An odd, fascinating journey through the mind of a man who channels messages from horror movies, occult events, and other bewilderments, and turns them into songs.

Even with a couple of missteps, this is a solid album that will likely stay in heavy rotation on your stereo for months to come.

Me First is a Sunday record, a rainy-day record, a home-alone record, a lying-on-the-floor, staring-at-the-ceiling record.

Each of the 12 tracks on the Grey Album is finely tuned -- the precision cut-and-paste sampling DM exhibits is often mind-blowing.

On a musical level these new songs are clearly identifiable as the Poster Children's work, but the band covers a broad array of lyrical turf on No More Songs About Sleep and Fire.

Apropa't has a tendency at first to gently wash over you, striking no particular chord. But as you pay closer attention to the music, the melodic wash of it all becomes one of its addictive qualities.

Margerine Eclipse is a decided improvement upon their last three albums, discarding the dense and difficult song structures that plagued those albums.

The songs aren't always as good as one might hope, especially in comparison to The Mekons' peak period.

[He's] invented a loud and severely impassioned polished rock sound.

The music is mysterious and moody, with an unusual blend of instruments and lyrics full of strange imagery, but no real narrative.

Pyramid Electric Co. is a vast step forward for Molina. It provides ample evidence of his spiritual growth and shows him once again evolving as an artist.

Boy in da Corner defies genre in a defiant manner, refusing to be defined, refusing, even, to be dismissed.

Maryland Mansions wants to be a great record, but it's simply a good one.

The Black Album is a spectacular farewell if that's what it turns out to be.

Ghosts of the Great Highway is one of those albums that you want to have around for when life gets you down.

The Strokes don't make the most original sounding music you've ever heard, but they make something that is only The Strokes.

Fans of the movie who are attached to the film renditions have no cause for concern; none of the songs here are dramatic reworkings of the originals. But almost all of them pop with the same buoyancy and joy, demonstrating that the artists covering the songs are Hed-heads too.

Come Feel Me Tremble is a bit of a mess, like they stuck the disc on a wall and threw the songs at it.... But you could say the same thing for Hootenanny, and to me this captures a bit of the same magic.

This record finds a band scaling the heights of their precise craft in a way that gives upward mobility a good name.

Horn turns in the best work of his career, giving DCW a collection of sounds so potent and invigorating that the album may be Belle & Sebastian's Revolver.

On Out of Season, Gibbons' voice takes the spotlight. There's a quivery sound, similar to Billie Holiday's, which gets lost amid Portishead's stops and starts.

Whether you listen closely, for the sonic textures, or in a cursory fashion, scouting out the allusions galore, with each listen you'll likely appreciate something different.

There's no question Aesop Rock makes essentially no sense half the time. The other half, he's painting abstract art all over fractured soundscapes. The music is smart and progressive; it's also pretentious and challenging.

While some of their songs deliver nothing more than noisy twaddle, British Sea Power are a formidable band when they choose to simply stop making sense.

Swings like a pendulum from playful dance beats, cutesy female vocals and spacey synth effects to feedback-drenched, guitar-heavy rock fronted by a raspy male singer. And it does so with such affection that the unique power of their contagious, inventive sounds cannot be denied.

Meloy's words stir your insides like good poetry, his imaginative tales climb into your mind, set up camp and stay awhile. But without the enchanting, heart-wrenching and totally affecting power that is the consequence of The Decemberists' music, the words would not have ever found life.

With all four members taking the mic, cohesion should hardly be expected. Yet, for all the different styles the band employs on this album, all but the closing number seem indelibly stamped as this band's work, uniquely The Wrens.

On this disc, which bustles with other artists' flashes and flourishes, the different personalities sometimes vie for attention.

What easily could have been a tired retread of rock snob classics instead makes use of the past to provide a recognizable framework in which to deal with the emotional rescue necessary after a damaged romantic relationship.

A sturdy reminder of why Warren will be missed.

This whole is a sum of 14 songs that adds up to an estimable artistic much, the kind of album worthy of nestling in for months.

