The French Kicks have changed dramatically and not always for the better.

Sexsmith is incapable of dishonesty, insincerity or cliché in his writing or performance, but none of these melodies soar and the lyrics reveal nothing new for him.

Like all great garage rock, it all sounds the same, but that doesn’t matter.

Stevens' most personal and focused album.

Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes is diverting, short (47 minutes), atmospheric and contains exactly one truly memorable song.

Less punkish than its predecessor, the Liars’ second effort, although marred by Wagnerian excess, lyrical inanity and overlong atmospherics, is still a record of non-commercialized large beats and immense technical skill.

AwCmon is the stronger of the two, with a trio of outstanding instrumentals acting as the backbone for a suite of typically moody songs.

NoYouCmon is more eclectic and less focused, with fine moments to be found.

The expansive palette of the debut has been shorn of its tumult and restlessness.

Perfectly arranged and one of the best of 2004, it's an ideal starting point for newcomers.

The album glistens with supple melodies, chameleon-like stances towards the history of rock and orderly, accomplished instrumental prowess.

It's like everything that has always been great about the Red House Painters made a notch or two more exciting in the studio.

There's nothing about the quintet's second album that audibly acknowledges the impact of its debut.

A shambolic, blues-based record that will repel purists of the 12-bar form but delight anyone who brings a six-pack and a cockeyed sense of humor to the party.

Cedars is a keeper.

The album is ingeniously constructed; many of the songs play off each other while seeming off the cuff and loose-limbed.

This disappointing album is infectious and literate, but erratic compositional fortitude and lack of daring is a drag, as each clever step is followed by another clever step.

Still quietly bombastic and still occasionally in search of an author, the spacey, haunted music bounces from the ethereal to the grounded dirt that our shoes kick away on imagined dance floors.

Mostly acoustic, with flecks of jaunty snares and loping bass work, his singing is the best so far -- confessional, inspired and bracingly touching.

The slower numbers (“Ha Ha High Babe,” “Shade of Blue”) rely less on showy atmosphere and more on loose guitar accents, which makes the whole affair earthier, rawer, more real.

This is no passive listen -- it is Trace rendered impressionistically -- but it has many rewards among difficult and unsettling stretches.

The songs left over from the original, non-Matrix album form the emotional core of Liz Phair and make it worth hearing.

Hawley emerges as a fine manipulator of studio-driven baroque pop.

Black Cherry strips away almost all of the film score drama of Felt Mountain. This would be a bigger disappointment than it is if the album's dance-oriented, neo-new wave were less successful than it is.

If Hayes had let her disparate styles duke it out a little more, some of the material that tends to run together might have been thrown into sharper relief and become more memorable for it.

Beyond the musical unevenness of an album whose finer qualities interleave those mounting miscalculations, a rising suspicion that misery is of more comfort to her than happiness makes the tenor of Williams' songs increasingly hard to bear.

A masterpiece, regardless of hype.

A little blood and dirt and humor might have catapulted this album into greatness.

Where Shall You Take Me? brings Jurado back to familiar, minimalist territory.

Emphasizing colorful vocals over the average playing benefits the band enormously.

Jaunty, rambunctious, and youthful.

The impact is inconsistent but stronger.

Teems with all the life that the band omitted from Oui.

The group's masterpiece.

A magnificent, epic take on American history and mythology.

[A] blindingly good debut.

Wildly experimental and unique, Melody A.M. belongs in the collections of fans of lush keyboard instrumentation, '70s soul, new age and Boards of Canada-style strangeness alike.

[The opening] quartet of tunes blows the band's wad, leaving the rest of the album scattered with only moderately cool mid- tempo metal, all of it delivered with gusto but not enough serious hooks to make anything stand out.

The sound is fuller, the arrangements more complex; most importantly, the songs are just a whole lot better [than Parachutes'].

The songs are not as strong overall as on her previous albums, and the tempo neither flags nor picks up over the course of the album.

An exciting mix of audacious punk rock stammering held together by such disparate art-rock nomenclature and tendencies as vocal transmutation, discordant climaxes and ironic herky-jerky rhythms.

Positive energy and enthusiasm go a long way here.

To their vast credit, even if the songs resemble a greatest hits package of indie rock, each guitar break, each bridge comes alive with experimental toughness.

A strong batch of Dylanesque songs.

More time spent in the songwriting lab might have yielded material more suitable to the evident studio effort invested and brought Wilco closer to making a truly great album.

While hardly bad... the album too often sounds as if the ceaseless invention that made Nixon so vibrant has been replaced by self-consciousness of the wrong sort.

Whereas Music Has the Right to Children's pastoral atmospherics were airy and open, Geogaddi is faintly claustrophobic and tense.

The three- guitarist approach brings back the spark and rush of their 1988-'94 peak.

A dandy little 36-minute album of simple pop tunes with all the right moves and no real motion.

A stunning flop, a failure on almost every conceivable level -- conceptual, artistic, commercial.

This fine album contains several striking songs (notably “The Dark Is Rising” and “Nite and Fog”), but it suffers in comparison to the artistic breakthrough of its immediate predecessor.

Has muddied sound in spots but careful, detailed and varied playing.

Their worst album so far.... Too much of the album ("Expecting," "Aluminum," "I Can't Wait," "I Can Learn") wallows in an odd, crusty hard-rock haze.

This mainstream update to the unvarnished directness of Sweet Old World starts slow and flirts with blandness but sparks to life about halfway through.

When the music is fully operational... the potential for greatness is obvious.

When it pays off -- which is more often than not -- BRMC's fuzzed- out angry shoegazer stance reaches levels of sonic brilliance unmatched by any of their peers.

A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure is many things: inevitable, insane and their finest album.

Even for a debut album, it’s too tentative and timid for its own good.

A record which adheres closely to the formula but fails to generate any sort of spark from it.

Begins the band's slide into sonic monotony and lyrical malaise.

She takes a slower, more folk-rock approach to much of the material.

It’s easily the weakest album in her career and sounds even worse when compared to the subtle path of Beautiful Creature.

The only complaint to be lodged against Bachelor No. 2, other than its partially duplicated track listing, is the mid-tempo groove from which Mann rarely extricates herself.

While nothing here fails the consistent artistry of his work, neither does any of it make the direct connection to a soul and heart.

A calm triumph.

The album navigates effortlessly from peak to peak.