Mixing the lawlessness of Hank Williams with the Gypsy fervor of Gogol Bordello, the band's second album is a scrappy, vaguely deranged, country-punk mélange that goes down like an impeccably mixed mint julep: sweet until it burns.

Sky eschews the occasional decade-hopscotching of 2007's Traffic and Weather, reaching a new, raw sincerity and cohesiveness.

Beans' avalanche of verbiage can obscure his nuances, but a cast of collaborators--disco evangelist In Flagranti, electro-hop eccentric Tobacco, psychedelic beat guru Four Tet, even Interpol's Sam Fogarino--burnish his rhyme schemes into high-tech funk.

Thanks to a volatile mix of the uplifting and gloomy--there's a bitter murder tale ("Dust Bowl Dance") and lingering visions of death ("Timshel")--Sigh No More transfixes.

Essentially a synthesis of the various phases of the band's career. [Jul 2006, p.85]

After 2006's acclaimed debut, Hello Master, this Montreal metal foursome had to cut through a mass of red tape before Fire, their long-gestating follow-up, could get a U.S. release date. Someone should be fired for the delay, because this baby burns.

All of these lyrical open wounds could be hard to stomach if not for the salve that Emre Turkmen and Mikey Goldsworthy’s head-spinning instrumentals provide.

His agile attack still lacks Jigga's precision, 50's swagger, or Kanye's cocky confessionalism. [Jan 2006, p.92]

All We Are can be a somewhat tough album to get a grip on, because it invites musical styles that seem to be set in opposition to one another to find chemistry, resulting in a genre that can really only be described in apparently oxymoronic hybrid terms like "discogaze" or "slowfunk."

Pluto wears that influence loosely, without ever feeling formally indebted to it.

For about 17 minutes, the duo's third album comes terrifyingly close to brilliance. [Aug 2003, p.114]

Sure, there's hurt everywhere, but Carrabba sticks with the pain he knows. [Nov 2007, p.121]

Recorded at Jamaica's Tuff Gong studios, the record's strongest asset is making things that shouldn't work together sound natural.

While occasionally meandering or drifting into tempests of digital noise, Herren focuses on a path of rapturous melancholy.

Disc two works better in theory than fact, compiling disparate song fragments into a single 33-minute mixtape-inspired track, but the group's radiant delight in pure sound is undimmed.

Aside from "Lovealot," she proudly proclaims her intentions as a first-world pop star, de-emphasizing found collage and "third-world democracy" for melodic sway and punky bluster.

Though it lacks the electrifying newness of the Sung Tongs era, Eucalyptus is nonetheless a success. It is a patient, reflective, and decidedly low-key work, one that seems content to thrum along in its own corner of the universe without much regard for whether anyone’s there to receive its generous gifts.

A quick dip into glitch seems like a novice move, but all that slide guitar and glockenspiel give Sea of Bees a seasoned sorrow.

On Head First, the singer's bandmate-producer Will Gregory creates a pitch-perfect neon-lit '80s wonderland with Hi-NRG bass lines and plenty of that fat synth sound made famous by Van Halen's "Jump."

The result: an album exuding wall-punching energy, ugly noise, and raging nostalgia for stale bong water and sunburn.

None of this will make Devin a star anytime soon, but that's less his fault than it is everyone else's. [Nov 2008, p.90]

Face Control's programmed electronics, in fact, ring deeply human, and Boeckner's tortured vocals express shared experience rather than alienation.

While the production's scope doesn't quite fit Chikita Violenta's knack for scrappy Superchunk-style guitar pop, the busy shimmer usually complements the songs' energy instead of burying it.

Watson gives Nero's robotic skronk a rare injection of humanity, and the U.K. producers are smart enough to build most of their debut full-length around her husky voice.

Ideal for anyone who finds Cypress Hill too sober.

[Sinatra's] is a light, ductile weirdness, and nearly all the contributing acolytes here play to it well. [Jan 2005, p.96]

He takes Lambs Anger's used parts and models them compressing keyboard sounds and looped samples into a sci-fi party mix. [Feb 2009, p.82]

The third album (and first for a major) from this Boston-born, Mississippi- and Chicago-bred singer-guitarist is bound to inspire Sam Cooke comparisons, but Get It just as frequently stirs up Jackson 5 dance fever.