A welcome return to that good stuff Gang Starr has delivered over the years.

This is exactly the album that should be blasting from car radios all summer.

Sumday's only real flaw is the creeping sense of professionalism that is starting to emerge in the band's songwriting and playing.

Like so many great singles of the past, this is the sound of a good band getting great. Don't miss the moment.

Where The Blackened Air sounded haunting, Run to Ruin sounds downright haunted, and, indeed, it's got moments filled with menace and chords written to make you feel uncomfortable.

The most shocking aspect about You Forgot It in People is just how easily everything seems to be accomplished. Every note and transition is smooth and effortless, and there is such a wealth of brilliantly executed music.

Band Red spins bouncy, raw, sloppy and slightly erratic punk that can stake a claim for carving out a jagged edge of its own, complete with loveable, contagious sing-along sounds.

Cex's production style favors an air of deep melancholy and foreboding, similar to the style of the Anticon Collective.

One Word Extinguisher doesn't shock the way Vocal Studies... did but, if his debut drew the vivid hip-hop/electronic blueprint, Herren convincingly takes his plans and constructs something big with the follow-up.

[The songs] are just similar enough to blend together in a close listen, but they also work as a diverse soundtrack behind whatever it is you're doing.

O's seductive, cooing/shrieking contributions to the power of the Yeahs are immense, but they are no bigger than those of guitarist Zinner or drummer Chase.

Road-testing new material has produced a tight and confident work that transcends many third and fourth attempts by artists of similar caliber.

A dizzyingly crafted explosion.

As a whole, The Secret of Elena's Tomb is a compendium of many of the things Trail of Dead have been to date: provocative lyricists, well-honed musicians, and now film directors.

Idlewild are rapidly outgrowing their influences as they forge a unique identity that leads me to suspect that they may soon be inspiring a slew of like-minded new bands.

May well be the best of its seven studio albums, one that even approaches the heights of the stellar Singles Going Steady collection.

In one instant, lead singer Jordan Blilie is whispering passionately in your ear. In the next, he tears into your insides with growls so piercing you'd think he'd transformed into a savage beast.

More life-affirming than life-changing, on Up the Bracket the Libertines deliver a stellar set of songs that -- both musically and lyrically -- neatly synthesizes the past 40 years of English rock.

Music of reassuring terror.

The Magnolia Electric Co. succeeds where other albums of a similar nature fail because it has the courage to point towards what is wrong with itself and the medium through which it is presented.

They are pop and punk and rock and indie and a combination of all these things, but, more than all of the above, they are Harris' personal songs and they are incredible.

Drawing notions of rhythm, tonality and structure akin to the work of avant-garde greats Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra and Kool Keith, Antipop vs. Matthew Shipp is an inventive, spaced-out fusion of classical free jazz and futuristic electro hip-hop.

You aren't free after all, because once you've let the album in, you may never shake it off again.

If there's one misstep on 100th Window, it's that [Sinead O'Connor's] talent and her range are underused.

This isn't music about angst or ego, hooks or licks, or lyrics we've heard before.

The conversational rawness that drove the previous albums is gone, and the band loses something as a result.

Hate is a beautifully gilded record, thoroughly nice and thoroughly listenable, and a mark higher than a lot of pop music with lofty intentions, but it doesn't move you to extremes.

One Bedroom does tend to lag in parts, perhaps lost in the legacy of the band that created it, but in the end it comes off as an unified organic being, both necessary and pleasant.

With Phrenology, The Roots have finally made an album that lives up to their potential.

What makes Quality worth it is exactly what dragged down Train of Thought -- the slow and syrupy songs.

Sticking to a formula -- a formula that works for them -- the band sounds fiercer than ever on Riot Act.

Cash might surprise with his choice of covers, but in nearly all of his selections, he locates some personal meaning, or introduces new emotional elements.

Let's face it, no one else today is making music as cool and original as that of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

The music here combines the scrappy, psychedelic folk of Hour of Bewilderbeast with the more melodic and sentimental "About a Boy" soundtrack.

