A terrific and long-overdue reissue that's sure to satiate established fans as well as the new converts it hopes to earn.

If Boy In Da Corner marks the beginning of distinctly British hip-hop, the genre's standards are already impressively high.

Elephant isn't one of those albums that'll change your life, or your tastes, or even the face of your music collection -- it's just a strong and consistent collection of powerful rock songs.

The beats aren't as strong here as they were on his debut, so Skinner lives and dies by his delivery. It's a clear sign of his ability that even in the album opener, when the tempo is strange and the backing track is kind of dull, you feel compelled to listen because you want to know what he's saying.

The only thing keeping Is This It from being absolutely storming is the questionable production work of Gordon Raphael, whose primordial approach lacks the necessary punch to really bring these tunes to life.

An expansive album that ultimately recycles itself.

Though it sounds strange at first, Skinner's delivery is so absorbing that the accent issue will be an afterthought before opener "Turn the Page" has ended.

I defy you to find a more elegantly shambolic, soulfully homespun and, indeed, heartfelt album than this.

Listening to Funeral takes a bit of patience. With most of the songs, the payoff doesn't come right away; in some cases, it sneaks up on you after several spins.

The first My Morning Jacket whose songs reach the heights to which James's voice aspires.

Rounds contains a new underlying sonic scrape that is brisk and windy and distinctly more dynamic than Hebden's previous, more placid outings, but the signature dense soul of his work is the same.

The Notwist can sculpt more emotional sounds and music into a compact and cutting four minutes than most can do in a career.

The bottom line is that QOTSA turns in another genre-demolishing, hard-as-titanium album in Songs for the Deaf. This is not your father's metal. It's better.

Yours, Mine, and Ours is a fantastic album. In fact, it's one of the best things I've heard so far this year. On the other hand, I can count at least three other albums that bear the Joe Pernice stamp that are better than this.

The Shins' second effort sparkles with a clarity that was not always evident on their debut and energizes with a spark and an enthusiasm that previously seemed forced.

There are no breathers in Hypermagic Mountain. There are only a series of knuckle sandwiches in the form of throbbing, distorting, gesticulating low-end ear bleeders.

It takes Ta Det Lungt a while to lay down its grooves in your head, but once it does, they stay there.

The music is just as pure and personal and unintermediated as before, but it sounds better in every conceivable way.

It's simply wonderful -- bristling with pop masterpieces large and small, and reassuringly unburdened by Smith's deep-seated malaise.

The least interesting, least engaging Sleater-Kinney album ever.

The complexity and depth of the songs has increased; the band sounds less like they're trying to channel The Pixies, and more like they're reaching toward the sublime.

Abattoir/Orpheus is not as immediate as some of Cave's previous triumphs, but you'll take pleasure in unearthing new sentiments and innuendo within its walls.

I Am a Bird Now is a sweet, sumptuous brace of noir-laced cabaret pop, distinctly out of step with just about every other album released this year.

At first listen, it's thrilling, but not quite the statement we were made to believe would shift the world's axis by its very existence. The best thing to do is clear your mind of hype and expectations, and listen to this record -- this fun, addictive, thoroughly entertaining record -- again and again.

A powerful masterpiece of an album.

While The Argument may not be as bracing as their groundbreaking work from a decade ago, it crystallizes the strengths of four musicians hitting every mark.

Dizzee's voice still sounds like a helium-inflected hiccup, and the beats still sound like they were recorded directly from a Nintendo, if not an Atari.

Elegant, downbeat orchestral pop songs.

While my inclination is to recommend A Feather in the Engine to everyone without reservation, the disc is actually best suited to more advanced listeners -- that is, those of you for whom sing-along pop songs are not a prerequisite for enjoying an album.

This is a terrifically exciting debut, imbued with a zest, energy and songwriting flair that warrants -- perhaps even commands -- some sort of attention.

The sheer scope of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is so utterly breathtaking that repeat airings only reinforce its stunning songcraft and otherworldly sonic splendor.

Imagine a troupe of gloomy cow-punks careening down a thundering Hawaiian pipeline and you've got a bead on their wildly divergent sound.

