Beenie Man's smooth adaptability works against him, as the 17 tracks almost inevitably contain a few less than stellar ones. For the most part, however, Art and Life has more good than bad.

The result is not only a more ambitious album than one might have expected, it's also a substantial step forward from Urban Hymns, the Verve's own crowning achievement.

The 10-song album... hits and misses in equal quantities, though even at its worst moments, there's at least a germ of a good idea that simply wasn't realized -- or, in the case of some of the album's longer tracks, was overdone.

What is meant to sound languid and trippy instead comes across as overwrought and pretentious?

The band is beguilingly hypnotic, making music that is decidedly off-kilter. Guitars swirl, grind, and mesh with fluid rhythms and haunting melodies.

A dense and textured rock affair that builds a bridge between grunge, goth, and industrial stylings.

Enter Faith and Courage, an album that reclaims O'Connor's status and stature as it presents us with a kinder, gentler, and matured artist who still sings like a wily archangel and writes with passionate, purposeful clarity.

The disc's first single, "Someone Else Not Me," makes it clear that although the band often sticks to the same songwriting formula, there are still new melodies left to explore.

Plaintive, nakedly honest lyrics collide with keen observation... an hour of enrapturing atmosphere.

Moves with a quick tempo that whips through the album's 15 songs and assorted skits.... There's something innately joyous about many of the group's songs, whether it's how the J5 MCs play verbal double-dutch over the pulsating "Jurass Finish First" or the assembly of sampled snippets that drive the playground anthem "Monkey Bars."

It's not precisely rock and roll, more a summary of the stylistic fusion that has evolved over his last five albums: unequal parts rock, bluegrass, folk, Irish, and punk.

Scottish pop whizzes Belle and Sebastian have finally found a way to rid themselves of their onerous rep as critics' darlings: They've made an album that isn't very good.

Van Helden's compositional modus operandi doesn't vary much between the 11 tracks, but it's a combination that rarely fails to deliver a knockout punch. He introduces one element -- a vocal snippet or a jazzy drum break -- and milks it for a spell, before introducing a contrasting timbre. The two begin to climb in and around each other, as Van Helden tweaks and twists various effects, bringing the music and momentum to a dizzy, unsettling pitch.

Rock affirms that he is no overnight sensation...

Displays a broader sonic reach than its predecessor.

A melange of rather unremarkable vocals; ambitious, overwrought dance-pop; and lyrics that occasionally read and sound like English as a second language.

The Platform, for all its individual strengths, never hits any kind of synergy as an album.

Matchbox Twenty never claimed to be original or challenging or anything more than a lightweight and entertaining pop band. Which is why Mad Season, with its rather casual and jammy feel, is so surprising, so substantial, and much more satisfying than expected.

It's smartly crafted black comedy from hip-hop's greatest white MC, a strong storyteller and a master of the metaphor, who produces staggeringly popular music that's mostly meant to be enjoyed with both a pained grimace and a smirk.

Wasp Star adheres to the bouncy melodicism and skewed humor that's been XTC's stock in trade for 25 years.

They've offered us more inventive, more substantial work in the past...

A formless collection that drifts from one tune to the next, weighed down by a general sense of murk that pervades everything from Tchad Blake's production to the song arrangements and the lyrics.

The band members unleash meditative, self-consciously poetic jams, solidifying their status as the hipster's Phish.

Some of Hatfield's best work ever... [v]irtually every track here is memorable, and often heart-rending, revolving around Hatfield's strengths as an artist: her baby-girl voice; her frank, naive lyrics; and her acoustic melodies.

An unseemly, almost unnecessary foray into heavy metal and hard rock, especially in light of her success on the acoustic side.

Oops! does succeed in making Spears sound sexier and meatier -- and not that innocent -- as its team of top-shelf producers (particularly Max Martin and Rodney Jerkins) supports her adenoidal vocals and breathy hiccups with bottom-heavy arrangements that provide a bit more thrust and pump to the proceedings.

The blond brothers' creative maturity is evident all over the disc's 13 songs.

The band hasn't taken the same sort of strides it has in the past. That's not to say Wishville isn't a strong album, but in the realm of Catherine Wheel recordings, it doesn't deliver on the promise of Adam and Eve.