That the music of Beyond rocks so righteously in a way that sounds like a conscious progression from where they left off with Bug, rather than a misguided attempt to recreate the past, makes this unlikely recording comeback all the more incredible.

Feist is now that rare artist in complete control of her talent.

Tears Of The Valedictorian is the band in top form, with Spencer Krug binding meandering tales of post-postmodernist artistic anxiety with wiry keyboards that echo Mercer's morphing vocals.

In typical Rush fashion the compositions tend to feel coldly scientific or laboriously calculated.... Nevertheless, it's a solid record.

It appears Patti Smith could've benefited from an outside observer when choosing songs.

Where the Monkeys come up short is in their compositions, which are beginning to sound formulaic.

An album that's high on good intentions but low on spark.

Her great success is making these protest songs personal, and she does it in a most profoundly moving way.

The lyrics are brutal.

Thematically it's overboard and at 16 tracks over 60 minutes repetitious and ham-fisted. But musically, Year Zero offers moments of industrial brilliance.

The unexpected bit is that there are a couple of tracks where the Junkies appear to be making a move from their brooding ballad comfort zone toward brooding bluesy shuffles that very nearly get funky.

Once our boy Nick begins his bellicose bellowing, there's no mistaking Grinderman's amped-up scorch for anything but another of Cave's darkly humorous creations of magnificent malevolence. Long may he howl and snort.

Oberst's political criticism is most effective when he's humble and straightforward, yet his overwrought poetics seem laughable, childish and blinkered when applied to world affairs.

23 is fundamentally a more interesting album than 04's Misery Is A Butterfly, neither as cartoonishly bleak nor as sonically pristine.

It's all about throwback synth melodies, programmed beats and melodramatic bellowing about non-specific relationship trauma, sorta like Human League, Spandau Ballet or maybe the Associates.

Kings of Leon often seem torn between their stadium rawk impulses and their hip underground aspirations.

Fans of the Mary Chain's Suicide-meets-Shangri-Las hijinks will have an immediate connection to Sister Vanilla's sweetly sinister sound, particularly when Jim or William steps up to the microphone to add his droning vocals.

The album's overall bad rip-off of early Britney/current Chantal Chamandy sound is a huge step backward.

Most of Shock Value confirms that Timbaland is most valuable when he's in the background.

As on Employment, some songs spark with energy and others die in the first verse. Is a complete album asking too much?

After years and years of hating every ounce of Maryland's mall-punk icons Good Charlotte, it seems now that the actual trick to enjoying their music on any plausible level is to go into the whole thing with absolutely no expectations. Not even low expectations. Nothing.

Repeatedly tries to regenerate the neo-soul-pop formula of I Try, down to its beat pauses and rich, piano-driven arrangements.

She succeeds on a level that was always just out of reach; the whole thing feels organic and natural.

The bigger problem, though, is Young Buck's yawn-inducing rhyme flow, which, paired with relentlessly slow, chugging beats, creates pure aural Sominex.

Devoid of filler and pop vocalist appearances, Red Gone Wild's a solid surprise for fans who thought the Funk Doc's career had gone up in smoke.

This sounds more like an album and less like a collection of singles and ideas, and the pop and funk elements are a bit more refined than before.

The album as a whole does drag on, and the songs aren't as immediately grabby as those on their last disc, but We Were Dead is more interesting and varied than Good News.

They sound like one brain playing machine-gun rhythms and echoing chords on a multitude of instruments, and their incredible fusion makes even the tunes with the simplest, most standard structures... exciting.

In his old glamcore days, Malin's affected voice might've been easier to overlook, but in this context, it can grow grating.

Why Bother sounds like it would be fun to see live in a dive bar, but at home it's a little grating to listen to from start to finish.

El-P's progressive beats here are full of driving, distorted drum sounds and rough samples; futuristic b-boy shit that walks a fine line between funky and grating.

Producer Ewan Pearson occasionally falters in connecting her vocals with the arrangements; there's a nice engagement on the slower, non-beat-driven tracks that you wish he'd mastered on the clubbier cuts.

With the fast-maturing Stone gaining greater control of her powerful pipes and a recent breakup adding to the underlying sexual tension while stoking the creative fire, the craftily reconstituted 70s R&B concept works exceptionally well.

The clever hook is keeping everything fuzzy enough to create a trippy mystique that makes it difficult to pinpoint what's happening or where it's all leading.

Back To Black is just a darkly rockin' good time, which will hopefully spark a new trend away from R&B's sickening slickification.

Parochial pop somewhere between Supergrass and the Arctic Monkeys.

There's something genuinely refreshing about smiley-faced singer/songwriter Rosie Thomas's straightforwardness.

Yours To Keep is kinda like an entire disc of that Lust For Life riff. Fun but a bit flat.

There are lots of references thrown into their oddball funk, but it's starting to sound completely logical and natural.

There are some pretty moments, and the production is immaculate, but it's plodding and dull for the most part.

The biggest glitch is the production - the myriad elements sound cramped for space.... Too bad, cuz Butler's lyrics, which replace coming-of-age angst with poetic explorations of global anxiety, politics and an excoriation of celebrity culture, put Funeral to shame.

Ultimately, Candylion is more annoying than entertaining.

It comes off sounding like a transitional recording, but with Son Volt any change is welcome.

Though the songs here are so much crisper and more exciting, they don't sacrifice the easygoing looseness of Apostle's Folkloric Feel debut.

The Weirdness does have many of the recognizable sonic and structural traits, but the essential threat of impending doom is missing.

Whether anyone outside of the NPR listening audience actually gives a shit about what clever socio-political points Cooder is trying to make metaphorically is difficult to say.

Woomble... shows an innate inability to keep pace, vocally and emotionally, with the thrusting guitars, driving drums and push toward intensity the band bids for.