The Creek Drank the Cradle is very surreal, mythical, haunting; it creates a mood of warmth and comfort, and makes me feel as if I've been transported to another, far more peaceful plane of existence.

Seven Swans plays like a stripped-down, less thematic counterpart to its predecessor. It's also strong enough in its own right to keep fans arguing for months over which album is better.

As mindlessly captivating an album as you're likely to hear all year.

Mass Romantic more than repays any musical debt owed by the good people of Canada. In fact, it’s going to take some pretty strong efforts by America's best and brightest to match The New Pornographers' achievements here.

Herren takes what amounts to a series of completely artificial electronic noises and whips them into one of the most soulful, funky, relentlessly compelling albums since the Neptunes' last outing.

It’s quite a feat to create an album that is not only haunting, but uncompromisingly beautiful and utterly serene.

Separation Sunday stands a chance of being one of 2005's true classics.

A monster of an achievement.

The Decline of British Sea Power is a record you'll probably tell your friends about, but it won't make you into a fervent, foamy-mouthed convert -- at least, not unless you're in a suitably receptive mood and play the record at its optimum volume...which, in case you wondered, means as loud as possible.

Not just for followers, Minimum-Maximum is perfect for the old-school, drawing a new crowd of robot poppers and maybe convert a few disbelievers.

This is one of those rare albums where every single track is a keeper and killer hooks abound.

Welcome Interstate Managers is a watershed accomplishment, surpassing the band's debut in terms of whimsical pop songcraft, lyrical astuteness and blind melodic ambition.

It took ages to arrive, but LCD Soundsystem isn't the album you've been waiting for -- it's far, far better.

Although not every track here is of the highest quality, all sixteen tracks are woven together expertly.

As beautiful as much of the album is, it all starts to blend together after a while.

Make no mistake about it, The White Stripes are the real deal, and if they can continue to kick out the jams as they do on White Blood Cells, everyone else would be well advised to get the fuck out of their way.

In a hip-hop world ruled by clichéd production and watered-down beats, a sound so simultaneously funky and strange is, to say the least, a welcome change.

Its ten tracks wend their way through a forest of oblique metaphors, kaleidoscopically fractured images and alt-country instrumentation, their path lit only by the wounding fragility of Orth's voice.

It's a good-natured and engaging mix of subtle sample manipulation, music concrete, downtempo dance beats and pop experiments.

It isn't identical to Mass Romantic or Electric Version, but it differs from them in ways that probably could have been predicted, modeled and simulated.

Though the group largely downplays their skull-splitting excesses, their songs resonate with a fury that a lifetime worth of broken power-chords couldn't match.

Source Tags and Codes is phenomenal. It's one of those albums that starts the listener on a seeminlgly unsustainable high note, and uses that as a launching point.

As entertainment, Tenacious D succeeds surprisingly well -- for the first few listens.... The only long-term replay value you'll get from this record will come from playing it for friends who haven't heard it.

The Real New Fall LP is as solid and interesting as anything the group has released in the last ten years.

His most compelling, not to mention complete, work to date.

Their most musically adventurous yet artistically grounded record to date.

Nastasia's gaze is still directed inwards, obsessed with the vivid minute imagery of relationships and an increasing dark streak -- a still-blackening air.

The Wrens experiment with sounds and textures you don't normally hear in so-called "rock" records, but unlike many groups, they manage to do this in a way that attracts attention without upstaging the actual music. And the songwriting just keeps getting better; there isn't a lackluster track in the bunch.

Though not as darkly elegant as Permutation, Supermodified is still rife with sophisticated Brazilian lounge-jazz samples and unpredictable drum'n'bass skitterings, this time augmented with more overt nods to hip-hop and Aphex Twin-style sympho-electronica.

The album retains the trademark layered sound of earlier work, the dueling guitars, the wailing vocals, the powerfully musical drumming, yet it plunges into much darker territory than before.

There are very few artists who could pick up where they left off after ten years, or even five. To do this after half a lifetime is extraordinary.

It probably won't sway rock and roll, and it most likely won't change your life, but it's a solid disc from a consistent band who haven't let their major-label affiliation change them.

Geogaddi isn't a classic.... Disappointing, however, it is not.

