Freed from slick production, Clark plays to his many strengths.

It's a star-studded epitaph of hits and misses.

Despite the stylistic twists and turns, that it all holds together as an LP is largely due to Fair's familiar nasal, wide-eyed vocals.

With Ndegeocello, Ruthie Foster finds her rhythm, and more importantly, an album steeped in purpose both personal and political.

Goatwhore channels every evil impulse of its blackened death thrash into Constricting Rage of the Merciless, sixth LP of ill intent.

Uniquely imaginative, the duo's efforts will seduce like-minded forward-thinkers, but High Life will be too ostensibly weird to be widely digested.

It's a smörgåsbord of carefully culled influence, one that Krell indulges in with gusto.

Decades from now, Petty people will wonder at how a modest marvel like Hypnotic Eye aged into a late-career riff rocket.

Her debut long-player LP1 is proof that talent can only thrive in the shadows for so long.

The dolorous gloom of Foundations of Burden should be oppressive, but Pallbearer turns pain into beauty.

Billy Joe Shaver, 74, came into this world rough around the edges, so his songwriting resonates with unmatched autobiographical intensity and Long in the Tooth follows suit. Contrary to the album title, he ain't headed for pasture anytime soon.

[A] meticulously compiling fan favorites, deep cuts, rarities, and alternate versions from that 40 years' worth of work. There's hardly a bad track in the bunch.

The craggy acoustic set sandwiched between electric workouts (metallic "Black Queen") counts off the hits ("Only Love Can Break Your Heart," "Guinevere," "Teach Your Children"), never better than Nash's breathtaking piano rendition of "Our House" at Wembley. Glimpse it on the rather short-shift, bootleg quality 40-minute DVD, where the foursome's harmonies cut through the cynicism of the times like a dove finally vanquishing the hawk.

The heiress-turned-songwriter spins tragic tales that further an intrigue somehow only mounting, yet they're just dubious enough to keep any artistic credibility at a cautious arm's length and thus perpetuate her core polarity.

The Both brings refreshing energy to a pair of catalogs whose unlikely intersection succeeds superbly.

Analog tape thickens America's best punk band into an upward curve on its third LP.

They Want My Soul returns Spoon to rare form.

With its durable theme and shambling demeanor, United States makes a different kind of sense with each successive spin. It's adult rock music in the best sense of the oxymoron.

Throughout, there's a sense that the band lives to let it all hang out--beg, scream, and shout.

Sneer away, jaded hipster. All you're missing is rock & roll being saved.

The second CD of Led Zeppelin III expands on its mothership's psychograss exhilaration.

Led Zeppelin II binds the biggest and baddest of the group's heavyweight first chapter with the thinest of extras, 33 minutes of early mixes and backing tracks.

The fearsome foursome's eponymous, 1969 debut pairs its volcanic blues and folk with a raw performance from that same year in Paris.

Self-production and guests like Loudon Wainwright III and the Roches scales back Are We There in all the right ways, letting the drama ooze from vocal performance above all else.

Deep Fantasy falls short of its predecessor's Hellraiser hooks, but only by degrees of fuck-and-run whiplash.

Rather than refining any creative molds, World Peace stays the course, which could just be creative enough on its own.

It's as if this box set wants to prove Slint was human, not just a faceless menace that cut a record lost to time and circumstance, worthy of celebration and also fitting neatly in a box.

Band of Brothers belongs solely to Willie Nelson. This is the sound of rust being ground out, cylinders squeaking back to life, engines and carburetors opening wide on the road again.