A pretty lightweight disc.

Much of it sounds like it could have been played by humans using traditional instruments.

Perhaps the thinking is that a softer, subtler approach will make Antibalas more palatable to a wider audience. Unfortunately, it's come at the cost of what originally made their music so exciting.

Not a dud in the entire meticulous love letter to a da-do-ron-ron era.

It's still epic – and a bit grandiose at times - but in a charmingly human and believable way.

Levi pulls off his flamboyant persona because he has the meticulously structured songs to carry it.

Singer Glen Hansard moves from quiet introspection to earnest Jeremy Enigk-like wailing and back again, all the while reminding you just how rewarding a listen The Cost is.

Calla deal in that dark romantic narcissism guys like Nick Cave and Tom Waits are known to wallow in on record after record.

These are explosive epics that don't get tired, tied together in an album that's both instantly accessible and grows on you over time.

If I didn't know better, I'd swear Jill Cunniff had crawled under a rock and refused to listen to any music since her old band, Luscious Jackson, split in 99.

A resounding disappointment.

He's turned the clock back to the Fun Trick Noisemaker era of playful psychedelic indulgence that was the Apples' stock in trade before the unsavoury aspirations of indie-rock stardom took hold.

Too often Bloc Party aim for an overly expansive epic Coldplay quality that compromises the focus of their songwriting.

Phantom Punch is a wobbly ride through tracks that, for the most part, hiss and snarl with the leather-jacket swagger of his garagey backing band while Lerche either nervously essays a pseudo-rock "growl" over top or reverts to his customary loungey warble, both of which sound equally absurd.

It requires a certain level of self-denial to hate Fall Out Boy, as in, "No, I don't like huge hooks, soaring choruses or wild-eyed expressions of youthful ambition." If so, congratulations, you're 800 years old. Or a Joanna Newsom fan.

Sykes's closely mic'd vocals add a confessional quality to her melancholic delivery of cold raindrops and empty sky imagery that's endearing in small doses.

Otherworldly.

As with similar high-concept projects, most of it doesn't work, and the most successful pairings are often the ones you'd least expect.

Not every track is a winner, but fans of their brash debut will still find a lot to enjoy here.

A very good showcase for Jones's evolution as a writer and musician.

It's all soaring, boring hooks, ringing guitars cribbed from the last two decades of sad bastard Britpop and wussy vocals polished to a sleek finish that makes them ideal fodder for Hollywood soundtrack supervisors.

There's still space for reliable 'Driver fare: paranoid, vocab-intensive rhymes, self-deprecation and absurd imagery woven into a frayed lyrical tapestry that begs to be unravelled.

A dreary dump of sad sack pop blather that makes poor use of the substantial talent on hand.

Not everything works... but even the flawed experiments make for an enjoyable listen.

Most of what Barnes throws together here doesn't get beyond annoying pastiche, and he still lacks the chops as a wordsmith to magically transform mediocre jams into memorable songs.

There are worse artists to jack than David Byrne and company, but after all the breathless hype, you'd expect something a little more innovative.

In reconnecting with her former Eric's Trip bandmates, Doiron rediscovers her edge, wrapping her warm, frayed vocals around awkward and occasionally dissonant melodies, layering multi-track self-harmonized phrases over heavyish rock-focused arrangements and crafting dynamic songs that leave you with a satisfying sense of being shaken up.

Brilliantly catchy.

A Wu-Tangy darkness permeates the whole album, which is cluttered with gems both musical (live sax and jazz flute) and lyrical.

A few flashes of brilliance, but no sustained heat.

More for the dedicated convert than the curious.

Even Linda Perry, Swizz Beatz, Nellee Hooper and the Neptunes have their share of duff tracks, and it appears that's all they had to offer when Stefani came calling.

It sounds like the producers are all competing to drum up the best variation on Ciara's patented Crunk N' B theme.

Unfortunately, there are none of the ridiculous disses, insane freestyles or wacky interludes that make real mixtapes entertaining.

Jay proves that, yes, he really has nothing more to say except to state the fact that he's back.

The songs here are saturated with detail: ornate swirls of neoclassical lyrics, melodies that slither, then loop in on themselves, layers of sonic textures and feral noises. And too often, tunes with good bones cave in under that weight.

Love may not be a full-on revolutionary take on the Beatles catalogue, but it does bring back some of the most awesome material ever to come out of a recording studio.

Snoop plays to his storytelling strength, crafting a record to show he still cares about the music.

Unfortunately, the grand concept appears to have been a bit too ambitious for the 24-year-old Newsom and her associates to pull off, since what she plucks and sings in her little-girl-lost warble never seems entirely integrated with the hovering orchestral parts that sound like bleed-over from a symphony rehearsal in the room next door.

While they may never reach the heights of their Source Tags & Codes, the band can still push boundaries.

Unbelievably, the beats on Doctor's Advocate out-bang those on The Documentary, and the Game breathes compelling detail into the severe persona he established on his debut.

It's good enough to impress fans of David Gray and Coldplay.

That comedy gap between concept and finished product appears to be par for the course with Black's ventures.

Fans of Anne Briggs and Vashti Bunyan will find a lot to love here.

She catchily sends up herself, her Britishness and the unlikelihood of her (likely) stardom.

Wrist is yet another excellent record from mainstream hard rock's only real hope.

She's bewildering.

It's apparent Nelson doesn't share Adams's enthusiasm for the Fleetwood Mac and Grateful Dead numbers, but he's at home with Gram Parsons's $1,000 Wedding and Leonard Cohen's well-covered Hallelujah.

It's the mini-opera that moves spryly compared to the proper rock album half.

This is a musical just waiting to be staged.

His flow is generic and instantly forgettable and his lyrics are trite, inconsequential and full of self-importance.