The results are goofy but undeniably exhilarating.

If nothing really catches hold as a song, there's still a lot of tuneful, appealing material here, and it functions well as a party album for those hot days of summer.

While Killing Joke's discography has more than its fair share of awkward and overly ambitious albums, they've once again returned to the fury and focus of their classics.

Just a shade less stunning than his last full-length, Emotional Technology at least establishes him as one of the better album constructors in the singles-driven world of dance.

This is Pure Guava performed with the precision and cleanliness of White Pepper -- perhaps a mixed blessing for some (those who long for the Scotchguard-fueled madness of The Pod), yet it's a sheer delight for those who patiently sat through the longest period between Ween albums yet.

Packed with great songs and performances, it re-establishes Golightly as a beacon of grace and restraint in a world sadly bereft of both.

While Luke Steele's influences show through on all of Lovers' tracks, somehow the album avoids sounding totally derivative; instead, it just reveals Steele as a pop chameleon and an expert at pastiche.

Living Outside is as conscious a follow-up record as there can be, but it's likely also the record Sense Field would've made anyway, even without the band's mainstream ascendancy.

The constant changes of direction can be a little jarring on the first couple plays, but they eventually become one of the album's charms.

The power of Jane's Addiction is undiminished by Strays (this is still a band creating music unlike any other artist), but the imagination, bravado, and songwriting smarts apparent from previous classics is sadly missing.

Phantom Power is a very good album (and, again, compared to many of SFA's peers in 2003, it is far ahead of the pack), but it does lack some of the things that made earlier Super Furry Animals so exhilarating -- the grit, the wild abandon, the absurdity, and the sheer unpredictability, where it was impossible to tell what would happen next.

It's All in Your Head doesn't have the punch that Eve 6's previous albums possessed.

Betke wisely abandons a sound that had been developed to its full extent, yet the outcome is a set of hip-hop/dub hybrids that stumble out of the speakers with a fatigued skank.

Blessed with a voice that immediately announces itself, Gray still hasn't found a musical personality to complement it.

Red Dirt Road is not just one of Brooks & Dunn's most ambitious records, it's also one of their best.

Satisfying but rarely challenging, Quixotic is a fantastic start to a solo career, and its display of range, talent, and charm suggests that Martina Topley-Bird has an endless well of creativity at her disposal and that she is most likely destined for greater things.

There really isn't another dance/rap act on the scene that combines snarky teenage style with seriously slammin' retro dance beats the way Fannypack does.

The Violet Hour not only perfects the gorgeously hazy pop of their previous releases, it also adds a guileless freshness to it that is completely apt for their debut album.

Those who appreciate an honest, basic record will enjoy Paloalto's simple approach.

The songs have about as much personality as Ashanti's voice, but that actually is a point in its favor, since it keeps everything on an even keel and makes Gotti and Santana's stylish production the star.

Another title that demonstrates what an awesome period the late '70s and early '80s was for music.

Answers has a heavy downtown spirit, with standard instruments played in a unique fashion, and an aggressive interplay that's nearly antagonistic.

If you can get past the clothespin-on-nose delivery... and the constant up-and-down swoops and dives in which it's delivered, the album has a certain sense of awkward, ramshackle charm that's frequently unhinged and claustrophobic at once.

But while De-Loused in the Comatorium may well remove the stigma from the prog and art rock forms it suggests, and is certainly a monument to unbridled creativity, it can also be seen as bombastic and indulgent.

All the Gang Starr trademarks are in place, from Premier's perfect upchoruses to Guru's reedy voice cutting or instructing, and sounding better than ever.

Terroir Blues is a significantly more ambitious and confident work from Farrar than Sebastopol, but it's also more elusive, and ultimately this is the sort of record fans will love, but the unfamiliar will have a hard time embracing.

Like a latter-day Digital Underground, Black Eyed Peas know how to get a party track moving.

The album doesn't have the detail of character that made Michelle Branch so appealing the first time out.

There's nothing wrong with a change of pace, but there's a startling lack of depth in either the words, which are entirely too literal, or the music, whose hooks are at once too obvious and not ingratiating enough.

