Music is a weaker record than its predecessor, with only a few tracks possessing the strength, pop sensibility, and hooks that made Ray of Light such a success.

Occasionally, Yang's sugary, torchy vocals are too heavy-handed for this ethereal drone pop.

Although devoted fans will welcome this straight-down-the-middle approach with open arms, those on the fringes who were intrigued by their tinkering will find it lacks some of the vibrancy of their recent artistic adventurousness.

The best results are in the vein of Low-era Bowie. The duds turn up, surprisingly, in the area that Blur is strongest -- songwriting.

While the band's sound is unique, too many of the remaining ten songs play like slight variations of each other, and few of them stick.

Like her two previous solo records, Merchant's stately gloom is the stuff of pretension and precision, and her serviceably beautiful voice comes off as either darkly charming or annoyingly lilting (sometimes both at the same time).

With 18 songs that clock in at over 63 minutes, The Hour of Bewilderbeast meanders too much, and the quirky pacing (there are many random instrumental interludes) makes it difficult to enjoy as a whole. But taken in sections, it's a bit of a grower.

Her message, so powerful when unadorned, tends to get diluted by the awkward arrangements that accompany it.

There's a welcome sunniness to much of the album, with "Beat a Drum" recalling The Beach Boys' "Feel Flows," and "Imitation of Life" displaying some of that classic Document-era jangle. The two songs are Reveal's only real highlights.

Simon aims his melodies outside the box this time around, incorporating world-beat rhythms and working his sublimely dour mood to best advantage.

The first thirty minutes are a chaotic mess of style over substance, and while Joi's weirdness immediately sets her apart, "It's Your Life" and "Techno Pimp" are cloying and difficult to listen to.

The performances aren't much different from the studio versions beyond an extra dose of guitar grit, so this is mostly a case of tossing a bouquet to Luna collectors.

Shopping Trolley is a fun, for-the-fans work with a heavy dosage of otherwise unavailable rarities. It's safe to say, however, that casual listeners looking for Gomez's Philips [TV commercial] appeal are not best served here. Try 1998's Bring It On instead.

Sailing to Philadelphia, the singer's guest-star-heavy sophomore outing, is a deliberate, grown-up record (in a season which has seen a pronounced lack of adult offerings) that feels -- heavily in places -- like Dire Straits: Five Years Later.

While Dreamland is a dignified, pleasant album, you can't help but give the edge to 1975.

While most of the mixing is clean and effortless, it is also often unspectacular. Furthermore, the decided lack of turntable wizardry certainly won't earn him a "DJ Dan" moniker among vinyl mavens. But in terms of selection and overall execution, Monkey is a very nice listen.

The album, as a whole, is not a washout; it just doesn't live up to the hype and expectations.

Fortunately, the energy and enthusiasm with which the seven tunes are hashed out here makes them compelling enough to render the miserly production inconsequential...

Zevon, so frequently great, should know better.

Sheik... seems uncomfortable with the slicker presentation.

The album as a whole leans a little too far toward dissonance and gratuitous noisemaking.

Keeping things light is both the band's strongest asset and its greatest weakness.

The Guest, for all its flaws, is wise beyond the years of the musicians who made it.

Travis' knack for making saccharine songs is both a blessing and a curse; one doesn't know whether to feel the love or scream bloody murder.

The sounds are simply too dark and sweaty for most fans' home listening.

Solaris is like no Photek album you've ever heard before: It's an album that celebrates both dance and relaxation, touching on deep house, trip-hop, and ambient, with (gasp) only one drum-and-bass track (the typically spare "Infinity"). Sentimentality for his musical roots and the desire to create music with a warmer, more human feel drive Photek on these 11 disparate tracks, and the outcome is mixed.

Quasi's only mistake might be that it made this album too long; it clocks in at over 50 minutes. Such tracks as "Seal the Deal" and "Little Lord Fontleroy" show the limitations of a duo, and, at times, Quasi's basic keyboard and drums approach lacks a sense of wholeness and tends to meander.

Electric Mile is good, just not earth-shattering, and coming from someone with Dutton's creativity, it would be nice to hear something a bit more, well, electric.

It's a tribute to Williams' almost delusional self-confidence that he sounds equally at home no matter what the musical form; he invests each track with an energy many of them don't deserve.

It's obvious right from the start that Vitamin C is going for a sexier, vampier, and more grown-up image on More... But for all of her provocative lyrics and musical innuendoes, Vitamin C doesn't necessarily make a convincing argument that the change is a positive one.

