[Co-producer Mirwais Ahmadzai's] deft touch for crafting disarmingly warm songs out of synthetic tools gives Music a rich, human quality that nicely underscores Madonna's quietly personal -- if purposefully vague -- lyrics.... it's the music that ultimately sucks us into Music.

Edited and mixed with Sandman's oversight prior to his death, Bootleg: Detroit was taped by a Morphine fan at the band's March 3, 1994, show at Detroit's St. Andrew's Hall, capturing the band and its hyper-aware fans at the height of pleasure.

Somewhat surprisingly, for a band that hasn't toured much in its 12-year career, Live is full of edge-to-edge dynamite performances dating from 1990 to 1996.

That Sylvian has managed to fashion his extensive career into a fulfilling double disc is impressive enough. But the fact he manages to do so while still coming off as a vibrant, vital artist -- some 22 years after making his recorded debut -- is what makes Everything and Nothing especially exquisite.

Not only does every song here work beautifully on its own, but the recording listens cohesively front to back, from the frosty chime of "Unsound" to the enchanting blues of the closing "Healer."

If one wanted to quibble, one could say that the Cash-Rubin collaboration is starting to feel just a little formulaic.... yet Cash continually surprises with his ability to completely inhabit material by writers much younger than him.

Without a doubt one of the best pop records of the year.

Now, as the group starts its third decade, U2 has found what it's looking for is good music, songs that ring with melody and hooks -- and meaning -- while still weaving in some of the ambient and electronic textures it explored on releases such as Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop. The result is a richly crafted and filler-free pop album on which each song sounds like an individual work, calling to mind mid-period Beatles titles such as Rubber Soul.

The biggest surprise here is Cave's singing. Forsaking the bluesy moans and wails of older works like The First Born Is Dead and Kicking Against the Pricks, he pushes his voice in new directions...

An album of stunning acoustic folk-blues... Hiatt is at his absolute sharpest in terms of songwriting, and the arrangements, most often just guitar, bass, and mandolin or a second guitar, are fully fleshed out and never feel spare or slight.

Though not much older than Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, Nelly Furtado is an artist whose music stands head and shoulders above the manufactured pop pap that rules the charts right now.

Peppy but relaxing chill-out tracks as sweet, shiny, and peculiar as its memorable moniker.

Without the thundering drums and over-amped testosterone of the originals, the songs are revealed as the beautiful blues-based writings they in fact are.

An outrageously accomplished and daring album-

But as the songs blow by like so much sonic shrapnel, Rancid runs the risk of trying to say too much too quickly and losing its voice amid the ranting, raging blur.

While Lovers Rock is not any sort of departure from the quiet ballads that marked the group's first three albums, there is an element of freshness that aligns Sade with the current electronic music insurgence while still maintaining a distinctly analog outlook on love's foibles.

It's smartly crafted black comedy from hip-hop's greatest white MC, a strong storyteller and a master of the metaphor, who produces staggeringly popular music that's mostly meant to be enjoyed with both a pained grimace and a smirk.

Supposedly split into two themes, it turns out that the music throughout is interchangeable; any track could have appeared on either CD.

As always, the acoustic pop tracks remain the Go-Between's most effective.... It's clear that the band's heyday, those heady times that supplied fans with a surfeit of astonishingly good pop songs... are over, but there's also no doubt that McLennan and Forster can still turn out quality goods.

Beenie Man's smooth adaptability works against him, as the 17 tracks almost inevitably contain a few less than stellar ones. For the most part, however, Art and Life has more good than bad.

Everything, Everything is a solid live album, and a great introduction to the music of Underworld, even if its most transcendent moments prove to be all too fleeting.

Moves with a quick tempo that whips through the album's 15 songs and assorted skits.... There's something innately joyous about many of the group's songs, whether it's how the J5 MCs play verbal double-dutch over the pulsating "Jurass Finish First" or the assembly of sampled snippets that drive the playground anthem "Monkey Bars."

A mesmerizing 13-track suite that ebbs and flows with a continuous hallucinatory lushness from start to finish.

Yet for all its adrenaline-rush thrills, the RFTC sound is also surprisingly complex. Like Phil Spector's '60s pop masterpieces for The Ronettes and Righteous Brothers, the sonic density of Group Sounds is actually composed of virtuoso performances and subtle nuances...

Some of the strangest lyrical fodder ever to inhabit radio-ready fare.

The lyricism is, as always, witty, wry, and full of cleverly deployed twists, along with literary and cultural allusions and smart metaphors...

Familiar-sounding as these songs may be, they function as well as any blend of jazz and rock...

The disc evokes both the heartbreak and the buoyancy of bands like Big Star and Teenage Fanclub.