Van Helden continues to battle being pigeonholed by throwing disparate musical elements into the mix; unfortunately, the resulting musical tapestry is uneven.

Perhaps what makes The History of Rock most interesting -- and what ultimately validates Kid Rock as the real deal -- is that these old tracks prove that his love affair with rap and rock wasn't something he just cooked up to weasel onto MTV's "TRL."

In small doses it's wonderful stuff, though in total it's a little sickly sweet.

MCs Evidence and Rakaa's shortcomings are amendable because they do have a great scratchmaster in DJ Babu. The problem is that this inventive DJ is allowed to shift gears and twist and crawl only after the rappers have said their pieces.

A relatively bloodless album, a work that seems formatted to satisfy the demands of the marketplace without really transcending them.

The problem is, as the album drags on, young Master Mathers wastes his considerable wit and opts to grouse in the guise of a rampaging reactionary. Song after song finds Eminem viciously baiting real and imagined enemies, as if that's all he knows how to do.

Communicate's energy level lags in places, trying to make up for in quantity what it lacks in consistent quality.

Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2) finds Partridge and Moulding at the top of their game, making the collection a fitting match for past XTC triumphs...

ESG may have been heard mostly in other artists' songs, but A South Bronx Story is an impressive attempt to focus attention on the force behind the samples.

For the most part, the seven new tracks on The First of the Microbe Hunters, which is technically an EP, feel all too similar to last year's Cobra Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night...

It's an uneven mix that frustrates by offering just samples of what Pearl Jam increasingly does best, namely, provide clear and, yes, quiet stories about the travails of everyday life.

Certain moments find the quartet keying in on the same fugal intertwining of beauty and dissonance that Television explored back in the late 1970s.

Spears' new album does sound exactly like her last one.

Feeding everything from polyrhythmic samba marches and interstellar jazz excursions into his mixer-microprocessor, then topping them off with obsessive beat-programming, Tobin blurs the boundaries between organic and prefabricated, as if the coexistence of the two should be an undeniable rule.

Make no mistake: This album represents a small step for a band, not a giant leap for mankind. But it is energetic, entertaining and several polymer configurations less plastic than the teenybopper product currently being manufactured in Orlando and elsewhere.

Wishville is seamless, expansive and full of go-nowhere moments.

Call this music "experimental easy-listening" -- neither strident enough to warrant serious commercial attention, nor sufficiently free-form to attract all the independent obsessives.

Some of the finest music of their already sterling career.

On the evidence of her work here, one would have to say there really isn't any pop-rock composer writing more sophisticated material these days than Mann.

Ween are at their best when they either dive headlong into ridiculousness or play it totally straight (admittedly, they don't do the latter very often). Here, however, they walk a rickety platform between those extremes and frequently fall into the ironizer's pit.

The band's new sound appropriates slabs of dance music, free jazz, rock and techno to create a menacing landscape of rattling beats, thundering bass and crippling distortion, dotted with lyrics that evoke urban decay and social disgust.

Overall, though, this is one of those odd little albums that the ever-prolific Young comes up with periodically -- dotted with a few flashes of inspiration, ultimately sunk by a lot of by-rote artistic adequacy.

At first audition, Broadcast is disposable John Barry-inspired pop drenched in overcharged organs, egregious electronic overproduction and languorous vocals that somehow have no residue.

Call it thinking-man's pop from a reluctant star, but Figure 8 is a "grower." However weird it may sound initially, it merits repeated listenings.

In the five long years since that multiplatinum release, these SoCal rockers have nearly been torn apart by fame, and the accompanying mixed-up emotions are manifested not just in the lyrics but also in the album's musical genre jumps.

Continues the musical evolution that was evident on last year's Knock Knock, with a collection that goes beyond Smog's standard home-alone-in-the-basement-with-a-four track-and-a-weird-mood aesthetic.

There are more flashes of the old White Light/White Heat Reed than the old crank has provided even diehard loyalists in years.

Even at its slickest moments, Gung Ho is worthwhile, not only for Smith's lyrics but for her soulful vocals. At 53, she sounds much like the jazz vocalists who develop and train their voices as they age.