Too exciting for the underground (maybe), too weird for the overground (hopefully not), he deserves to be heard by both.

Kingdom Come is Jay-Z at his least inspired, and, yes, that includes the R. Kelly collaborations.

Ultimately, that’s the problem: No one can really decide where to take these songs, so everyone takes them everywhere.

Figuring out where each part is originally from will be fun for the fanatics, but isn’t necessary to enjoy the mix.

Orphans may not have something for everyone, but what’s missing says more about the listener than the record.

Jesse Lacey... still conjures up arresting images but they rarely add up to coherent songs—and nothing consistently cuts to the bone like Deja Entendu’s highlights.

The sheer amount of misfires makes Songs for Christmas impossible to recommend to anyone but the devoted Sufjanite.

Rarely has a band created a world-space so monolithic yet provided a listener with so many easy routes to the interior.

While Ys is ridiculously overwritten, over-performed and self-contained, her fables always sublimate into the hot fog of real emotions just before they calcify.

Its artistic detours are even more jarring than those of Worlds Apart. The good news is that its quality is far less erratic. The bad news is the reason why: it's almost uniformly awful.

For the most part Game sounds desperate, raw, and ravenously hungry.

The biggest problem might be Rice’s vocal technique. On O, he had a tendency to endearingly strain for notes he couldn’t reach. Now, it sounds like he’s purposefully written songs to allow him to overextend his thin voice.

His lyrics may be doggedly unspecific, but ear-worming hooks and top-shelf instrumentation largely rectify that shortcoming.

Get Evens is the aural embodiment of the sublimated rage of their debut. Though the instrumentation is still spare, it's meatier and more aggressive.

This is a lovingly crafted compilation that not only represents the raw live power of PJ Harvey but also tips a cap to John Peel and the raw power his sessions had on performers.

An irritating listen.

When the Deftones are successful, they seem to slow down time, expanding on floating moments of doubt and mystery. When they’re not busy getting bogged down in all those mini-moments, dragging the album through dread patches of sluggishness that is.

It's the same McKay on Pretty Little Head. Still the same pretensions, still the same confusions, still the same ability to overcome her own self-imposed handicaps to put out an absolute killer of an album.

The songs are still long, the rhythms are still organic, and in general Isis still sounds like Isis.

This is a goofy record of bubblegum punk, with Queen lapping at its edges and enough good tracks to justify the smattering of empty screamfests.

Threes is their most average album yet, sounding similar to their two previous full-lengths but lacking the confrontational loudness of Wiretap Scars or the precision of Porcelain.

It has some nice tracks, some experiments and more than a few keepers, and, yes, it’s almost exclusively a fan-only proposition.

The Walkmen’s version is difficult to recommend to anyone unfamiliar with Nilsson and Lennon’s album.

One of the better American rock albums of this year.

There’s no such dirty, beautiful reality on his new album, just grand empty gestures backed by production polish and symphonic schmaltz.

Press Play is like an episode of My Super Sweet 16: though lavishly decorated and probably an honor to be invited to, there's a megalomaniacal presence that ensures the whole party is about glorification of ego rather than actual fun.

And though the album sags a little towards the end, with a few shorter instrumental numbers, it’s still an invigorating journey, a caravan of cavorting musicians, careening through the countryside, stopping only to play festivals and funerals.

Its unbearable tendencies are avoidable because they're overshadowed by bursts of creativity.