While the soul-searching is utterly sincere, the music is only intermittently successful.

Most of the songs on God Bless the Go-Go's are lacking the huge hooks and punk spark that once made the group unforgettable...

Highly Evolved is clunkiest on long, drawn-out stuff like "Homesick" and "Country Yard," but singer Craig Nicholls has most of Kurt Cobain's shrieking mannerisms down, and, like most grunge, the band's simple three-chord rock is most exciting when played extremely fast.

There's little here that rises above the prosaic.

Faces and Names' new sonic explorations are a welcome change from the early '90s alt-rock sound Soul Asylum had bludgeoned into the ground, though the lyrics here don't approach Pirner's best.

But the Dave Matthews Band retains one essential ingredient that transcends Everyday's calculated pop: Dave Matthews. With his sassy, unassuming swagger, unique vocal delivery, and blatant sexual urgency, Matthews carries the load amply...

Listener-friendly, surprisingly short songs that walk a thinner line than usual between tired and inspired.

Do all of these elements add up to an album that offers something more than the usual steady diet of carefully polished, capably executed, but ultimately unremarkable angst-ridden punk-pop? Answer -- probably not.

On one hand, Vavoom! has the same can't-sit-still energy and brilliant musicianship of the 17-piece orchestra's previous efforts... But it sometimes seems as if Vavoom! goes a little too far in its attempt to sound experimental and break new ground in updated big band music.

Without the dread, the songs can come across without drama.

While the band's trademarked, reverb-drenched riffs remain, they're now intermingled with lots of skronks, bleeps, and clicks... After a sluggish start, most of what's here works as well as anything in the vast Man or Astro-Man? catalogue.

Certainly a talented guitar-playing songstress, she also takes her lyrical cues from Hallmark cards, a mix at once comfortable and off-putting -- and difficult to put one's finger on.

An album that takes a dramatic leap forward from the wafer-thin reggae he was peddling on his debut album...

Cydonia breaks little new ground.

Obviously trying to explore horizons beyond big beat (a genre now loathed by many in his native England), Cook diversifies his palette but, as the title unfortunately foreshadows, he only gets Halfway there.

Neither as sonically striking or politically conscious as Cornershop's well-received 1997 release, When I Was Born for the Seventh Time, Disco and the Halfway to Discontent is definitely the type of album a band can make when success provides an opportunity to experiment.

There are a few winners here among the brick-and-mortar alt-flak -- which the band is wholeheartedly capable of as well...

Though the first two songs, "Now" and "Rabble Rouser," sound like vintage KMFDM, the rest of the album finds the group being more of a rock band with industrial leanings than an industrial band with rock leanings.

With its brand of easily accessible pop rock, the Austin, Texas-based trio presents an extremely likable musical front that's based more upon influence than innovation.

Here again, it's a maddening ping-ponging between genius and plain stupidity.

But for all these guests and all of Silkk's versatility, My World, My Way still suffers from the same formulaic production -- all bleating synths and skittering drum programs -- that makes all No Limit productions seem indistinguishable.

The album as a whole isn't quite as brilliant as it ought to be, given the ideas at play.

Tweekend certainly isn't mind-blowing or revolutionary, but it's abundantly clear that the Crystal Method has found its sound: the hard rock and hip-hop influences that inflected Vegas move to the forefront, and the tempo comes down a few notches, thus emphasizing thunderous bass and hardcore head-bobbing.

Throughout the mix, Oakenfold follows the proven formula of prefacing more beat-heavy, climactic tracks -- such as Max Graham's "Airtight" and Tone Depth's "Majestic" -- with otherworldly vocals-only tracks by Dead Can Dance and Sabel, among others. The build-up is no doubt effective on the dance floor -- where Oakenfold excels -- but the effect sounds a bit repetitive after the first few occurrences.

Unfortunately, a couple of the early tunes are so slick as to lose all feeling, while some of the lyrics are dumber than a doormat, but as party albums go, this will keep you up for a while.

Getting through this album is a challenge. While Van Helden hits the mark on a few occasions, the bulk of Puritans irritates and frustrates as annoying samples create agonizingly long intros to otherwise solid tracks.

Somewhat of a Squarepusher overview: digitally diced, partially digested, and sometimes brutally regurgitated, of course.

On Atomic, the band unveils a sharper pop-rock sound, one that's so infectiously catchy that you'll feel like an inoculation is in order.

As works of art go, it isn't exactly Blood on the Tracks, and it isn't as blissfully fine as Millennium, but Black & Blue is unquestionably the most seamless boy band release of the year.

