The tone is certainly slow dances at twilight, but given a shimmer by the understated elegance of Moore’s voice, something that has always sound fragile but defiant at the same time.

While the tribute’s best moments reveal new and rewarding dimensions to his immortal songs nearly seven years after his death at age 74, the collection doesn’t move the needle when it comes to building more awareness around the visionary’s innumerable contributions to pop music.

At its peaks, it is capacious, melancholy and beautifully indicative of the human desire for connection and meaning. It is also, at times, simpering and molasses-y, when Savage has proven he knows how to succeed without shackling himself to those tropes. When it burns low, its ashes are suffocating—but when it flares, it blazes high.

Lyrically, The First Lady offers plenty of revelations.

Maybe it's the presence of guitarist Marc Ribot, maybe it's the arrangements, or maybe it's Dylan's vocal register and choice of themes, but the vibe often recalls a more laid-back Tom Waits or Joe Henry. That's not bad company to keep, though Dylan's delivery lacks any edge or emotional undertow that make the lyrics speak more pointedly than Ribot's stinging guitar.

This album will please fans of the vintage stylings of Adele, Duffy and the late Amy Winehouse.

Dawson's melodic palette's improved, but her stories are mostly told.

There’s plenty of violent syncopation and propeller double kick on ...Of The Dark Light, but it’s the meaty, crawling half time grooves that really make the album crushing.

It takes several listens to realize that the tracks on The Third Chimpanzee each function on an interior logic that’s quite satisfying to climb into, like being inside a video demonstration of a Rubik’s Cube getting solved over and over.

For the most part, Jacksonville City Nights is well paced, with enough uptempo songs spread throughout to balance the sluggish, pensive balladry that bogged down the too-long Cold Roses.

Plumbs current indie folk and country, with varying degrees of success.

It’s not a few hits padded out with rote genre exercises--it’s thematically consistent and maintains a high level of craftsmanship throughout. Dads and grads can both dig it.

[An] expansive and impressive sixth album.

A whisper, sigh, prayer and somehow catharsis, Roses balms life’s harshness.

While it might not be for those looking for something ultra modern or cutting edge, these songs ultimately feel immediate and engaging and worth multiple listens.

While kid-friendliness is a great merit of Under the Pepper Tree, its ineffable beauty makes the album a fast favorite for a person of any age to unwind after a long day.

Until the Tide Creeps In isn’t that; nor is it a mawkish trip down memory lane. Instead, it’s an album of reconciliation, an opportunity for Jack and Lily to make sense of their youth spanning into their adulthood.

U.K. upstart Jamie Lidell’s latest is trapped squarely in this box, but the quality of his vocal performance generally keeps things from being stifling.

Instead of reintroducing the genre’s founding dub steps and club sensibilities, contributions from Massive Attack’s musical descendants (Blur/Gorillaz mastermind Damon Albarn, Portishead’s Adrian Utley) lend quieter atmospherics that amplify the emotion of the band’s mainstay whispers.

It's this penchant for playing with contrast--between light and dark, comedy and tragedy, hard and soft, fast and slow--and their ease with switching gears between the romps and soliloquies that shines on The Carpenter, perhaps stronger than on any of their previous releases.

Stories Don’t End is crisper and more overdubbed, sprawling a tad where the first two albums flowed seamlessly.

On Jukebox, some of the eyes-closed magic is traded for dim lights, but the readings are just as stunning.

In Our Nature’s fingerpicked reveries, sonic gentility and lugubrious vibe might tug at your eyelids, but be warned: Its heavy-hearted sentiments are hardly the stuff of dreams.

Michelle Branch is no poet, but Hopeless Romantic tells her story with enough variance to stay engaging.

As both a quintessential entry into his catalog and a striking entry into mainstream popular culture, Colors once again cements Beck as a clever, ever-dynamic and enduring artist.

Island Intervals marks a giant leap for Thibodeau, while not veering too far from his own trodden trail. Call it future folk, but in 10 years we’ll be calling it timeless.

Another nice-enough album of sweetly sighing chamber pop that marks yet another incremental step forward. [Feb/Mar 2006, p.109]

The songs don't exactly span the musical solar system, maintaining the same general tempo and flow throughout the fifty-minute ride, but despite its rather static, predictable quality, Travellers managers to take listeners on a journey out of this world, but just barely.