More than just a gift to fans, it shows Elton's gifts haven't deserted him. [5 Oct 2006, p.68]

It's full of surprising, creative moments that recall Nas and Kanye West.

Hitchcock has a knockout gift for Beatlesque melodicism, and the Venus 3 rev it up here with a beat-combo drive and star-shine twang that sound like Murmur in space.

An album of angry, guilty, sad -- and often stunningly pretty -- songs. [5 Oct 2006, p.68]

Los Lobos' best album since 1996's Colossal Head.

The Black Parade... is the best mid-Seventies record of 2006, a rabid, ingenious paraphrasing of echoes and kitsch from rock's golden age of bombast.

Daltrey and Townshend have made a record as brazen in its way and right for its day as The Who Sell Out and Tommy were in theirs.

His finest batch of songs since This Is Hardcore.

A definitive album.

So why is it one of the best hip-hop albums of the year? For one, nobody gets the beats -- dry, hard and evil -- that Clipse get from Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo.

Nas has always sounded older than his years, but there are moments on his eighth album when he sounds like the lead in the hood version of Grumpy Old Men.

Most of Friend Opportunity... sounds like a pure expression of musical joy.

The eclectic elements combine for dark, muted balladry a la Syd Barrett or the Beatles' White Album, with a touch of dub.

No great departure from earlier stuff, New Magnetic Wonder is full of bright melodies that veer between the Beach Boys and the Kinks, and a guitar-keyboards-drums sound that bounces between hard-rocking, bubbly and lush.

Williams remains a premier artist. [22 Feb 2007, p.73]

Explosions in the Sky... are like the Kronos Quartet with big amps and John Bonham in the back, exploring the composed details in their music before blowing 'em up.

Here they fail to provide the elusive novelty follow-up to "Stacy's Mom" but nonetheless invent many dandy new ways not to be in love.

The band doesn't fuss with any sort of rootsy purism, which is why it gets away with retro moves that would sound soft from anybody else.

Musically, Cassadaga is fully formed, a considered synthesis of the catch-as-catch-can expansiveness of Oberst's Lifted-era bands with the country tendencies that have always undergirded his Middle American vocals.

On Year Zero, Reznor doesn't exactly sound like he's having fun -- does he ever? But he runs out of disc space before he runs out of ideas, and it's the first time that's happened in quite a while.

As a whole, the collection is as indispensable as Either/Or. [31 May 2007, p.96]

Sky Blue Sky is understated, erratic, often beautiful, disarmingly simple music; it really sounds like six guys playing in a room, and no doubt that's how they wanted it.

Most of Minutes is honed, metallic pop with a hip-hop stride and a wake-up kick.

The songs are subtler, statelier, with Matt Berninger's baritone exuding lonesome warmth. [31 May 2007, p.93]

[It] will likely remain the country album of the year. [14 Jun 2007, p.98]]

Era Vulgaris is Homme's fifth Queens album, and like the others, it's intricately crafted, meticulously polished and ruthlessly efficient in its pursuit of depraved rock thrills.

The best thing about Zeitgeist is that Corgan is back to what he does best: hard-rock architecture.

Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga might be Spoon's commercial breakthrough, doing for them what "Good News" did for Modest Mouse, but for certain it's one of the Austin, Texas, trio's finest records.

Super Taranta! soars for three songs before settling in to a depth-charged, raucously quotable musical and philosophical groove.

With help from name producer Butch Vig, Tom Gabel's emo-hardcore band makes them rock.

Finally, the Cribs deliver the tour de force they had in them, and it's about time.

1990s are a Scottish indie trio who pursue their ridiculous CBGB punk fantasies with almost religious devotion, resulting in some of the most hilariously brilliant singles of the past year.

It's yet more adventurous, a prosperous band's challenge to its comfortable cult.

They are aggressively modern in the long reach of Young Modern.

It's stronger and more assertive than 2004's "Uh Huh Her."

The pulse of the quieter cuts draws you into dreamy little songs that play out like strolls through an art gallery. Beautiful, if not always transfixing.

Let's Stay Friends is the first album of new songs in six years from indie-rock madcaps Les Savy Fav, yet it sounds like a band that's just hitting a peak.

His good-hearted faith in rock & roll delivers a powerful kick. As he well knows--and Rock N Roll Jesus proves--roaring guitars, truckloads of attitude and an unquenchable lust for life make up for a multitude of sins.