Keep It Together may not feature the emotional dynamics or track-by-track genius of Lost and Gone Forever, but it has something that its predecessor didn't: an unabashed pop anthem that dares you to sit still.

The first half is good enough to make Dangerously in Love one of the best mainstream urban R&B records released in 2003.

A work of beautiful, desolate fragility.

Menomena clearly thinks of itself as a clever bunch of musicians. Maybe next time around they'll be more interested in sharing their wit with their listeners rather than just alluding to it.

Scorpio Rising may not have the coherence of its forerunner, but its individual eclectic achievements still add up to an engaging album.

The changes are so minute and the record so unassuming and melody free that it is really hard to care about the band anymore.

They've got a rough, nervy, lo-fi take on power rock that has the weird immediacy of the Microphones' Mount Eerie.

With Happy Songs for Happy People, Mogwai gets to have it both ways -- it's ironic and sincere, concise and expansive, challenging and accessible, and it's one of the band's best albums, no two ways about it.

No hooks, no lyrical drama, no surprises, nothing at all inside the pretty package.

The total effect is less a spin through 3 Feet High and Rising than it is an hour of Yogi Bear cartoons -- fine when you hear any one track, but much too much over the course of a full album.

Those are the two things that Twice has in spades: soul and passion. Add to that a bunch of great songs, and you've got yourself a real keeper.

Few bands can get away with being in a holding pattern like Tindersticks.

Clem Snide has crafted another gem.

Somber and smart, Decoration Day also manages to kick like a mule, and if isn't quite a masterpiece along the lines of Southern Rock Opera, it's strong enough to suggest the Drive By Truckers have another masterpiece in them.

This sophomore effort finds Brand New maturing, reaching for textures and song structures instead of clichés.

There's nothing that betrays their high standards of craft, but, on a whole, the songs are neither as hooky nor as resonant as the ones unveiled on its predecessor.

This time, the one flaw may simply be that the group doesn't know when to say when.

Thought-provoking and a bit of a downer in ways Grandaddy probably didn't intend, Sumday isn't a totally empty experience, but its ambitions and results don't add up as well as might have been expected.

The truth of its fineness and devastating beauty is in the hearing.

Despite the fact that it seems more like a bunch of songs on a disc than a singular body, its impact is substantial.

St. Anger looks inward with a hard eye, and while it finds some grinning demons in that pit, it also unearths some of the sickest grooves of Metallica's 20+ year lifespan.

One long angelic hymn for an insane world with the intimacy of a friend playing guitar in your living room and the grandeur of Sigur Rós.

While the Rapture and to a lesser extent Radio 4 made off with all the headlines, !!! was making the best music of all the retro-punk-disco dancers.

Polished and tight in all the right places.

Whatever spaces the arrangements leave enable the imagination to play as much of a role as the instrumentation.

A simple, straight-ahead match of excellent MC with great producers.

Aside from a handful of real solid honest-to-gosh gems, the whole album feels a little too casual and off-the-cuff to stand on equal footing with her other recordings.

Another winning record.

Paper Monsters is a competent solo debut, and although it doesn't stray too far from the Depeche mold, Gahan does manage to put his own stamp on the songs.

It's the first album of hers that's a sheer pleasure to hear.

Like the best in commercial dance, Audio Bullys are excellent, distinctive producers, though their songwriting isn't in the same category.

It's not as poppy as some of his other albums, but it is more focused and appealing, and one of the stronger testaments to his ornery talents.

Creatively, My Private Nation, Train's third album, is the moment this band has worked for since it started making records.

Although listeners who found the first Broken Social Scene release a nice ambient pop treat may be put off by this one's all-over-the-map approach, it's certainly a much more accessible release overall and there's bound to be something in here that you'll enjoy.

The ladies of Northern State deliver funky breaks and tight grooves on Dying in Stereo, and keep the hip-hop flavor without being vulgar and crass.

What gives it some distinction is that there's a freshness to the music, largely dervied from its quick recording, a quality that has been lacking in his records for many years now, arguably since Big Daddy.

This is a lot closer to the type of compilation you'd get with an issue of CMJ than something special.

Unlike the Streets, Lafata spits everything with a straight face, making his slow-mo Baroque on "Break Or Be Broken" and hardcore pop finale "Let's Get It On" (which features a Peaches-like guest appearance by Sue Cie) into a kitschy farce worthy of his vanguard reputation.

