A sparkling sophomore effort, carefully designed to avoid any kind of critical slump.

The album almost sounds like an original cast recording of a musical -- the next best thing to being there, but not the same by a long shot.

Sure, it might be easier to accept if it was called a Damon Albarn solo album, but that's splitting hairs. A lousy album is a lousy album, no matter who gets credit.

Gore is almost too polite to these songs, but surely that can be forgiven when his love for them is so apparent.

While their beginning might have had many labeling Elliott as just another emo band, the growth and beauty in their albums continues to show their remarkable resiliency and evolution.

Ultimately, Fever to Tell might be slightly disappointing, but it delivers slightly more than an EP's worth of good to great songs, proving that even when they're uneven, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are still an exciting band.

Dynamic, taut, feisty and clever as ever, Send is this group's fourth-best album.

There's an innocence that's like slow dancing at twilight that sets Night On My Side apart from all the rest.

McKee's High Dive is simply an awe-inspiring album and easily her finest recorded moment.

Here, everything is balanced; the scope is small, close, and textured by pedal steel guitars, very organic percussion, and Lanois' voice way up front.

I'm Staying Out is cut from the same cloth as her first full-length, While You Weren't Looking, but it expands on the ambition of that fine record and shows Cary growing from strength to strength as a writer and a performer.

Beats and percussive effects are far more present and grounded in hip-hop as much as they are rooted in dub, which lend the tracks an organic touch never before present.

All the restless energy adds up to a few too many diversions.

Although its inspirations, musical and conceptual, trace as far back as Kraftwerk, The Complex serves as a reminder that modern devices and glistening production values can be applied to the most primal creative instincts, if utilized by the right -- blue -- hands.

Unfortunately, the Oranges Band can't sustain their head of steam during All Around's second half.

Even if it seems unassuming and underwhelming upon its first listen, Baby I'm Bored with each spin reveals the uniform strength of the songs and the sweet, understated charms of Dando as a performer.

For the most part the results are solid, limited only by some unimaginative arrangements and an unfortunate tendency toward repetitive refrains.

Overall, American Life is better for what it promises than what it delivers, and it's better in theory than practice.

Ultimately, Day I Forgot lacks the emotional poignancy and experimental sonic character present on every track of Musicforthemorningafter.

This album will have to remain the a mark of a band's crazy potential and perhaps a warning siren of what is to come.

One of Lisa Germano's most accessible works yet.

For all the sludge and fuzz on the album, Do Rabbits Wonder? never becomes muddy; the grit and gristle of Whirlwind Heat's abrasive repertoire of sounds remains clearly defined even at its most crazed.

There are too many songs, simply too much to make Say You Will work, even if there is enough to admire to make you wish it did.

This is a remarkable album; it sets a new water mark for Frisell's sense of adventure and taste, and displays his perception of beauty in a pronounced, uncompromising, yet wholly accessible way.

A sharp, versatile modern pop record, showcasing her voice, to be sure, but being much better than expectations, much better than the scores of flop diva records that cluttered the pop landscape in late 2002.

There's a great deal of variety to the record, something that sets them apart from the vast majority of the bands that pay homage to the '60s, but also something that keeps them from developing a distinct identity.

Most importantly, though, the duo has pulled away from the brink; no one ever doubted that Autechre was at the extreme of experimental techno for its own sake, but given a record like Draft 7.30, listeners might actually return for multiple listens.

A hilarious effort loaded with satirical song parodies and rock & roll spoofs.

The first six tracks are all vintage Louris gems -- trembling and honest, with warm melodies and hooks for days. Unfortunately, the album stumbles in the second half.

Not only does it hold the duo's most sleek and vicious material; it also proves that they can construct a bracing, compulsively digestible-in-whole album that presents the broad range of sounds and complementary sequencing that most great albums require.

Love & Distortion still finds the Stratford 4 operating as a band with more taste in music than original ideas.

