If there's a problem, it's that the fifteen songs tend to blur together after nearly forty-five minutes.

The big improvement is in the songwriting: This time around, Cee-Lo works a memorable tune into almost every one of these eighteen overstuffed tracks.

What is lost in warm immediacy is gained in eclectic cool...

Both more satisfying and more formulaic.

A riot: smart chicks who use brain-crushing beats and refrigerated New Wave riffs to critque bourgeois liberals and the fashion-industrial complex. [28 Oct 2004, p.100]

Keep It Together proves that all the touring hasn't hardened Guster's bright folk-pop sound a bit.

Fus[es] mean guitars and disco trance for a ferocious new breed of punk funk.

It all sounds glamorous as hell. [8-22 Jul 2004, p.122]

Bowie toughens up his sound, sawing at the edges of Jonathan Richman's "Pablo Picasso" and, on "New Killer Star," reclaiming the insinuating guitar propulsion he'd loaned to Lou Reed when he produced Transformer.

Both [discs] combine into one excellent combo platter, proving Nelly as one of the most clever and effusive pop minds around.

The despair is often easier to admire than to love.

LL Cool J has as much swaggering presence as ever. [30 Sep 2004, p.188]

With Rancid, the band's mix of American thrash minimalism and Brit punk's sound and fury have transcended revivalist mimicry once and for all. The result is a brutally exuberant rock album.

Shot through with uncut techno and hip-hop, the grooves on this seventeen-track CD are hard, propulsive and irresistible.

The Orpheus disc is quieter, and Blues is slightly more lewd, but taken together this may be the scariest album about panties, gorillas and bloody gods ever recorded.

These are Rascal's most accessible beats to date. [30 Sep 2004, p.186]

A great album that sounds like it could have been part of the Eighties British Invasion.

Rockwell and Merriweather may never sashay down Paris runways, but their How's Your Girl? has a hot style all its own.

They have a brilliant gift for Lennon-style pop melody that makes their spaciest riffs go down like a spoonful of hash-laced honey. [13 May 2004, p.73]

No band in recent history has better captured the vertiginous experience of falling apart and loving it. [16 Sep 2004, p.79]

Sounds more like the dusky thrum of Disintegration-era Cure than it does any of the members' previous bands.

It all hangs together, somehow, swaying unerringly from one idea to the next.

The band truly rocks: Its malevolent groove fleshes out its leader's usual complaints with an exhilarating swagger that's the essence of rock & roll.... On Holy Wood, Manson is as ambitious, personal and heavy as he's ever been, but the album is not, as he has proclaimed, the band's White Album. The music of these L.A. scenesters, though still evolving, can't hope to match the Beatles' level of eclectic experimentation or melodicism.

Ranks among the best work of his career.

Jem is blessed not only with reedy pipes to rival Beth Orton's but also a sense of sonic humor.

Five albums in, these ladies have outgrown their limited palette of good-time party tunes about boys, cars and getting high, and have tapped into an emotional well full of more bile than anyone could have expected.

Hopes and Fears contains more hooks than most pop groups manage in their careers.

Quietly beautiful.

Tyrannosaurus Hives is so tight and efficient, it makes Veni Vidi Vicious sound almost like it came from a jam band.

Their sloppiest, most playful set yet.

Against all odds, Green Day have found a way to hit their thirties without either betraying their original spirit or falling on their faces.

One of the more creative and accomplished records you'll hear this year. [19 Aug 2004, p.118]

Korn have circled the wagons and self-produced their best album to date, refining the formula to a black-cancer marmalade of corrosive riffs, fist-flying rhythms, gothic-carnival atmospheres and toxic vocals.

Shimmers with melancholy beauty. [16 Sep 2004, p.80]

Full of a lush, bubbling beauty that proves Frusciante's personal rehabilitation has taken his music further than ever.

Not just a dance-rock band anymore, The Faint unveil a strong song sense with tunes as richly imagined, well-written and arresting as their titles. [14 Oct 2004, p.96]

Winning Days is a noisy triumph -- as good as their 2002 debut, Highly Evolved, and in some ways a leap forward in style and frenzy.

The Red Light District is his most inventive album yet.

