It's unlikely to storm the charts like their first two records, especially since there aren't standout singles like on the earlier albums, but overall the record works better, perhaps their best album.

Where Director's Cut was a variation of different '70s film themes, Delirium Cordia is a score to Patton's own horror imagination.

A listening experience that is singular, startling, and soulful.

A surprisingly assured album.

A delicate, contemplative union of indie rock, country, and electronica.

Aerosmith sound reinvigorated, even liberated from the need to have a hit power ballad, and they tear through these 12 songs with an energy they seemed to lose sometime after Pump.

Inches is an ambitious concept, but the band's success with it is another example of Les Savy Fav's mix of intellect and volatility.

A heartfelt tribute that's among Clapton's most purely enjoyable albums.

The album's soft-focus allows Blonde Redhead to explore its relatively newfound romanticism more deeply than before... but with less tension between the fragile and harsh aspects of the band's sound, its soft-focus occasionally drifts into lack of focus.

The intricacy of the band's sound remain[s], but with less experimental desperation and considerably better ideas.

There's a sense of heady nostalgia here -- but one more deliberately adolescent and tender than the schlock-infested oldies radio station trends of most soundtracks of this ilk.

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.

This is the first SFA album not to progress from its predecessor, or offer the shock of the new, and that's hard not to miss -- but, if this is the first SFA record you hear, it'll likely intrigue, even dazzle, with its kaleidoscopic blend of pop, prog, punk, psych and electronica.

It marks a return to the sound and feel of Under the Pink and is her best album since then.

More gutsy, more aggressive, and more dynamic than B.R.M.C.

The Last Temptation isn't going to surprise anyone familiar with what Murder Inc. is all about, but their trademarked balance of the rough (Ja Rule) and smooth (Irv Gotti) has rarely sounded better than it does here.

The Wind feels less like a grand final statement of Warren Zevon's career than one last walk around the field, with the star nodding to his pals, offering a last look at what he does best, and quietly but firmly leaving listeners convinced that he exits the game with no shame and no regrets.

Whole New You may not contain a song that will spark sales and awards the way "Sunny Came Home" did, but anyone who, like the artist herself, has come to the safe harbor of family life (even with its many challenges) after a long, uncertain voyage through personal relationships and life experiences will appreciate Colvin's ruminations on the subject.

It's not that Have You Fed the Fish? is vastly inferior to Gough's debut so much as it's an unbalanced and ultimately frustrating album.

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.

This is a breath of cognac- and cigarette-scented air on an almost-dead pop scene.

Surely one of the rap game's most insightful voices.... The beats offer plenty of fresh surprises and the lyrics reflect DMX's increasing focus on introspection.

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

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.

One of the best young producers going in electronic music.

A bakers' dozen of their most focused and cohesive songs. Where their earlier albums were eclectic to the point of being scattershot, this release manages to limit the band's style-switching to dreamy, sweeping epics like "Godless" and "Nietzsche"; sussed, sleazy power pop like "Horse Pills" and "Cool Scene"; and country and gospel ventures like "Country Leaver" and "The Gospel."

An impressive look at Malin's musical maturation.

It's a strong accomplishment, and if you were unlucky enough to have missed this intimate string of shows, it's a document that comes close to bringing the experience into your own home.

Skyscraper National Park is an amazing record that tells its entire story with a hushed voice and subdued instrumentation, but is still more affecting then being screamed at for hours on end.

Melodic, wistful, whimsical, reflective, yet clever, the album showcases Hatfield at her peak, crafting fragile, endearing post-jangle pop songs that reveal themselves shyly and sweetly.

Each song soars with intricate musicianship and melodic lushness.

At times, John Barry conducting the Buzzcocks; at others, EMF covering Petula Clark.

Fortunately they never swap their emphasis on some serious crunk-drawling for rap music's usual curb-sitting; in fact, the group expand their purview to look lovingly at lower-class life from several viewpoints.

This is her sexiest-sounding record, thanks to Jam and Lewis' silky groove and her breathy delivery, two things that make the record palatable throughout too many spoken interludes and songs that just don't quite click.

