It's spontaneous and weird and, while its initial thumping may turn off those liking their trip-hop controlled, those who are ready to sweat a little will be rewarded by this unique duo's evolving imagination.

They're trapped by this, their one-trick shtick; it the same old song, played again, Sam, for all those girls in white belts who won't stop 'til they get enough.

Throughout Love and Distortion, the Stratford 4 convey through their music that sounding like other good bands that came before them isn't a bad thing.

She remains utterly, excessively self-involved.

Just like every other record Malkmus has been involved with, it doesn't feel like an album, doesn't feel like one whole work, doesn't feel focused, or of some specific intent. Pig Lib sounds rambling and goofy and slump-shouldered and half-assed and happened-upon and lazily comfortable with every step that it takes.

Easily the band's most consistent, tonally tight disc thus far.

Nick Cave, no mistake about it, is still a major talent, and Nocturama isn't nearly as bad a mid-career flop as Lou Reed's Mistrial or David Bowie's Never Let Me Down.... But nevertheless, this is also far from essential Nick Cave, as most longtime fans will immediately discern.

The only real problem with Hearts of Oak is that the band still can't make their less immediately compelling tracks sound as electric and urgent on record as they do when the Pharmacists tear up the stage.

Overall, Loose Fur is kinda interesting, especially as a historical document, but it's not much more than that.

One problem: Common is an MC, not a musician. Which makes it difficult for him to achieve his lofty goals. Mostly he fails.

Bobby Gillespie and company come up short here.

While these are accomplished musicians distilling their favorite musical influences, they fail to transcend those influences.

Yanqui U.X.O. is the work of a band that has finally become confident in its popularity and influence.

A solid album, turgid and at times stormy.

The album's tone and tunes and imagery and such are all still on the same haunted-house/boat-of-the-dead kinda kick they've kicked out on their three previous, numerically-titled jams.

Though it's not quite the folk-pop album that some post-Head Music interviews with Anderson had foreshadowed, the ballads do outweigh the rockers, which puts the lyrics in the spotlight, for better and for worse.

Buried at the 11th track on the compact disc, "Satisfaction" makes everything else on this album seem better by its presence. It's the one true standout cut, giving the album a jewel in the glittering, if ersatz, moving-outta-the-ghetto hip-hop-princess crown that Eve places on her own "bombshell" brow.

It is, in such, truly great, or truly arrogant, or truly conceited, or truly preposterous, or truly confused, or truly bemused, or truly profound, or truly magnificent. Or maybe all of these things. At once. Or at times.

The strength Moorer has shown from first album to second album and finally to this genre-leaping experiment in self-recreation is enough to not only merit a listen, but to make sure we pay attention to the fourth album when it arrives.

It's hard to figure out exactly why everybody is so excited about this record.... There is something there to like -- plenty, in fact. But it is also disjointed and sometimes maddening.

While appreciating Yoshimi for its merits poses little problem, actually enjoying it is more difficult.

The chaff-to-wheat ratio remains distressingly unbalanced on Torino.

[A] tired, uninspired collection of music and songs.

Their new pop direction finds them drifting about, directionless as opposed to eclectic.

Maladroit is the emo equivalent of '70s arena rock -- a bracingly cocky attitude that tag-teams with its partner, navel-gazing.

Lacking the startling mark of cool-hearted covermongers such as Cat Power and Mark Kozelek, this is still an easeful album of mostly slow-blooded tunes.

The set works like a spun-up set of carefully collated cuts, sequenced with stuck-tape-over-the-tabs-in-the-corners mix-tape affection that makes the whole seem like a sticky-sentimented sentimental love letter to the boys' record collections.

Coming up in the discothèque all disco/not-disco, Jackson's perspicacious hindsight gazes back to what was winning back in the day, now dragging it into the drag-and-drop to create pro-tooled playlist pop, its parts glued together into a seamless, shiny, mirroring whole.