A brilliant shot of Veloso the pop composer.

A showcase for some undervalued compositional chops.

For the second time in 2006, Wu-Tang’s Ghostface has released an album that makes it seem everyone else in the hip-hop world should be paying more attention to Ghostface.

Fortunately, getting the money isn’t all this follow-up to last year’s breakthrough Let’s Get It cares about, and the singles here are fire.

Too often on The Evolution she’s looking over her shoulder, too self-conscious to be a real seductress.

Their third effort finds the four-piece twisting confessional post-punk into something startling, brash, and exhilarating.

Even if the disc’s too long and there’s too much coasting here and there to qualify it as near-classic, there’s more than enough to convince doubters that Snoop can still deliver.

[It] depends less on the band’s gear-smashing antics than on their sense of tunecraft, which isn’t as highly developed.

He avoids being too folksy or slipping into an acoustic coma by layering percussion, electric guitars, and strings when needed. By the end, you’ll feel you’ve been through the same wringer.

Urban has the market wisdom to balance his artistic efforts with assembly-line Nashville pop-chart fodder.

This latest entry in the old-icon-meets-young-iconoclast trend is lit up by the sparks between the principals.

Noise Floor is a smattering of moods and modes all tied together by Oberst’s love-it-or-loathe-it voice.

Several cuts on +/-’s third full-length... feature tunes sturdy (and dreamy) enough to satisfy a Death Cab for Cutie fan. But Let’s Build a Fire is also full of moments that suggest Baluyut has grown tired of the straightforward indie-rock approach.

It’s a shame he doesn’t indulge more of his rock impulses, because his ornate mid-tempo predilections tend to water down his natural charisma.

Instead of wandering into opaque experimentation, as they’ve been known to do in the past, they corral those unruly elements into a series of hummable, memorable tunes.

Normal Happiness... could be one of his most satisfying sets.

For a gangster, Banks sure plays it safe.

As frontman Craig Finn tries singing instead of just reciting and the band hang tighter around their major-chord riffs, the music sounds older than ever, recalling beautiful-loser ’70s rock like Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungleland.”

In their music... the Decemberists are more confident and willing to stretch out than ever before.

His much-delayed solo debut eschews the kind of risk his productions are known for, and the result turns into one big mash of slow fades waiting for pretty ladies in the video.

It’s as warm and melodic as the Soft Boys’ Nextdoorland was brittle and jagged.

Under the Skin’s tenderly whispered ruminations... are gripping little creations, full of weird acoustic-guitar riffs and uncomfortably intimate vocals and open revelations about the anxiety he feels in trying to reassert his creative identity at this late date.

The results unfold like a well-plotted novel.

The echo-saturated clang works as background music if you’re washing dishes in a haunted house or performing at-home knee surgery, but hunker down with the sound by itself and it evaporates like stale smoke.

It’s their honest simplicity that offers a refreshing contrast to the irony of neo-new-wave disco retreads that are all the rage in the UK.

He’s brought together his best batch of melodies yet, along with lyrics that aim less to shock than to amuse.

Kasabian can’t do anything besides snarl, a limitation that’s starting to show after only two albums.

Eschewing the live-in-the-studio roughness of 2004’s On My Way, he returns to the fuller production of his solo debut, 2002’s Sha Sha.