At the end of the day, it's really hard to screw up these songs with that voice--try as he might.

A welcome return.

It's hard to imagine a set of songs that better reflects every phase the group has navigated through its turbulent career.

This is carefully architected to pack arenas.

One man has made a beautifully subtle magic in his bedroom studio--and it will be heard on The O.C. in no time.

Sounds like they had as much fun making it as you're going to have listening to it.

These tunes find him not only reconnecting with his sense of melodic urgency but with his loins, as well.

Krauss is blessed with one of the most coolly beautiful voices on record, and she's often better than her material, which is once again the case here.

At times, he's guilty of doing his best Lenny Kravitz impersonation.... But those moments pass relatively quickly, and he slips back into his stripped-down, socially conscious self--and that's when Harper truly shines.

Here, Grohl consistently puts forth straightforward, stripped-down rock that is neither ironic nor pandering--a fine line between Cheap Trick and cheap tricks.

This disc has a clutch of songs that mix chord-y abandon with raging rock riffs--and a heck of a lot of good times.

So maybe Black Foliage can be a bit self-indulgent and uneven at times (the short connecting tracks that recur throughout the album, for example), but such missteps go along with a brimming imagination that boldly explores the outer limits of rock's subconscious.

Precise? Yes. But does it work your frustrations out? Only a little.

Lateralus takes the L.A. band over the edge with elongated musical movements that simmer under heavy-duty distortion, Middle Eastern percussion and freakish guitar-and-drum time signatures that will make musical mathematicians (i.e., prog-rock dorks) as excited as the kids in the mosh pit.

Head-smashing songs like "Supermassive Black Hole" and "Invincible" all point to an album that strives to be nothing less than epic. It succeeds.

Let's hope we don't have to wait until 2040 for something else this good.

He does it all so proficiently, you can't help but want to have the guy hang out in your CD player for awhile.

An arresting mix of the singer's political and personal strife set to a jazzy backbeat.

Happenstance is lush and brooding, the kind of record that makes most sense coming through the headphones late at night.

Are you listening, Quentin Tarantino? Here's the soundtrack to your next movie.

The lyrics seem clumsy, and some of the melodies feel warmed over, and the Carlos Santana-appearing "Illegal" is a total buzzkill. But it's not all a loss.

Instead of making any stupid concessions to her sudden celebrity... the Home girl plays it cool, carrying on with the same smooth vibes that made her a star.

Even if it all sounds pretty much the same as their last few, you'd be unwise to turn a deaf ear to this release.

Granted, Step doesn't have anything as effortlessly flawless as the classic single "Judith" from the band's last album, but it does have a number of songs ("Blue," "The Outsider") that are almost as bombastically beautiful.

Mann's cranky muse is consistently compelling, showcasing both her wry lyrics and terrific melodies.

Songs like "World Wide Suicide" and "Severed Head" even come close to recreating the hard rock thrills of the band's billion-selling debut, Ten.

Simply striking.

This is an eerie meditation on aging, death and the corruption of popular culture.