As the disc progresses, her caustic diatribes against men get harder to take.

Bon Jovi's best one-two album kickoff punch since Slippery When Wet's "Let it Rock" and "You Give Love a Bad Name." But unfortunately, it's downhill from there.

But just as a couple of cool originals on its debut distinguished Orgy from the Antichrist Superstar cover bands current working the bar circuit, if only slightly, so too do a clutch of strong tunes on this, its second album.

It's a bit uneven, but you would be hard-pressed to find better runway music this year.

Like Collective Soul, Vertical Horizon, and Matchbox Twenty before them, Train is a fairly faceless, generic rock band that writes straight-ahead, sing-along tunes. As a result, some of the songs on this, their second album, will make some people happy -- and other people just sleepy.

A throbbing pop record of schizophrenic highs and lows as hyper-kinetic as its beats.

A dozen WB-ready theme songs that slay in that charmingly plastic way.

The Doc's latest product, Malpractice, seems less focused and inspired than usual, and it lacks the kind of momentum that made albums such as Whut? Thee Album and Blackout, his 1999 collaboration with Method Man, instant classics.

Really, it's not as bad as it sounds.

Too much of Britney is dictated by Max Martin's teen-pop formula.

On such ballads as "Corner of the Earth" and "Black Crow," Odyssey seems to come up short.... But when the intention is to make you move, Odyssey shines brightly.

The Tight Connection's unfussiness would be the perfect playground soundtrack.

Spouts off on multiple tangents and never returns.

Sadly, [lead vocalist Chris] Shinn's love of drama often overshadows the band's taut and atypical rhythm section, and the somewhat left-of-center construction of Thorn's guitar parts.

Know Your Enemy is a fine -- if slightly long and somewhat fractured -- primer to the moods of one of Britain's most (self) important bands

While convincingly earnest and certainly ambitious, the result is formulaic, and lacks the free-wheelin', soulful magic of the original

Like John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen, Stewart has done a reasonably good job of making his music millennium-friendly without alienating aging baby boomers for whom the occasional Tom Waits cover is adventure enough.

Ghetto Postage sticks to the classic No Limit formula -- lots of fat, dusted synth-beats, courtesy of C-Los; a ton of guest spots from the No Limit camp and its associates... Still, Ghetto Postage suffers from a lack of something. Big names maybe -- with the exception of Silkk, most of the collaborators here are scrubs.

There's nothing lasting or substantive about the 12 tracks (plus one hidden one) that make up Mad Season.

Of course, despite experimentation, Revelation is bloated with ballads.

Cocky's surprises remain few and far between.

Aguilera needs more than a just crash course in Spanish -- she needs a good translator (some songwriting help wouldn't hurt, either).

Pedestrian? Sure. But in '01, it's doubtful you'll find a more apt soundtrack to a summer of skyrocketing gas prices and stock market tumblings.

Unfortunately, Robinson too often relies on shoddy -- if not overly elemental -- lyrical passages, which ultimately prevents New Earth Mud from lodging itself into your musical memory.

This time, their quiet storm sounds like it's lost its thunder. There are no big emotional booms on the ballad-heavy album, just a confluence of harmless little raindrops and heartstring tugs.

The pleasant surprise is that, after all the personnel changes, Duran Duran still has its characteristic sound and charisma...

She may have been young and naïve at age 13 covering Patsy Cline songs, but she had much better source material than the sappy, saccharine numbers she's getting from the middle-age songwriters who scripted Twisted.

What saves what sounds from beginning to end like an extremely quick buck -- via material on a music equivalency level of farts and burps -- is Shakur's provocative presence, so urgent in both decadence ("Good Life") and desperation ("This Ain't Livin'") that he still seems here, at least in the spirit of his lyrics.

Borland neither plays the kind of hip-hop-rock Bizkit fans would want, nor the Van Halen-esque guitar-rock some Bizkit-haters might have hoped for.

For the most part Bloodsport is carried by a snaking seductive beat and slow-burning, almost sinister melodies that would make Dave Gahan proud.

Like many a club anthem, Chicane's massive tracks have a formulaic feel.

Although there are no ballads as moving as "Hello," "Truly," or "Say You, Say Me," the album does offer a nice collection of pop tracks that, for the most part, don't suffer from the stiflingly bland over-production that's characterized other adult-contemporary albums of recent years.

While the album is a distinct improvement on 1999's Twentieth Century, it still fails to rise above the level of a few good songs padded by a whole lot of filler.