The album is potentially valuable as a source for samples, but it fails as a listening experience.

Joan of Arc have once more surpassed themselves as artists.

Songs that have grown overly familiar through years of play seem fresh and new because of these vigorous, muscular performances.

Fans who have stayed with the band this long will probably find the album a breath of fresh air.

Hawley is a compelling mix of the pastoral beauty of English folk rockers like Nick Drake and the urban cool of balladeers like Scott Walker with a dash of the otherworldliness of Julee Cruise.

Yours, Mine & Ours is a truly grand record, another in the string of classic releases by Joe Pernice.... The kind of record fans of intelligent pop music played with real emotion should purchase. Immediately.

Those who connect with Staind will likely find this more consistently satisfying than Break the Cycle.

Electric Six's m.o. of inflating rock clichés to grotesque proportions, adding a dash of tongue-in-cheek pomposity, and then laughing at the results can generate more than just a great single. Granted, that single is still the reason to own Fire, but fans of that song probably won't feel burned by the rest of the album.

The most successful songs are those that either embrace their influences so fully that they become glorious reproductions or those that dispense with the idol worship altogether.

Though it's not quite as immediate as their excellent debut album, You've Seen Us...You Must've Seen Us, KaitO U.K.'s band red delivers more tightly coiled post-punk-pop with shouty vocals and elastic guitars, and also delves deeper into the group's experimental side.

The album's quirky appeal is reflective of Rooney's self-assuredness as musicians.

The Starlight Mints weren't excessively ambitious in the studio and the coolness of Built on Squares makes for a pleasant listen while capturing a band in the making.

40 minutes of soul-searching and bittersweet recollection that nevertheless rocks with major-league efficiency.

Deftones sticks a little too close to familiar territory this time around.

Harcourt experiments in more ways than one on this album, never overindulgent in the process.

The biggest problem with the record is that the eye is on the big picture - from how the songs fit together, to how the overall sound fits a song - that the individual moments aren't all that memorable, clearly lacking singles as forceful as those that fueled Throwing Copper and not quite as compelling as a whole as its predecessor, V.

It feels as if Manson now feels liberated from not being consistently in the spotlight, and his music has opened up as well.

If they can keep this sound and get back the hooks, they'd have something as good as their first two records, but, as it stands, this is their first stumble.

It's an album that kills with catchiness.

Decadent, theatrical, and magnetic, Alter falters only when the band's ambitions get the better of them, but the album's slight unevenness doesn't prevent it from being tremendously exciting.

As a whole, Politics of the Business never quite jells into the cohesive statement it wants to be.

The weightless drones and light filigrees are as mesmerizing and familiar as ever when folded into each other.

Other records from 2003 have been more innovative and certainly heavier, but Easy Listening is so golden, so upbeat and so perfectly right out of the Midwest's sleeper hotbed of rock that it simply sounds bigger than life.

While it's not quite the revelation that That's Not What I Heard was, Movement is still a dramatic album that shows that the Gossip is a powerful group continuing to define and redefine their music.

It's honest and raw in the sense that McCulloch is cool with where he's from and unconcerned with where he's headed.

The record offers something to nearly every audience that could approach it, with a bit of a groove for electronic fans, an obtuse sense of music-making for experimentalists, and a dreamy melodicism sure to endear it to indie-pop fans.

The Old Kit Bag is Richard Thompson's simplest and most unadorned album since Shoot Out the Lights, and while it isn't an immediate masterpiece like that album, it confirms that this man's work is best presented at its simplest, and the result is a modest triumph.

A record that practically demands a set of headphones to fully appreciate it; concentrated listening is the only way to reconcile the long passages of ambience with the bracing pop songs that often interrupt.

Electric Version is an enjoyable and easy listen, chock-full of hungry hooks and brimming with indie rock's classic humility.

If there were any doubters about Lamb being the brightest, most talented singer/producer combo in electronica, What Sound is all the argument needed to the contrary.

A set of electronica that's nearly as challenging as Autechre's relentlessly academic beat manipulation but just as funky and instantly gratifying as a Fatboy Slim flag-waver.