Forget Frank Lucas: The real black superhero here is Jay, and with American Gangster, Gray-Hova is back in black.

The Big Doe Rehab isn't as distinct as last year's Fishscale, but it's close. Ghost's bouncy, more direct approach on cuts like 'Walk Around' shows off his ability to turn crack-slinging narratives into big, hooky pleasures.

The Cool goes for softer, jazzier R&B hooks, yet the lyrics are even tougher in their street-level attack on hip-hop materialism.

It rocks, in this case a meaningful, temporary departure. Its unmelded sonic gestalt suits its thematic disquiet. It's Stephin Merritt's second-best album, which is saying a great deal.

She refashions material from other artists and makes it seem like it's been hers all along.

You could argue that the Truckers should have revved up this Skynyrd side more often. But instead they let the songwriting speak for itself, and it sings loud and clear.

there is a great leap in the songwriting--closer to classic hard-rock force and melodic drama--that, in 'Goliath,' 'Cavaletta'" and the Holy City atmospheres of 'Soothsayer,' is even more jolting than the weirdness.

'Wrestlers' epitomizes what makes this quintet the sharpest dance rockers this side of their pals LCD Soundsystem: catchy tunes, monster grooves, and lyrics resolving the heartfelt and the smartass.

Wagner and Foo have gone back to the rougher basics--distortion, echo and monastery-choir vocals--of their debut EP, 2002's Whip It On. But the simplicity is deceptive.

BYOP remain blissfully bored by the idea of lyrical or musical subtlety, which is why they're so perfect.

On her strongest album yet, she sets a poignant road tale between New York and Ontario ('Buffalo') and pens a fierce, Crazy Horse-ish squall about crack, murder and racism in her own back yard.

It's not every goth-punk fiend who can celebrate his fiftieth birthday with an album as loud, filthy and brilliant as Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

His latest seals the deal.

A concept album about an all-night bender, Last Night solidifies Moby's link in the chain that binds DJ pioneers like Todd Terry to slinky futurists like Justice.

Accelerate is the first studio album by that post-Berry stage band, and it is one of the best records R.E.M. have ever made.

On her American debut, this former U.K. record store clerk boasts an all star cast: executive producer John Legend, Will.i.am, Swizz Beatz, Kanye West and Cee—Lo, who duets on the Philly soul "Pretty Please (Love Me)." But those Yanks don't dilute Shine's regional feel--this West London homegirl's perspective is etched in her husky singing, fleet-tongued rapping and wised-up lyrics.

Even when she wrestles with Pharrell's abrupt stylistic changes or lets herself get absorbed in a Timberlake melody, Madonna still finds her way back on top.

Santogold ultimately sounds like her own damn movement.

Gibbard's indie-rock blues still plumb emotional depths with remarkable literary detail.

It documents the Stones on a historic roll, reveling in their mastery.

The songs are mythic Americana: With help from his bandmates, Petty creates a vivid cast of road dogs, strippers and junkies that conjures Gram Parsons' Bible-haunted Southerners and Robert Hunter's cosmic Westerners.

For listeners who like their music loud and fierce and pissed off at just about everything, there aren't too many better options than The Slip. Plus, the price is right.

Supported by an A-list cast including brother Rufus, Pete Townshend and Steely Dan keyboardist Donald Fagen, she's collected some impressive endorsements. But they're just a backdrop to a riveting one-woman show.

A lower-dosage Animal Collective, the Foxes stuff their free-form songs with rich, swirling melodies; billowing clouds of organs, tom-toms, bells and assorted stringed instruments cloak group vocals whose secular-gospel, suede-fringed precision owes plenty to Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Evil Urges explodes the band's sound with the same kind of creative leap that Wilco took on "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" and Radiohead took on "Kid A."

This double-disc set includes the first official release of Pacific’s follow-up Bambu, a harder-rocking but weaker set that Wilson never finished. Yet the reissue’s heart lies in tracks like “River Song” and the rollicking “What’s Wrong” — two raw, emotional highlights that are as moody as anything Brian ever composed.

Influence aside, what's just as impressive about this handsome anthology of barely legal rarities is how well tracks work as songs.

The band achieves a new unity in variety here, winding from near-glam romp and fireside-folk warmth to slow-climb grandeur with an attention to the repeated payoff in a sturdy hook and hum-along chorus.

