearing them.

While the mostly mid-tempo, mostly acoustic continues the trajectory from college rock to radio-ready adult alternative, Gomez has yet to succumb to anything resembling blandness. The album’s best songs are its most experimental, which will continue to frustrate those who want these Southport boys to more frequently embrace the strange.

It's not a shining example of the craft, by any means, but it's still enjoyable, a soothing late-summer soundtrack devotees of either parent band will particularly love.

They're both excellent, similarly imaginative, fully realized efforts. [Sep 2006, p.75]

For the most part Ya Know? comes across exactly as one would hope--like a collection of songs Joey Ramone would have been proud to share with the world.

Lovely and visceral at once. [Oct/Nov 2005, p.141]

The record plays like an old mixtape: a few songs you dig, a few you forget, and two or three you can't stop playing, that you can't keep from becoming part of a night the pictures can't do justice, of a packed dance-floor, of a girl you didn't kiss, of a midnight drive.

There needs to be a balance of reflection, inspiration and originality or things will come off stale and forced. Try as Danzig might, he never does find that equilibrium.

Working with Lukas Nelson’s Promise of the Real, Young’s urgency is infused with youthful intensity.

Overall, the album--self-produced, four years in the making and the band’s first for its own label--isn’t as catchy as “Geeks,” but works reasonably well.

In a world of quicker, faster, harder, it’s intriguing when songs spread out, taking their time to get to the point or create landscapes beyond the hook.

What Makes You Country has no shortage of potential hits.

Minaj is at her best-at her most compelling, most ingenious, most human-when she indulges every weird mannerism that comes into her busy brain.

It sounds like they've never left, with many recurring tropes.

It demands attention, and it has just enough glitch and grime to remind you that it's not 30 years old.

This version of Gang of Four is clearly Gill’s vision, and if the group doesn’t sound as tightly wound as they did in their first incarnation, the angular guitar attack and the relentless pounding of the drums is a clear indication that the fire still burns within.

Things get slightly clunky when the tempo slows and they stretch for drama, but there’s a growing self-awareness here that keeps Rooney within its comfort zone, which, refreshingly, is comforting more often than not.

While her album shares its laptop atmosphere with many other troubadours plying Boston’s streets, it’s sprinkled with heavyweight pro touches that belie her deeper legacy.

This album feels like it’s trying too hard to get me to sing along, to partake in transforming its songs into soccer field-sized anthems.

Certainly, the most innovative thing about Storytone is its presentation, with each of the album’s 10 songs recorded in acoustic and fully orchestrated versions.

There might be more substance musically than lyrically on Sheezus. But even the album’s flashy pop is missing some of the bells and whistles of her previous work.

The record loses momentum when its latter half settles into decompressed electronica, but RJD2's daring innovation and unconventional melodies are enough to cement his reputation as hip-hop's most adventurous musical astronaut. [Mar 2007, p.63]

Creating a musical theme that stretches across the album isn’t a bad idea, but The Little Ones fail to pull it off, and the songs suffer from a frothy sameness.

And It Shook Me may not be a game-changer, but what it does show is a group attempting to shed the shackles of its influences and take one step closer to embracing its own identity. And that’s something that should be admired.

Release Therapy is solid; disappointing only when weighed against Luda's prodigious talent. [Dec 2006, p.89]

Night on Fire is going to need a gifted remixer to transform it into the dance-floor-packer it aspires to be.

Recorded by Deakin, Avey Tare, and Geologist, Tangerine Reef is also, for better or worse, the first Animal Collective album recorded without Panda Bear, whose melodic gift is frequently missed here.

The album suffers from a lack of focus. [May 2007, p.67]

Their spectacularly boring new album has so little dynamic variance that it literally pains the ear.

Raw and revealing.

In context, Ritual is the wrong title -- very little here feels repetitive or procedural. The album is a flight of fancy most listeners will want to take again and again.

It’s interesting, but it’s never happy, sad, angry or romantic. It’s not even overly smug.

With proceeds going to cancer research, Be OK is more than a stopgap recording; it cements Michaelson’s status as a conscientious musician whose chops are equaled by her worldview.

It's quite hard to get a grasp on Tha Carter IV; in its relentlessly schizophrenic assault, you might end up falling in-and-out of love several times.

Whatever Key lacks in ramshackle charm, it compensates for with deft musicianship and winds up just as achingly fine as the band's sepia-toned debut. [#13, p.119]

This record’s way blander than the sassy hits she played.

Timeless sounds like a pop-charts-and-trends magazine exploded in the studio. [Apr/May 2006, p.115]

Mmost frustrating about this album are the shades of old Morrissey.

Deeper Into Dream shows incredible growth in Lee and an exciting new direction to his usual style.

Space Invader is good rock album, and it’s an even better guitar record.

Perfectly enunciated lyrics, layered instrumentation, infectious melodies, rinse, repeat. The sound wasn’t broke, so Bishop Allen didn’t bother fixing it.

The artistic liberty of neglecting to ease anyone in to a new incarnation of the same band is wholly admirable. The result, however, is pretty uneven.

Unfortunately, irrational moments like “The Rape Over” make you question the entire 17-track outing.