Is both simpler--in sound and scope--than Pirate and much more ambitious. [27 May 2004, p.80]

Heartbreak is an instance when that hoary music-biz cliche -- "They're better onstage" -- rings true; ironically so, since the Kings and producer Ethan Johns recorded Aha Shake Heartbreak live in the studio, with no overdubs.

Demonstrates a truly elegant sense of pacing and development.

Rock that feels like techno ... Gorgeous and wasted, THE CONTINO SESSIONS sounds like blues for space cowboys.

He submits a dozen songs to crystalline modern engineering and arrangements that place selective bits of mandolin, flute, harp and synthesizer in guitar-and-rhythm grooves, moving forward without losing his identity.

Has a rhythmic, revving-motorcycle momentum, like the Pixies without all the shrieking, or Sonic Youth without the frustrating feedback experiments.

This is an album about the seductions of oblivion, and a few of the more densely arranged songs mimic the characters in the lyrics, stumbling around without quite connecting.

The Rapture are artier, and Franz Ferdinand are more, well, Scottish, but this Las Vegas band has actual pop songs -- in spades.

Songs that, for all their quietness, leave a dark, lasting impression.

The well-worn beats ensure the album is good even as they prevent it from being great.

Most of the songs are like a Southern accent: eight miles an hour, deliberate and very dangerous to underestimate.

Transatlanticism should be overwrought -- it's an album about young men enduring lost love in an ocean of memory; instead, it feels like a conversation with an old friend.

Chuck's heavy melodies find a balance between ADD guitar wank and next year's prom-night hit. [28 Oct 2004, p.102]

His ace in the hole is his signature cozy sound -- dusty soul samples, gospel hymns, drums that pop as if hit for the very first time.

Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant embellishes on the coyly lavish arrangements of 1998's The Boy With the Arab Strap without forgetting to flex real heart muscles.

For once, the inevitable U.K.-press hype is justified: Franz Ferdinand's debut draws from beloved Brit pop and post-punk bands without the usual plagiarism.

Van Dyks's segues are so effortless it's easy to take them for granted, but the precision with which he moves between styles and tempos is a thing of beauty.

DeLonge is one terrific little guitar player, the comic chitchat interludes are a sweet bonus for fans, and Blink-182 steal enough moronic hooks to make The Enema Strikes Back a hoot.

Both the most extreme record Bjork has ever released and the most immediately accesible. [16 Sep 2004, p.79]

Sexsmith has always known how to deliver a gentle melody, but his work has a new gravity on Retriever; it adds up to his best album yet.

Sounds like a solid Kinks album covered by a bunch of smart indie boys. [15 Apr 2004, p.151]

Mixes sunniness and darkness in artful ways. [28 Oct 2004, p.102]

There's not a dud among the dozen tracks. [16 Sep 2004, p.81]

Lacking any dramatic innovations or departures from last year's The Man Who, The Invisible Band succeeds by approximating - via warm melodies, textures and sincerity - Simon and Garfunkel fronting U2.

What makes Two Against Nature work isn't its cerebral ellipticity but its stunning musical clarity.

Closely packed with urgent horn breaks and friendly guitar solos, Anastasio's new songs are less diffuse than his old roomy improv workouts.

Revelations abound: Max Weinberg's demon drumming turns "My Love Will Not Let You Down," an early-Eighties leftover, into a rampaging opener; "Two Hearts" allows duet partners Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt to pay homage to the Marvin Gaye-Kim Weston Motown classic "It Takes Two"; Nils Lofgren's six-string rave-up drops a bomb on the relatively sedate studio version of "Youngstown"; and the slide-guitar voicings on a stark, howling "Born in the U.S.A." evoke both the Far East and Mississippi.

Writing for others showcases Gano's versatility.

Chemistry works precisely because of Semisonic's skillful management of cliche, particularly Wilson's ability to elevate ordinary story lines with buoyant melodies.

A slender set of humorously coldhearted would-be club hits that celebrate hopelessness, freedom from tedious human relationships and numbness to heartbreak.

The Night is the Boston band's most painstakingly layered and ambitious album, with cello, organ and oud expanding on the trio's original sax-y swagger.