The music is more rousing than ever; the power chords and hair-metal wanks spiked with singalong chants and new instrumental flavors.

Rarely is postmodern art such bloody good fun.

Taken as a whole, the album's first five songs stand among Beck's strongest work.

This is a sprawling, furious, deeply ambivalent theme album about institutional racism, the failures of black leadership and the pathologies and promise of early-21st-century African-American life.

Mellencamp teamed up with producer T Bone Burnett to create a whole new sound--a set of textured, atmospheric folk and country blues that adds up to one of the most compelling albums of Mellencamp's career.

So his return to political-minded material on Harps and Angels is reason to wrap yourself in the flag and cheer.

Along with the recent string of Rage-reunion gigs, this set shows the rapper-activist stepping back into the arena, and dude's on fire.

The boys' fantastic third album is steeped in the fuzzed-up guitars, three-part harmonies and cotton-candy choruses of Big Star and Cheap Trick.

Part of what makes The Rhumb Line so engaging is that it's ultimately life-affirming: It's not only a requiem for a lost friend, it's a tribute to the ones who stuck around through the worst times.

That Lucky Old Sun lacks the magnificent shock of SMiLE, Wilson's 2004 completion of that '67 album. But it has a natural, hopeful flow that leaves you warm all over.

Country has no shortage of wanna-be outlaw neotraditionalists, but Johnson's songs are crisper and more tuneful than most.

The songs skirt standard verse-chorus form; the best of them are just chord patterns that swirl and mutate with slow assurance.

With their new album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, the pair rejoin the rock conversation as if they'd never left.

The musicianship feels thrillingly live throughout, and nimble new bassist Robert Trujillo helps, even though he's mostly heard as a distant, ominous rumble.

The 28-year-old singer-songwriter says his latest collection of heartfelt love songs is a tribute to the Rat Pack's pressed-suit style, but it's actually a superb concept album about what a great boyfriend he can be.

Dear Science is a brilliant balancing act between pop aspiration and music-geek aesthetics.

With a supple tenor that glides up easily into Smokey Robinson territory, the former Tony! Toni! Toné! frontman has crafted a filler-free album that evokes classic Northern soul without sounding slavish.

There's plenty of storminess on her excellent second solo album, whose songs mix muscular guitar rock ('The Next Messiah') with soul balladeering ('Sing a Song for Them') and chamber pop ('Black Sand').

Throughout the album, Blitzen keep their songs highly tuneful, making Furr a breakthrough worthy of toasting with a microbrew, or several.

This isn't just B.B. King's best album in years, it's one of the strongest studio sets of his career, standing alongside classics such as "Singin' the Blues" and "Lucille."

The result is the best Pretenders record in years, a mix of galloping rockabilly and country & western songs, delivered in Hynde's trademark snarl.

Off With Their Heads is great British pop in the dynamic lethal-irony tradition of the mid-Sixties Kinks, the early Jam and, with that vintage-New Wave tone of Nick Baines' keyboards, XTC's 1979 album, "Drums and Wires."

While it shows that the 55-year-old barbed-wire country singer is wary of rock's trappings, Little Honey proves she's still crushed out on the music.

Molina pulls off the most out-there material with melodies nearly as accessible as conventional pop.

On Los Campesinos' second LP, he sings about puking in a Mexican restaurant and fucking up some dude's teeth, but he makes those lyrics sound almost uplifting thanks to a supercharged mix of violins, guitars and glockenspiel.

On their third album, the duo are as danceable as ever, but they've tiptoed away from straight musical pastiche, crudding up their blues boogie with low-fi fuzziness and oddball percussion.

Cardinology is a classic-rock record to the bone, nodding to influences that Adams has conjured before but never so well.

Live at Shea Stadium has its flaws: Devotees will rightly quibble with the set list, which is light on rarities and cuts from the Clash's brilliant debut. But the album captures a rousing, crystalline-sounding Clash show.

Like Vampire Weekend, it's indie rock getting its global groove on.

The first Guns n' Roses album of new, original songs since the first Bush administration is a great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record.

Her music mixes an almost impersonal professionalism--it's so rigorously crafted it sounds like it has been scientifically engineered in a hit factory--with confessions that are squirmingly intimate and true.

Where Reed once ham-acted the part of cuckolded savage Jim on the original, he sings here with both detachment and fatherly compassion.