A sweet and sometimes bitter pack of world-weary bubblegum pop.

There's nothing on this album quite like the guilty pleasure of "Candy," her textbook pop number from "So Real."

Something of a mixed bag, "Production" teeters between grating aimlessness and uniquely dark, claustrophobically compressed runs through the Vocoder-happy lands of French house music.

X.O. Experience is more commercial and polished than the group's previous three efforts.

Just as little has changed on the radio front, so has Cake stuck with its market-proven formula on "Comfort Eagle."

The album may not break much new ground, but the band's performance is more dynamic than on previous releases.

Having traded in affected spooky vocals and idiosyncratic song structures for straight-ahead rock, however, Black seems to suffer a crisis of confidence on "Dog in the Sand."

The band, while heavy on charm, is light in its ability to demonstrate any diversity in its songs.

Ultimately, the record is kept from wonderfulness by too much drowsy material--it lacks [Neil] Young's screwball conviction or the hallucinogenic intensity of the VU.

"Cuttin' Heads" isn't covering much new ground.

It's that menacing air surrounding "Familiar" that makes it worth a listen, and Oasis is, quite simply, loads of rock and roll fun.

The results on "Solitary Man" are mixed, leaning at times to inadvertent novelty.

A 12-song collection of ear candy so sweet as to give many listeners a toothache.

Lee has produced a competent, contemplative record that should tide fans over until the power trio's long-awaited return to local arenas.

The band nearly succeeds in messing with your head. However, front man Courtney Taylor's hamming like Jagger on "Bohemian Like You" and the country schlock of "Country Leaver" are definite buzzkills.

On its fourth full-length adventure, Glaswegian septet Belle & Sebastian wanders away from their painfully catchy melodies with symphonic '70s-esque feather rock.

He's ditched dusty folk LPs for guest appearances by stars such as Bootsy Collins and Macy Gray. Gentrification suits him. For all her classic-soul flare, Gray is fond of abrasive nuance. Her singing is the perfect analog counterpart to his techno-philia; those saliva-laden glitches turn her catch phrases into perfect little samples.

There are hints of the stuttered hooks that snared listeners on the band's '95 debut, yet they're so snarled in manic sound, you're unsure whether you're being grabbed or gagged.

Following a path forged by fellow U.K. exports Badly Drawn Boy and Travis, still-wet-behind-the-ears quartet Coldplay prefers a folksy, familiar approach to guitar pop.

You're going to have to dig through a barrage of radio-ready songs to find the excitement of previous albums.

Neither Brit-pop nor hip-hop, "Gorillaz" contains a motley, dub-influenced collection of songs that are, like Hewlett's drawings, an exercise in sophisticated immaturity

High on boyish charm and low on moral fiber, Blink's songs have all the lyrical depth of a whoopee cushion.

Halfway through the album, Michael ruins the good mood with a seemingly endless run of soggy, would-be anthems and self-pitying celebrity complaints.

Despite his always dead-on guitar playing and decent set of pipes, Setzer pens original material that tends toward repetition. Couple that with a rather pedestrian "Mack The Knife"... and "Vavoom!" comes across as listenable, but ultimately forgettable

This time around, the Garbage tradition of borrowing from all over the map has produced unfocused and derivative results.

Manson still has the most bloodcurdling scream in rock. But the flat-footed musical backing on "Holy Wood" leaves his delivery sounding strained, like an overburdened star left naked on an empty stage.

"Forever" is about as glossy as it gets. It's also understandably predictable.

The music is rarely up to the task set by the lyrics. Truly successful union of melody and words occurs only twice—on the sparsely arranged stream of consciousness titled "Bonefields" and on the album's most original piece, "Another Plane Went Down," which teeters beautifully on the edge of dream and reality.