Pinkerton became a cult classic, all raw guitars and self-loathing wit - it's the In Utero of sexual frustration.

A serious, ridiculously ambitious punk album. [14 Oct 2004, p.100]

Greatest protest album ever made? Most stirring soul-music symphony? Yes and yes. And then some.

The real revelations are recordings that part the curtains on the making of Rumours, like Christine McVie's solo-piano-demo rendition of "Songbird."

Reminds us that, for all of Simon's genius with tunes and lyrics, it's his rhythmic searching and sophistication that sets him apart.

It's looser and messier than Sgt. Pepper and, one suspects, always would have been. But its sui generis Americanism counterbalances its paucity of classic pop songs.

Lynn and White weren't straining to make history, just a damn good Loretta Lynn album. But it sure sounds classic anyway.

Captures Zep in prime swagger.

Barring the discovery of more golden eggs, the four CDs of Keep an Eye on the Sky are the last word on Big Star's first, ultimately glorious lifetime.

There is a moment in this five-CD ocean of music when you agree with its creator, the Beach Boys composer-producer Brian Wilson, that the greatest pop album ever made is still within reach.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is his most maniacally inspired music yet, coasting on heroic levels of dementia, pimping on top of Mount Olympus.

They perfected the genre moves: bracing attack, two-guitar blurs of dissonance and beauty, a sympathetic barker wringing emotion from lyrics about the insular rock scene and girls who stalked it.

This edition has 12 outtakes, most of which have been hoarded on bootlegs by Stones fanatics for years. Some of the bonus tracks are nearly as hot as the originals.

The remarkable achievement of Love and Theft is that Dylan makes the past sound as strange, haunted and alluring as the future...

The bonus material is not essential listening, but since U2 rarely pull back the curtain on their creative process, it's fascinating to hear this rough draft of history.

The alternate takes are all lesser versions interspersed with studio chatter and other audio vérité--the sound of a band enjoying its work, unaware its time was nearly up.

The sound quality is astonishing.

This reissue bonanza shows the Nineties' premier indie band turning reflective and joyfully screwing around at the same time.

This sumptuous birthday celebration of America's greatest folk singer is really a present to us: two CDs of his greatest songs and recordings, mostly from the mid-1940s, and a disc of illuminating rarities, including what is thought to be Guthrie's first studio session in 1939.

Just as exuberant is the part of Disc Two dominated by the jazz-infused playing of pianist Rubén González, whose spiraling solos bring roars from the crowd.

It's built for fanatics, yet the goods could make a fanatic out of anyone.

It is a glorious thing to hear. It will be one of the best things you hear all year.

Finally, the third and most brutal album from these Detroit legends gets both the rawness and the power it deserves.

It rings true to one man's unshakable vision.

Quadrophenia, as delivered the first time, is still one of his, and the Who's, greatest albums--and the better opera.

This five-CD box set features the band's three great studio albums, plus terrific bonus tracks and dub versions, and a slew of live recordings in which the Beat unleash their dance-floor fury and their Thatcher-era protest politics.

The Live Anthology redresses that wrong with a panoramic picture of the Heartbreakers' indestructible groove.

His third straight masterwork. [7 Sep 2006, p.99]

It's a museum piece, a record that merits a display in the Smithsonian.

Rarely does an act so flatteringly curate its own brilliance.

Might be the most oddly beautiful, psychedelic and ambitious [album] of the year. [21 Sep 2006, p.84]

His album of Waits' penned-and-produced songs may be the masterwork of Hammond's long career, as well as further testament to Waits' unique genius.

All of it rocks; none of it sounds like any other band on earth; it delivers an emotional punch that proves all other rock stars owe us an apology.

Weird, playful, unclassifiable, sexy, brilliantly addictive.

Kala strikes deep. There's a resolute sarcasm, a weariness and defiant determination, a sense of pleasure carved out of work--articulated by the lyrics, embodied by the music.

Rage Against the Machine's 1992 debut is a grenade that keeps exploding.... Remastered to museum-clean standards, the reissued album comes with DVDs of holy-shit live shows and music videos, plus demos that prove just how down and detailed the group had every song (even if Morello still couldn't resist changing solos).

Chronological evenhandedness short-shrifts their vaunted 1980s but shows that their confused past 15 years did produce some Georgia peaches.

Ram sounds ahead of its time.

In somebody else's defiance of death, we in the audience get an intense affirmation of life, not to mention some of the best jokes in rock & roll history.

Tell Tale Signs makes plain that Dylan knows the caprices of the world he lives in, now more than ever.

It comes down to the songs, and these are the most intense he's ever written, one instant classic after another.

