As Clef drops mostly trite lines about green cards, strippers and police harassment, this strategy either succeeds brillantly--or goes haywire. [Nov 2007, p.153]

Fresh off his triumphant "Fishscale" series, the thinking-thug’s MC once again shows why he’s the alpha Wu-Tanger: palpable street authenticity, classic taste in R&B (Stax, Motown) and the breakneck rhyme virtuosity of hip-hop’s golden age.

This compendium of pop standards is as good an introduction to the great American songbook as any.

Most of the album, like the single 'Tick Tock Boom,' sticks to formula. [Nov 2007, p.150]

With Simon LeBon sharpening his typically abstract lyrics and everyone bolstering the contrasting, constant hooks, Timbaland perfects the rock-techno fusion his solo album fumbled, while Duran emphasize their willfully plastic extremes. They’ve never sounded this pretty and severe.

The music is dizzying, even mesmerizing.

It’s easy to see why these songs didn’t fit on their record but, while a full listen turns unrelentingly dour, they’re better than discards have any right to be.

This album, the second from Angels and Airwaves, is thick with U2-aping major-chord bluster and well-meaning meaninglessness.

As groups like Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem are making analog programs ring clear as Marshall stacks, Williams makes them sound mysterious, creepy and sexy again--even when geeking out on a cover of Bow Wow Wow’s big hit, 'I Want Candy.'

The album works as an ambient whole, its fog-bank synths, yearning vocal slivers and stoic basslines filling the room with melancholy.

The sonics beneath Buck's deadpan rhymes are too often more subdued than the dense collages he started out in the late 90s, but jazz keyboards and conga poly-rhythms keep the backing from sinking into mere soundtrack. [Nov 2007, p.146]

Spears’s fifth studio album is her most consistent, a seamlessly entertaining collection of bright, brash electropop.

While straying from metal's path, they uphold its legacy of conservative politics. [Nov 2007, p.148]

The best songs here are the least ambitious: love laments that coleader Glenn Frey and bassist Timothy B. Schmit both sing the hell out of.

Pete Doherty remains the British tabloids' pinata of choice--but at least his music is looking up.

But vintage doesn’t mean nostalgic. 'Dirty Old Man' is the pissed, hilarious antithesis of his wide-eyed ’70s signature 'Old Man,' and it rivals Nick Cave’s 'No Pussy Blues' (see Grinderman) as the year’s best song about a deranged, horny graybeard.

This is mostly music to zone in and out of--periodically, new sounds and rhythms croip up and coexist in rough approximation of grooves, catching the ear; other times songs drone in the background, either beatifically ot forgettable. [Nov 2007, p.146]

Coheed have found their sweet spot.

Cheery and unassuming, Underwood is a pleasant oddity: a pop star whose central belief is her own powerlessness.

He's screaming louder than ever on his solo CD, but what's notable is how all the titanium riffs and loud-soft-loud dynamics now feel personalized, a little cozier and multihued than on SOAD record. [Nov 2007, p.157]

When it comes to creating nuanced and irreverent, yet oddly touching, pop and rock simulacra, no one really touches pseudonymous Pennsylvania duo Gene and Dean Ween, still together after 23 years.

Even more surprising is how dynamic the duo sounds, as their voices both blend together and draw each other into fresh territory.

The result is a mess but--thanks to Bemis’s passion, humor and knack for inserting multiple hooks into a single song--an exhilarating one.

Their sixth album sticks close to what they know best. [Nov 2007, p.153]

Too bad, then, the album drifts off into the ambient sighs and murmurs of their recent movie-soundtrack work, minus the diverting visuals.

There’s nothing like a concept album for faking musical maturity.

It’s strange and sometimes fascinating to hear R.E.M.’s oldest songs played so differently, though vintage tracks are rare in a set concentrating on 2004’s mostly inert "Around the Sun."

In Rainbows is far more pensive and reflective than its predecessor.