If the preceding Dusk at Cubist Castle was the Olivia Tremor Control's very own White Album, then the labyrinthine Black Foliage is their Smile -- it's an imploding masterpiece, a work teetering on the cliff's edge between genius and madness.

C'Mon Miracle isn't as showy as some of her previous outings, but it does show that Mirah's music works on both a large and small scale.

The band's poppiest and most upbeat and musical record yet.

Let It Come Down is another masterfully made Spiritualized album, but its very ambitions sometimes overwhelm it.

Partly glamorous and fully imaginative.

What makes it a slightly better album than Rule 3:36, though, is the album's consistency.

She freely mixes hip-hop, Latin, R&B, rock, and trip-hop into a uniquely enticing mix that quickly identifies her as an adventurous artist along the line of Angie Stone, Jill Scott and Lauryn Hill.

It's brighter, denser, catchier than either of its immediate predecessors, and boasts her most assured singing yet.

An invigorating and glorious mess of undistilled Rock fury.

Much of This Time Around feels like a conscious attempt at furthering their craft, defining their sound, and honing their songwriting skills. In other words, it's a stab at maturity.

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

Clem Snide has crafted another gem.

Tour de France Soundtracks is a successful record on anyone's terms; it's one that fans won't need to cringe from, and one that newcomers will be able to enjoy for what it is.

Certainly a vast improvement from their sophomore effort... what makes Twisted Tenderness so vibrant is how Electronic placated their lushness for more of a moody demeanor, mysteriously similar to the likes of U2's electric distortion found on 1997's Pop.

It would have been nice to lift the haze with an uptempo track or two, but at only ten songs and 37 minutes, the album never drags. It is a rare reinvention that comes across as well as this.

Feels like an evening well spent with old friends.

He has moved on from the effervescent prettiness of his former band to make music for himself -- something the Verve might have done somewhere in time, but it wouldn't have been so honest or stripped as this solo jaunt

With Atlas, Latin rock quintet Kinky move closer to actual rock than the electronic pop of their 2001 debut allowed.

This self-produced major-label debut boldly plunders a reverb-and-white noise course previously trampled underfoot by long-gone British bands of the late '80s and early '90s (the Jesus & Mary Chain, the Verve, Ride, the Stone Roses, etc.).

Faded Seaside Glamour trades in the band's dreary English roots for radiating waves and rays of '60s California pop. It's a slick transition, an honest presentation soaked in Delays' crisp musicianship and the foursome's lush harmonies.

It is an unabashedly lush, deeply textured pop record that makes no apologies for its radio-friendliness or its adornments.

Though they may be more focused, Enon will never be straightforward, but that's one of the band's, and album's, strengths.

The allegories and metaphors of her previous work are replaced with direct, vulnerable lyrics, and the album's production polishes the songs instead of obscuring them in noise or studio tricks.

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

Sadly, Poe's work might not be welcomed in the mainstream, which is disappointing because her original compositions have the makings for a new music revolution alongside the likes of Radiohead's Kid A. Haunted is in its own class of twisted intelligence and beauty.

As could be expected, the set works best when the group focuses on material from its most recent forebears: rappers and hardcore bands.

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.

Skull Ring doesn't always capture Iggy at his best as a lyricist, but here what he says isn't half as important as how he says it, and he hasn't sounded this right -- and had music this potent backing him up -- in a decade.

The Rising is one of the very best examples in recent history of how popular art can evoke a time period and all of its confusing and often contradictory notions, feelings and impulses.

The Long Winters get happy on this one, and Roderick's vibrant, newfound confidence as a showman and songwriter allows the Long Winters' sound to finally gel.

The Convincer is a laid-back record that simply feels good.

Ultimately Creature Comforts is another starry refraction in the cosmic music that Black Dice have claimed, one that hasn't failed yet in dazzling.

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.

The music is livelier and almost exuberant at times, and certainly more varied that on the last album.

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.