Austin's favorite trio dishes out eleven helpings of diverse alt-pop on what may wind up being the finest record of its ilk all year. Charged by song sculptor/frontman Britt Daniel, this start-to-finish triumph never underachieves even if it has an effortless aura at times.

Late Registration is an undeniable triumph, packed front to back, so expansive it makes the debut sound like a rough draft.

Like the other two [albums], it's speaker-blowingly brilliant. [11 Aug 2005, p.70]

The lyrics on Old Ideas reach for the stark power of prayers, hymns and religious riddles.

Immersion is a good way to characterize the grip and whirl of construction recounted on the two CDs of demos in this seven-disc box, which includes a previously released recording of the 1980-81 stage show.

This isn't a mixtape, it's a suite of songs, paced and sequenced for maxaqimum impact.

Vampire Weekend have gotten better at just about everything they do.

[Tempest is] a thing to behold.

Blunderbuss gets stranger and more fascinating the closer you listen.

There isn't a weak song on Money; most of them are unforgettable.

Even for him, though, The Rising, with its bold thematic concentration and penetrating emotional focus, is a singular triumph.

As a 50th-anniversary souvenir, the Stones have assembled a three-disc, 50-track compilation that is the best and most comprehensive collection of the band's high points available.

This three-disc remastered Ya-Ya's includes the original in all its gritty glory. Disc Two is a five-song EP from the same shows, with acoustic performances--"Prodigal Son" and "You Gotta Move"--from Richards (playing a resonator guitar) and Jagger. The third disc is an unexpected treat: blistering sets by openers B.B. King plus Ike and Tina Turner (doing an outrageously steamy take on Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You Too Long").

If you happen to be a rock band, and you don't happen to be either of the White Stripes, it so sucks to be you right now.

Devils and Dust is also as immediate and troubling as this morning's paper.

A perfect treasure of soft, spangled woe sung with a heavy open heart.... It's the best album Beck has ever made.

Why anybody would choose to spend their life without a copy of This Is Not a Test! is a mystery.

On Graduation, West tries hard to address the problems on his first two albums, and succeeds: The new disc is tighter than "Late Registration" (fifty-one minutes long), with no skits (thank heavens) and less ornate production.

The most despairing, confrontational and musically turbulent album Bruce Springsteen has ever made.

There are bum notes (musicians were high, burnt or both) and bumpy mixes (recording conditions were just shy of wartime). But the result, combined with the full-length performances in the Woodstock Experience packages, is the most comprehensive and satisfying account so far of the main reason why Yasgur's acres became an instant city of freaks, including me: the music.

All he [Malkmus] wants to do is surrender to the lightheaded rush of the music, and the results are downright glorious.

On The Union, produced by T Bone Burnett, John and Russell share the resurrection. Each goes back to what he first did best. Then they do it together.

There are jailhouse weepers, lullabies and gallows humor like "Five Minutes to Live" – a jaw-dropping testament to the depth of the man's songbook.

Magic is, in one way, the most openly nostalgic record Springsteen has ever made.

If this combination of big-name backers, undeniable skills, radio-ready tracks and a marketable thug persona make Get Rich or Die Tryin' a sure-shot smash hit, it also makes it a great record.

The album's producer, Gil Norton (whose crescendos for the Pixies were an alternative-rock cornerstone), has subtly filled out the sound of the Patti Smith Group without losing its handmade, jamming essence. Guitar tones resonate through the mix, and new lines snake through what used to be hollow space.

A Bigger Bang is just a straight-up, damn fine Rolling Stones album, with no qualifiers or apologies necessary for the first time in a few decades.

This record demands a room full of quiet and your undivided attention. Listen to it any other way and you may be disappointed, even bored, by it. And that will be your hard luck, because Silver and Gold is Neil Young at his hushed, acoustic best: simple, romantic, direct.

This is a record of breathtaking, eccentric opulence.

He is still singing about singing, all over No Line on the Horizon, U2's first album in nearly five years and their best, in its textural exploration and tenacious melodic grip, since 1991's "Achtung Baby."

Working on a Dream is the richest of the three great rock albums Springsteen has made this decade with the E Street Band--and moment for moment, song for song, there are more musical surprises than on any Bruce album you could name.

Produced by Ken Nelson, who was also responsible for Badly Drawn Boy's Bewilderbeast, Quiet Is the New Loud is equally praiseworthy, as the band conjures up the spirit of Nick Drake with eerie precision.

To the 5 Boroughs is an exciting, astonishing balancing act: fast, funny and sobering.

21st Century Breakdown is even better, so masterful and confident it makes Idiot seem like a warm-up.