The album coheres; it's a full body of work intended to be heard holistically, not simply as a collection of songs. But it takes some work. You must be an active listener to appreciate it fully.

In the midst of its 14 tracks, there are a couple that, if taken on their own, would qualify as throwaways. But the way the album should be heard, as a whole, each piece works with the others.

Like a night taxi ride along a broad, lighted, skyscraper-lined city street, Happyness, the band's latest, feels wondrous, daring and slightly dangerous.

Cruelty Without Beauty is the sound of Soft Cell reclaiming the musical territory they staked out in their 1981 hit debut, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, offering up hooky, dancefloor-oriented synthetic soul, now jacked up into a higher gear for the clublands of the new millennium.

Hot Hot Heat's compelling energy, original hooks and rhythms, and quirky, sometimes indiscernible lyrics combine to make Make Up the Breakdown one of the most energetic and enjoyable listens of the year.

Nextdoorland is one of the rarest of things: a reunion album that captures the spirit of what made the band special in the first place.

Sea Change not only signals a pinnacle in his career but may just be remembered, in an environment fueled by accelerating cycles of disposable culture, as one of this young decade's best records.

The songwriting is self-assured and thoughtful; the album is unified as a pastiche of romantic musings.

His best work since 1997's Built to Spill album, Perfect From Now On.

There are no real shocks or surprises on this album; instead a number of more understated delights come through.

It recalls U2's The Joshua Tree, and not just for its stunning guitar work but for its wild passion and spiraling tension-and-release dynamics.

This is a rare record that simply responds to the quiet masses who maybe feel just a bit to much too often, and offers them a soothing, downbeat source of comfort without preaching or apology.

The instant pop buzz Pulp have concocted in the past is largely missing, but each listen reveals another layer, another level, another reason to love it. Highly recommended.

Eternal Youth is broad and ambitious. Merritt's singing is missing; his baritone would have added a male perspective, not to mention an added playfulness. But Gonson suffices.

Blacklisted proves that Case's musicianship has evolved alongside her songwriting skills.

Whether they're shrieking or pleading, dancing or shivering, they're always exuding an intensity that never fails to find a way to hit you hard, really hard.

Moonlight, which grows more and more likeable with repeated listens, is Spoon's strongest effort yet, topping 2001's Girls Can Tell and even 1998's A Series of Sneaks.

All of One Beat is strung loosely together by a common plea: for awareness, for understanding, and, most of all, for holding onto hope.

Throughout the album's dozen tracks, the sentiment Lightbody conjures evokes real pain and real beauty.

Daybreaker bears all the strengths and beauty of the earlier Orton CDs, but it also shows some growth.

Like all his best work, the whole of The Rising is better than the sum of its individual songs.

Their sound is dirty and raw, sexy and wrong.

Written with some basic, inviting rock structures, the album replaces the hyper energy and angst of older material with slowed-down, complex textures and delicate grooves -- but still rocks out intermittently.

The Last Broadcast is big, intelligent, irony-free music that demands an open mind -- and rewards the heart quite well. Magnificent.

The Private Press is full of rollicking beats, spectral tone colors, and enough subtle textures and supple surfaces to fill a textile warehouse.

There's a lot of empty space in these songs, the better to focus on Kim and Kelley's up-front vocal harmonies and classically off-kilter lyrical ideas.

With About a Boy, Badly Drawn boy has grown up.

Ultimately, I suspect Costello non-devotees will find that too much effort is required to get into these songs and there may not be sufficient emotional payoff to justify the investment.

YHF is a fierce record.

If you thought Mooney Suzuki's Estrus debut, People Get Ready, rocked, Electric Sweat will blow you away.

It's simultaneously refreshing and amusing. And it rocks hard.

The band is never so consumed by brainy showmanship that they forget to rock -- this album kicks harder in places than Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath ever did, or The Strokes ever will.

The Super Furries have indulgently embraced a collision of musical elements; what we hear is a jarring, yet surprisingly seamless, mix of sounds and exceptional songwriting.... Their best work to date.