You’d hardly expect songs as strong as these to be in anyone’s wastebasket, but with only a few exceptions the material assembled here is just as, if not more, intimate and honest as anything on those proper albums.

His effort to make the most tense, uncomfortable record in the world has resulted in something that actually feels pretty straightforward, uncomplicated, and digestible.

The highlights would be far better suited to lesser status on a great album, and turning away from the impressive vocal performances of Rock Action to fully retreat into vocoders and hushed mumbling is a step backwards. [Note: Score listed is an average of two separate reviews, scoring 91 and 72.]

One of the best albums of 2003, one of his best albums post-Clash, and as the highest note Joe Strummer could have exited on.

Finally--a Go-Betweens album with the clarinet solos, harmonies, programmed drums, and splendor this band needs. Oceans Apart really sounds bright yellow and bright orange.

Kicking Television is consistent, professional, and unapologetically inclusive. It’s also a uniformly strong testament from one of rock’s most endearing acts, capable of producing both heady noise jams and shameless lighter-wavers.

Ideally [Fall records will] feature two things: semi-incomprehensible (yet strangely prophetic) ramblings from the eternally tetchy Mark E. Smith, and a band who sound as if their music is perpetually falling down the stairs. The Real New Fall LP delivers on both counts. To much rejoicing.

It is, to be frank, one of the most remarkable and forward-looking rock albums that you will hear all year, and testament to Lanegan’s ability to take desolate lyrics and fashion beautiful, redemptive tunes around them.

Mostly though, it’s status quo.

A diverse batch of songs that she brings together as a consistent set, showcasing Yearwood as not just a fine singer, but also a just-gets-better-and-better artist.

Burn Piano Island, Burn was something approaching a masterpiece and Crimes doesn’t live up to its lofty standard.

Yes, this may well be the best of the Eels, his greatest achievement to date, because he reaches so far on nearly every track, and yet still finds something to grab on to.

Listening to these four discs, you can really picture an entire nation of college students and twenty-somethings promoting their own gigs, designing their radio station playlists and folding their own record sleeves while staying up late to watch 120 Minutes.

Nastasia’s pen has sharpened greatly since The Blackened Air. No more does she scratch out mental images and feelings into terse songs, but builds upon those images and experiences -- placing the listener in her worn, ragged shoes -- instead of in our Gucci’s, 20 feet away, behind a chained link fence.

With about twenty killer lines or couplets per song, unexpected hooks coming from everywhere and one of the most ingenious track sequences of the year, it’s not really so hard to imagine what The Wrens have been doing all this time.

THS’s move toward a purer aping of classic rock is mostly welcome and largely successful; the fallout is the loss of the band’s snaky, blunt riffing, their wit dissipating into a pool of honest rocking.

While Ys is ridiculously overwritten, over-performed and self-contained, her fables always sublimate into the hot fog of real emotions just before they calcify.

Review 1:<A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1413" TARGET="_blank">Kish Kash suffers from a surfeit of ideas and sounds; quite simply there is too much going on here.</A> [score=70] Review 2:<A HREF="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=1412" TARGET="_blank">It is simply how dance music--natch, pop music--should be done. </A> [score=90]

Miranda Lambert is at a very rarified place right now, turning her songs into vehicles for a persona that transcends background narrative and personal history. This is Jagger, Bowie, Debbie Harry, and early MJ territory.

By taking the visceral punch of Dig Me Out and The Hot Rock, blending that with the pop sensibilities of All Hands on the Bad One, and throwing in a few bonuses, Sleater-Kinney have crafted their best album yet.

This is a quietly pulsing release, alive with simple pleasures and celebrating events like hanging out and running into people you know.

The album swells with beauty, but an intimate, unapologetic beauty drained of gravity or mystery that invites and comforts in one stroke, stronger than the gravest clock and gentler than a stray sigh.

Capable punk rock with a slightly skuzzy, yet unmistakably pop edge.

Uninhibited and hushed in all the right places, it&#146;s safe to say that Comets on Fire have hit their stride.

To me, Medulla is an experiment in transforming the primal power of the human voice into a 21st century context. It's an amazing effort, and it's one of the best albums of the year.

It's like a medicinal tonic cleansing your system of the toxic effects of 10+ years of boring, bloated rap full-lengths.

Has a laid-back, gleeful quality to it, one that gives the listener the sense that its musicians are making things up as they go along, unable to hide their excitement at the fact that it all sounds so unexpectedly awesome.

Though this album may not change the minds of the numerous naysayers, it does show an interesting development in the group&#146;s all-around craftsmanship.