When an album is as effortlessly warm and pretty as this one is, it's hard to begrudge the band a return to more familiar sonic pastures, and even more so when Mouthfuls suggests that the Fruit Bats' next album will be even more winning.

Accomplished, varied, and rather easygoing, though not gripping, indie pop/rock.

Faceless... grooves more fluidly than Awake, but the band still hasn't managed to locate the pop hooks that made their debut a success.

Summer Sun is so mellow and pretty that it feels uncharitable to call it one of their weakest albums in recent memory; many bands would kill to make music this accomplished.

As before, Ginuwine rises above most of his dozens of imitators in the contemporary R&B realm, with a set of productions -- from the returning Troy Oliver -- that fit his voice perfectly and rate as slightly edgier than the norm.

It is simply the bravest, most emotionally wrenching record she's ever issued.

His tracks are vibrant and imaginative, calling on fuzzed-out guitar solos and summer-day vocals that recall a raft of solid shoegazers.

If you're looking for irony, you're out of luck; if you want to hear a rock band confront the blues with soul, muscle, and respect, then thickfreakness is right up your alley.

Boomkatalog.One is a clever marriage of technology, creativity, and straight-up sass that gets away with being much more enjoyable than it might deserve.

Even when their brazen demeanor shifts tempo for the stainless melodies of "That's What They Do" and "Wake Up," Sahara Hotnights offers a musically cultivated sophistication that's missing in bands like the Donnas and the Vines.

Elefant frontman Diego Garcia must have memorized nearly every song by the Cure while he was growing up, because his band's debut album, Sunlight Makes Me Paranoid, is a shameless, abstract pop mix, a solid indie pop record heavy in new wave aesthetics.

While Source Tags & Codes might be a more cohesive listen and feature slightly stronger songwriting, Secret of Elena's Tomb suggests some promising directions for the band's next album.

Elephant overflows with quality -- it's full of tight songwriting, sharp, witty lyrics, and judiciously used basses and tumbling keyboard melodies that enhance the band's powerful simplicity.

The ability to make a genuine album -- and not just a collage of songs -- from a wide interest in musical styles is truly what makes this album such a delightful and great surprise.

Though the album could use a bit more grit and grime, it's still remarkably solid.

New fans will find Sleeping With Ghosts to be a good record. Old fans, though, might think the band wimped out while growing up.

Backed by stale songs, formulaic arrangements, and mediocre songwriting, Williams is forced to rely on his volcanic personality to bring this album across -- and despite a few strong performances, he sinks into lame self-parody time and time again.

A.R.E. Weapons comes across as partially put-together and all the way dumb -- not dumb meaning fun but dumb meaning dumb.

Unfortunately, Fear Yourself's intricate, careful sound results in a rather bland album.

While Silver Lake sounds like a Vic Chesnutt album through and through, it's also a better than average introduction to the man's work.

More than once everything connects perfectly.

Though her voice is hardly the most impressive instrument in country music, Cash knows how to compensate by using an understated approach to more quietly highlight the essence of a song.

Not a hint of pretense makes even the most formulaic tunes and lyrics ("Little Baby," "Party," "Come On!") seem inspired if not quite inspirational.

What seems less successful are the English language efforts.

The similarity of Meteroa to Hybrid Theory does not only raise the question of where do they go from here, but whether there is a place for them to go at all.

The Remote Part captures a divinely aged five-piece.

The overall mood is casual, laidback, and relaxed.

Echoes of classic U2, Echo & the Bunnymen, and Swervedriver resonate throughout.

A small triumph, but a triumph nonetheless.

Apart from the wonderfully elastic, surprising “Us," it doesn't offer anything striking or resonant.

Grand Mal isn't going for anything bombastic with Bad Timing, but it's a good dose, a healthy spoonful of new millennium indie rock.

At times, the production is so even, the music simply flows out of the speaker without distinction between tracks, but the result is a record that holds together as a nice mood piece while holding up as individual songs.

Hard to imagine Green Day or Rancid having anything this interesting up their sleeve 27 years down the line from their first recording.