If he's not this generation's most raggedly refined songwriting presence, then he's certainly in the top ten percent of his class -- a bona fide show-stopping tunesmith on a par with giants Elliott Smith, Ron Sexsmith and Richard Davies.

But as wonderful as parts of Old Ramon are, the spaces between the high points are at times, less than impressive.

This is great stuff, and a significant advance over both of Comets on Fire's previous albums.

This time out, Moby manages to establish himself not only as a talented multi-instrumentalist and genre-jumper, but as someone who can write interesting songs in a variety of genres -- a point he's missed in the past.

The question is not whether Medúlla is brilliant; insofar as this can be objectively asserted, it most certainly is. The question is really, Do you like Björk? Do you like her a lot? Obviously, a Björk a capella album is going to be lost on you if you never really liked her vocal style in the first place.

Kids, parents and nerdy long-time fans alike can take something out of this.

It's a languid and elaborate affair -- a throbbing amalgamation of wiry, Au Pairsian art-funk, steely Gang of Four resolve and Cabaret Voltaire-inflected industrial howl.

Our Endless Numbered Days won't knock you off your seat with ribald lyrics or rambunctious riffs, but its confident, measured chords and precise tones will hold your attention long after they've grabbed it.

Picks up, astonishingly, exactly where the band left off, not exactly retracing old paths but branching off of them into new and exciting vistas.

Again raises the standard for thoughtful, well-crafted pop.

This is a wonderful album -- and a significant advance over the excellent Sung Tongs.

Their expanded sound, with its explosions of noise and romantic swells, deserves reconsideration by fans and skeptics alike.

Like waking up one morning to discover you suddenly like coffee, this is one of those albums that feels natural; the discord and the overwrought weepiness, the experimentalism and the simplicity -- everything works. It fits.

A perfect synthesis of modern studio manipulation and old-time pop craftsmanship, shattering all notions of what pop music can, or for that matter, should be.

Ghosts of the Great Highway easily ranks among the very best of Kozelek's dense discography, and it seems fair to suggest that it will become the measuring stick against which any future non-Red House Painters material is compared.

It seamlessly combines the choicest bits and bobbles of other acts into an overwhelming patchwork of sound and fury, but in the process, the band occasionally loses sight of their own identity.

Yoko is a much, much darker record than anything else in Beulah's canon.

Call it the exclamation point on Gibbard's stratospheric year.

If you can't quite muster truly fervid enthusiasm for Send, it's probably due, in some part, to the matter-of-factness of its presentation. There is much here to be excited about, but carefully cultivated detachment seems to be Wire's preferred modus operandi.

Expansively orchestrated, Nixon ultimately comes off as beautiful but slightly disturbing...

Whether the band is shakin' its collective art-rock ass to syncopated beats or barreling through treble-infused dueling guitar throwdowns, there's never a dull moment here.

Essentially, you get one disc on which Godspeed You Black Emperor tinkers with their sound a little bit, and one on which they deliver exactly what you've been expecting. That's a good mix.

It's rare that a band can recreate such a broad measure of emotions with such a soft palette.

Secret Wars is more than a good album. It's an incredible experience, taking you out of your daily life into a mysterious and mind-changing space.

While the nervous energy that has always been a key ingredient of the group’s sound (on record and otherwise) remains firmly intact, a newfound sense of responsibility and road-worn weariness occasionally rears its head, putting a bit of a damper on this otherwise upbeat record.

No one else is making literate, story-based pop this good.

Your senses will be sorely disappointed.

It's Golightly's most genuine, dark-struttin' My Generation-type record to date.

The group has created an album filled not only with the timeless pop hooks you have come to expect but with the anthemic swagger that is the hallmark of many of the great rock recordings of the last 30 years.

Apologies to the Queen Mary is almost an hour long, and there are certainly portions of it that aren't essential... but it's difficult to see where any fat could have been cut, as each track has its own fractured beauty.

Yes, Lali Puna are taking the Radiohead Route. Not just thematically, either: the tone and ambience of Faking the Books is as detached and cold as Amnesiac was, though more straightforward: there are more "straight" guitars and "actual" drums on this album.

Imagine a less sardonic John Wesley Harding, prone to occasional bouts of husky, Peter Gabriel-style vocal sincerity, and you'll have the basic idea.