With Killing Puritans, Van Helden means to scramble and then reassemble house music like the Beasties' Paul's Boutique scrambled hip-hop in 1989. Like Paul's Boutique, Puritans initially seems chaotic and arcane, but with repeated dosage it starts to reveal itself as a pugnacious party album.

Nova and her producers do not rely on atmosphere alone. Instead they nail songs with unshakable melodies, choruses, bridges and harmonics; the technique, as on the great soul records, uses structural certainty to access emotional mysteries.

Handcream for a Generation is a festive crash of cultures, a Babel of loops and ethnic body language. Dixie R&B, Bollywood kitsch, Crooklyn hip-hop, Eurotrash electronics -- singer-songwriter and producer Tjinder Singh shakes 'em up like rats in a box, finding kicks and connections in aggressive pastiche.

Jump Leads escalates the surging energy infused in their up-tempo and electrifying approach.

It's a bedlam of romance, a tender look back at first relationships and sexual romps, but with a bit of a smirk.

Nightworks shifts moods up and down with a crafty balance of beats that would work loud in a club and low in your headphones.

Stripping away the nails-on-chalkboard caterwauls, ear ravaging guitars and caveman histrionics, Kozelek gets down to the very essence of the words and melody, rendering most of the songs unfamiliar but wholly captivating.

On her new album, Bette Midler has gone into the studio with a master of makeovers, producer Don Was, and ended up sounding pretty much the same. That's a good thing.

The handsomely produced Public Domain is so rich in history that it could do brisk business in the Smithsonian gift shop. Rather than just revisit folk gems like "Walk Right In," "Delia" and "Railroad Bill," Alvin completely reinvents them.

Bedlam Ballroom is one hell of a hot musical night out on the town.... the sort of jazzy, bluesy stew that made the Zippers so cutting in the first place -- untrendy roots music that somehow got trendy again at the end of the 20th century.

The guitars (some by occasional Beck and Tom Waits sideman Smokey Hormel) snap out repetitive riffage that's one step from cliche. But Burnside's singing has never been more compelling on record.

Photek, has shaken things up with his second full-length album, Solaris -- it owes more to techno and house than to drum-and-bass.

Uncluttered but muscular production, deft samples and smart rhymes all ensure that the album's power increases with repeated listenings.

With unexpected juxtapositions learned from hip-hop and a sense of spiritual release gleaned from underground disco, Oakenfold steers the ultra-European, classical-minded pulse of trance toward syncopated rhythms, drum-free interludes and actual songs.

Admirers of melodic craft and pointed poetry -- even those stricken with synth-pop allergies -- should consider Release.

A heroic monster of an album. [27 Jan 2005, p.58]

Emoh is full of quiet lyricism and Nick Drake beauty.

An album full of beat-wise psychedelia. [27 Jan 2005, p.61]

The result is impressively visceral darkness. [10 Feb 2005, p.81]

The Secret Migration seethes with life and loveliness, building on the beauty of Dream and 1998's Deserter's Songs but steering clear of the dark overtones on those albums.

Pure instrumental pleasure. [10 Feb 2005, p.82]

With this delicious melancholy, he is nearing perfection.

Ladd's band... cooks this tangle of worry and dada to perfection.

Kurihara's sweet swells turn into fuzzed-out jams alongside Naomi's fluid bass and wraithlike vocals and Damon's feathery cymbal play and murky poetry.

Ward has imbibed a sense of remorse and cold-eyed mortality from country blues and Appalachian mountain music, and incorporates them into his own decidedly modern songwriting.

[Barzelay's] sharp eye and endearingly nerdy voice enlivens his band's meticulous acoustic pitter-patter.

The Cosmic Game displays much of what we've come to expect from Thievery: lush, down-tempo beats laced with authentic Jamaican and Latin flair.

Beam maintains a strikingly hushed vocal presence yet expands his minimal, mostly acoustic arrangements with unusual percussion, slide guitar, keyboards, violin, distorted electric guitar and multitracked harmonies that never clutter his delicate delivery of durable tunes.

No Wow is smaller, more focused, with less hip-shaking and more goth.