Is less a bold statement of principle as it is a blossoming into maturity.

MacIntyre's wise abandonment of the kitchen-sink approach would've benefited this album even more if he had kept the running time below 45 minutes or so; at an hour, some of its nuances are bound to be lost in the shuffle.

Like both Radiohead and Foo Fighters, Cave In is a stylistic chameleon that rarely uses its freewheeling taste as a crutch to present self-indulgent material.

Kids looking to anger their parents to the point of losing it should pick up this CD, turn up the stereo, and lock the door.

Easily his most accomplished record since his days in the Lost Boyz.

Transfiguration is a quiet record and might lose some listeners in it's sleepy summer melancholy, but M. Ward is the real deal.

Virtually every song on Up the Bracket is chock-full of the bouncy, aggressive guitars, expressive, economic drums, and irresistible hooks that made the Strokes' debut almost too catchy for its own good.

The album's a bit more edgy than any of her American contemporaries, but it's still not too far from [Lauryn] Hill and other neo-soul figures.

Like label mates Aphex and Autechre, this all amounts to something of a tough listen, though it is tracks like "Sixnot6" and "Distracted2" which really reward the listener willing to wade through the bleak atmospherics.

His last two albums also reflected his ongoing growth as an artist, but Supper's settled but intriguing warmth is an even bigger step forward.

The fifth album doesn't deviate far from the band's tried and true sound, but it's solid nonetheless.

The album's subtle build from bleak electronica to ethereal alternative rock is a stunning accomplishment; his productions haven't maintained this kind of flow since the first Soul Assassins disc.

Oskar Tennis Champion would surely please most Momus fans, though it does not match up to his best albums.

Builds considerable muscle to the skeletal frailty of intricate guitar work while commendably maintaining all which was good of their debut.

The arrangements and solid production, however, aren't enough to save the material.

Another stunning effort from one of rock's underground heroes.

Feels like an evening well spent with old friends.

Consolidates the strengths and weaknesses of the American Movie one disc.

Though he's never as instantaneously gratifying as the Streets, the Roots or Jurassic 5, his efforts to continually defy convention in both production and lyrics - simultaneously looking forward to electronics and back to days of good rhymes, talent and passion - make for a rewarding, maybe even educational, listen.

Just when the strings, piano, and rainstorm effects threaten to turn Sing the Sorrow into a My Dying Bride album, there is a burst of hardcore like "Dancing Through Sunday" to recall California pioneers of the genre like Dead Kennedys or SST transplants Husker Du.

The melodies are there, but they sure aren't catchy pop.

The songs, while as elegant and naturally paced as they've ever been, tend to merely drift along.

Sleepwalk an essential body of work for those who enjoy their electronic music with a little human interference.

At its best, though, this album is like having a beautiful girl hit you repeatedly over the head with a baseball bat.

La Bella Mafia affirms Kim's briefly questionable status as a formidable female presence in a man's world and once again turns the often sexist mindset of rap on its head in the process.

Magnolia Electric Co. may not be the best Songs: Ohia album, but it is certainly the most approachable. It has a big, open feel certain to appeal to any classic rock fan, but retains the warm intimacy of previous albums.

Another collection of typical speed punk tunes, virtually indistinguishable from the work of Green Day and Blink-182, not to mention dozens of other similar bands.

Adding some variety to their tempos would make the band even more impressive, but with More Parts Per Million they've created a bracing, charming debut.

Their loudest, noisiest, most immediate album yet -- and it's one of their best.

The Ugly Organ is greater than the sum of its parts, with tracks that flow into one another seamlessly in spite of the wildly varying tempo and stylistic changes, not surprisingly like a classical piece in that regard.

The result is a bit jarring, but there's a fervent originality at work here, despite all of the referencing of the halcyon past.

The productions are much better than the songs.

Though the Manchester duo might not be completely on par with the bands they emulate, they more than earn an A for effort while crafting some wonderful melodies along the way.