Working out of his home studio, Sweet--joined by drummer Ric Menck and multi-instrumentalist Greg Leisz--nails every sonic nuance, buried under cumulous clouds of glorious boy/girl harmonies.

Mumford and Son resisted the temptation to upend their sound for more commercial ends, with an album of carefully chosen material and plumbing even deeper declinations for lyrical insight. It’s a strategy that pays off; along with increasing anticipation, it results in a better set of songs overall.

They are still committed to immaturity; all these songs have a special affection for youth and fittingly incorporate threads from hip hop.

On In the Dark the band has paired its roadworthiness with greater ingenuity, and it finally feels like a fuse has been lit.

Armed with a collection of adrenaline-pumping beats and diverse vocal appearances, it's a musical force that continues to establish Zimmerman's place among the house music greats.

Over just 33 minutes, On My One simply meanders too much, too unfocused as it weaves in and out of multiple genres, never getting a solid footing in any of them.

In a world where machined dance fodder, rap-deckled pop and lumbering rawk dominates, a genuine article of soul music-especially one where the thick bass, tumbling Wurlitzer and bright guitars set the tone-is a joyous noise, indeed.

The lyrics explode with angst, music fills the scenes with detail, and the answers all raise questions.

The majority of This Modern Glitch is an enjoyable--but not terribly memorable--collection of songs.

Hoyas sounds slick, monochromatic and even a bit stale.

What’s disappointing about A Fine Mess is not just that the songs are unremarkable but also that they don’t deviate from the band’s usual approach in any notable way. There are no oddball experiments here, no genre strays, no real risks to speak of. There are just five more songs that sound a lot like Interpol, for fans for whom that is always enough.

Duffy has a uniquely girlish voice, like Joey Lauren Adams doing an impression of a Bond Girl, and her quirks get the best of her during the album's slower moments, where her vibrato sounds forced and faded. When the tempo picks up, though, Endlessly sounds like a proper sophomore effort: mature, confident, and wider in scope than its predecessor.

[The] familiarity brings you to the cereal, the soap and the market, and some people will be drawn to Be, okay with seeing the imitation. The rest are better holding off for Oasis’ inevitable reformation.

Costa’s jazz-tinged neo-folk songs are boyishly engaging for as long as they last, but they drift away without leaving a trace, as he too often settles for merely maintaining a feathery, bittersweet modality, so that the McCartney-esque tunefulness of the title track, the Mungo Jerry-like lilt of 'Miss Magnolia' and the ever-so-slight edginess of 'Cigarette Eyes' stand out by default.

As a coming-out party, Island Universe is an effective offering, rightfully confident in its demonstrations of range.

Fans may feel it’s more of a long slog than they remember, with the slower tempo stretching many of the songs beyond their natural length, and the spoken word passages lending a languorous quality that may induce drowsiness.

There are some great ideas and moments that make up the first two thirds of the album.

Too often, it's elevator-funk, waiting room disco.

A chaotic mix of gorgeous T. Rex acoustic reveries, cheeky Stones-inflected rockers and studio-jam goofiness. [Apr 2007, p.55]

The songs amble through multiple genre divides, most pushing well past the three-minute pop mark. Good thing--it’s the contrasts where the pleasure lies.

Thicke does his best with these tracks, hitting all the right sultry vocal notes, but really the beats and production aren’t doing him any favors.

Call it Trip-Pop. [Apr/May 2006, p.117]

Overlook is her best, most animated collection in years.

Covers is his first album devoted to nothing but other people’s music and, unsurprisingly, it’s marked by his same strengths and weaknesses, not to mention some intrusive backing vocals and superlatively bland production.

Through it all, Johansson is just another instrument in the mix, and her willingness to allow the arrangements to transform Waits’ creaky intimacy into wide-eyed atmosphere ultimately results in the rare covers album that actually has its own identity.

Listening to the surfer/artist’s third album is like sitting on a barstool alongside a good friend, knocking back pints and rappin’ it down about, y’know, life and whatever.

At once punishingly long and oddly incomplete. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.110]

A pleasurable, spun-sugar confection. [Oct/Nov 2005, p.122]

The crux is the album’s smothering, reverb-heavy, more-is-more production style, which smooths over some of the off-kilter quirks that made Torches’ sprawl so alluring.

A weird blend of rave rhythms, distorted guitars, druggy aimlessness and less-than stellar vocals, I’ve Tortured You Long Enough sounds like something out of early ‘00s New York City; the product one of the bands that definitely didn’t make it.

Although the sparkling production of Empires doesn't allow for much in the way of nuance or detail, Snow Patrol still attacks the choruses of "You Are" and "The Weight Of Love" with enough oomph that you can already hear the stadium sing-a-longs.

With few real rockers, Born is more disappointing than it had to be.

I still prefer Bell X1 with just an acoustic guitar and piano, but Bloodless Coup is, at the least, guaranteed to grow your Best of Bell X1 playlist.

What makes this glossy album more charming than cloying overall is the totally unselfconscious way he throws himself into these showy and technically stunning performances. [Aug/Sep 2005, p.111]

This time around, the 11 songs that graced the initial disc, along with two new tracks, provide a serene counterpoint, one that coaxes the listener along and shares some sentiment along the way.

The problem with Macy Gray's comeback album is that, on it, she talks too much about her comeback album.