Yes, of course, it’s a total homage to his favorite music—but it’s an extraordinarily moving one, both emotionally and physically.

Yes, this may well be the best of the Eels, his greatest achievement to date, because he reaches so far on nearly every track, and yet still finds something to grab on to.

Parades, both restrained and wildly dramatic, gently touching and warmly enveloping, is not a record that sits comfortably with convenient labels.

Right now Elbow are hitting an emotional pitch no one else is managing; one more personal and more potent than those that might be considered their competition.

Perhaps less transcendent, The Milk of Human Kindness may ultimately prove more enjoyable.

Fishscale intermingles skewed narratives, expert guest choices, exquisitely conflicting production, and a concept and focus—the drug trade is the near exclusive subject mater—that, while somewhat reductive in scope, sharpens the album into an immense, furious, and focused album.

Building on his unassuming alternative icon status, this great debut (under his own name) is sure to bring him that bit nearer to the awareness of the mainstream.

A richly executed and textural record—one of the best guitar-based albums of 2007 thus far.

A masterful record.

This is one of the most forward-thinking “rock” albums to come down the pike in some time, playing with the genre in both form and function while showing off Reznor’s ridiculous resevoir of ideas in fine fashion.

The result is in some ways immensely pleasing (at its best the quality here is easily the equal of the songs from the proper album), but at seventeen songs and a full hour in length Oh You're So Silent Jens suffers a bit, predictably, from too much of a good thing.

It’s the collage of styles that distinguishes this album: Cuban and Indian flourishes, Eisenhower-era doo-wop, the smoky Stax groove, bucolic British trad-folk, the eccentricities of American folk, of both the Dust Bowl troubadours and the Vietnam flower-children.

Easily her finest effort since Ray of Light.

The songs here are superb, the arrangements and production nearly perfect, and Jackson’s singing is the best of his career.

This is called showing the kids how it's done--and doing it.

Human Animal comes off as a less directly brutal assault than its predecessor. It sounds a hell of a lot better cranked to ten, though, its contours more explicit, the sounds sharpened to a steely point.

Writer’s Block has announced the renaissance of both pop music and love.

Just Like You shows and proves unquestionably that Cole’s capable of some seriously rich, powerful art.

The finest album of the White Stripes’ career.

45:33 works both as exercise-soundtrack and discopunk-odyssey because James Murphy understands how to make people move on a basic, physical level. [Review of UK release]

The disc succeeds by merging a unity of sounds with a complex variety of emotions.

His best [album] yet, his most fully-formed, emotionally engaging and sonically rewarding.

Barnes has created some utterly brilliant compositions, captured a perfect blend of melodic energy and sincerity while never sacrificing catchiness, and has used both achievements to create one of this year’s most cathartically fun albums.

Sometimes it does sound like The First Ever Country Record On Matador, too tied down to ideas of what country records are supposed to sound like.... And then Laura looks you in the eyes and you realise that really, you’re being a bit of a twit. She’s still there, the same as she ever was. Her surroundings have just got a bit grander.

On On My Way To Absence Jurado provides far more satisfying moments than dubious ones, and that’s no small feat when trafficking in the kind of bottom of the barrel human emotion that Jurado has made his trademark.

There are gimmicks, but there’s musical merit, and genuine feeling to match the calculated charm.

Out Of Season is both a remarkable record of beautiful music, and an outstanding, awe-inspiring performance inducing near-irresistible feelings and sensations. This album is a sublime example of the art of the singer, and of the art of music.

La Forêt has the sort of courage-minus-contrivance that is exceedingly (and ironically) rare in music of its dramatic and thematic ilk.