Mink Car is all over the map, an ideal piece of entertainment for listeners simultaneously blessed and cursed with high IQs and attention deficit disorder.

On their fourth album, Bedlam Ballroom, the Zippers have concocted another stew of lively dance music. Problem is, with so many people having jumped on the swing revival bandwagon, the group's new material sounds dated. And not in a good way, either -- it merely recalls a fad, rather than evoking the bevy of twentieth-century American music styles the Zippers have long been in love with.

Ron Sexsmith actually rocks, albeit only sort of and irregularly.

There's almost no drama to be found on Alone With Everybody... [t]he songs don't turn corners, and they fail to elicit any real emotional response.

The most memorable tracks on Pieces in a Modern Style feel like high-brow Puff Daddy songs...

Fans of new British bands like Gomez or Minibar should find plenty to like.

This collection is a sugar-high set, adrenalized even more than Blink's souped-up studio albums by the waves of Cheap Trick Live at Budokan-like female screams pouring from the audience. And the playing offers plenty of evidence to quiet anyone who thinks these guys are just three-chord wonders.... But young audiences love Blink shows in part for the wiseacre, self-deprecating quips, and this album is full 'em -- and not just between songs, as there are (count 'em) 29 extra tracks of banter lasting over 10 minutes at the album's end.

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

Ivy specialize in nebulously oriented dream-pop: too ethereal for straight pop fans, too structured for the 4AD crowd. The result is rather like Swing Out Sister playing with all the rock and roll abandon of, say, the Sundays.

Green Day's melodies are as delicious as ever, and the band continues to integrate acoustic guitar into its sound without getting all granola on us. But as a songwriter, Armstrong's neither here nor there, unable to fully abandon his goofball roots but not stretching far enough to score the breakaway great album he's always seemed capable of writing.

Filled with the sort of aggressive, testosterone-fueled rage that has helped make DMX the Henry Rollins of hardcore hip-hop.

The album never truly develops, as the group prefers to rehash old stuff rather than break new ground.

Though many of the songs here are associated with male artists, James usually succeeds in injecting her own womanly strength and style into her renditions, making the tunes indisputably her own.

At once epic, playful and a little bit strange, the duo's latest effort perpetuates the brothers' patented geek-chic, though things come across as more introspective and ambient this time around.... Alternately excellent, kitschy and lackluster...

John and Frank Navin, the brotherly core of Chicago's Aluminum Group, produce impeccably tailored bachelor-pad pop with a cynical bite -- like a less restrained Sea & Cake or a more Anglicized Stereolab.... More post-consumer than post-rock, the Aluminum Group's environmentally conscious sounds will make your ears feel as comfortable and cultured as fine quality furnishings.

Lacking Pierce's unifying vision, The Carnivorous Lunar Activities Of ... tries hard to make a virtue out of stylistic schizophrenia, and only partly succeeds.

This album shows a band eager to expand its creative range. One wonders, sadly, what might have come next.

Despite their retro stylings, this Orange County, California band has served up a sixth album that is better (by leaps and bounds) than the punk-by-numbers that dominated their first two albums, 1989's Offspring and '93's Ignition. Further, Conspiracy has more well-written, hook-laden songs than anything found on their fluke indie hit, '94's fittingly titled Smash, or their too-boring-to-be-a-sell-out 1997 major label debut, Ixnay on the Hombre.

On the plus side, the album sounds really nice.... The problem is, things get a little too lazy and hazy; Reveal's 12 tracks all move with almost the exact same dreamy, midtempo lope.

Much of the album has the odd, rehashed sound of a Blur record produced by the Automator, but the diverse guests keep at least every other song fresh and new.

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.

Just as Stewart's last major hit wisely spoke directly to his generation, Human unwisely seeks to plug him into the present one.

If you fish around a bit, you'll find several good ideas here, some of which may have worked better in different hands.

It's hard to imagine The Golden D as having much of an impact.

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.

Twisted Tenderness hits its turning point on the title track (RealAudio excerpt), a solitary, surefire progressive-house hit that recalls the Pet Shop Boys' 1999 album, Nightlife. From that point the album's energy improves considerably -- so there's the twist: It's not new, but it's improved.

Unfortunately, the heavy-handed folk-pop production... doesn't serve Williams well here.... In general, the overwrought keyboards and Steve Holley's percussion... could use a good slapdown.

Kid A represents the first time in Radiohead's short history where their desire to do something different has outrun their ability to give their experiments a personal imprint. The problem with the album isn't that it's introspective, or obscure, or even that it's derivative (alternately conjuring Eno, Aphex Twin, Pink Floyd and so forth), but rather that the striking group personality so well defined on the last two collections has seemed to evaporate.