Even for fans not needing much convincing, Get Ready is a "grower," an album whose focus on sublime songcraft and introverted delivery reveals its secrets slowly and after many listens.

[A] mesmerizing debut.

Kid A is easily the most successful electronica album from a rock band -- so much so that it doesn't sound like the work of a rock band, even if it does sound like Radiohead.... Despite its admirable ambition -- ambition that is all the more impressive in 2000, the year when most bands simply stopped trying -- Kid A never is as visionary or stunning as OK Computer, nor does it really repay the intensive time it demands in order for it to sink in.

A few too many songs share tempos, melodies, and moods to make this a great Kristin Hersh album, but it's still a very good one that her longtime fans will appreciate.

It blends the stripped-down sounds of Pod and the Amps' Pacer into a collection of strangely intimate, feminine garage rock.

Between Here and Gone quietly demands the listener's attention and dives deeply into a labyrinth of emotions before emerging as a validating, affirmative, and instructive experience; it is an album not only to experience, but to hold on to.

Bows + Arrows may not be a drastic change from Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone, but their music, built on loud guitars and organs and strange reflections and remembrances, is so unique that drastic change isn't necessary, and simply having more of it around is more than enough.

A simplistic tour de force through a myriad of proven gangsta rap motifs. Beginning with the standard "I'm Bout It" variation, this time titled "Bout Dat," Master P and his post-Beats By the Pound production team -- primarily Carlos Stephens, XL, Ke-Noe, Myke Diesel, and Suga Bear -- move through the motifs without making them seem too clichéd and, more importantly, performing with an aura of confidence and poise, two attributes sorely lacking on Only God Can Judge Me.

Banhart's music is utterly unselfconscious and poetic.

It's some of the band's fullest-sounding work, rich with strings and keyboard flourishes... The Rising Tide is one of Sunny Day Real Estate's -- and 2000's -- most impressive albums.

The Remote Part captures a divinely aged five-piece.

The downside to a more refined and mature record is that some of their ramshackle charm and energy has been lost. Not enough to make the band bland, but if they take one more step toward professionalism the next record may turn out that way.

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

Filled with vocoders, stylish neo-electro beats, dalliances with trip-hop, and, occasionally, eerie synthesized atmospherics, Music blows by in a kaleidoscopic rush of color, technique, style, and substance.... an appealing, addictive record.

Stone, Steel & Bright Lights manages to capture Jay Farrar at his apex as a solo artist, while at the same time reminding fans of why his solo work continues to be so frustrating.

Save for the unfortunate hip-hop slip-up of "Prego Amore," this is an excellent set of mellow electronic pop.

A Rush of Blood to the Head might not instantly grab listeners, but it's not tailored that way. It pushes you to look beyond dreamy vocals for a musical inner core.

You can fault the album for feeling much like a scatter-shot collection rather than a planned full-length, but forgiving the lack of structure of dancehall albums yields spontaneous rewards when you're dealing with a talent like Beenie.

The most natural and best record they've ever made.

Like Springsteen, Phillips centers his songwriting in a kind of mythic America, an approach he used as well in his former band, Grant Lee Buffalo. But it is an approach that works only if the songs and the characters in them are believable, and Phillips' carefully considered, ornate lyrics often work against that believability.

Jerusalem is the work of a thinking troublemaker with a loving heart, and while more than a few people will be angered by some of his views, Earle asks too many important questions to ignore, and the album is a brave and thought-provoking work of political art.

Isolation Drills sounds like the real rock album GBV have always wanted to make...

This album's 19 songs may seem interchangeable at times in both lyrical and production terms, but Kelly manages to write some great songs that cut through the clutter.

A wondrous listen that tosses jangling pop and psychedelia with such ease that you'd be forgiven for thinking he could do this in his sleep.

Bjork has crafted an album that is both intimate and theatrical, innovative, but tied to tradition. Though Selmasongs paints a portrait of a woman losing her sight, it maintains Bjork's unique vision perfectly.

It all holds together in a way the Olivia Tremor Control often didn't.

The thick veil of gloss that co-producers Joe Henry and Tucker Martine use to coat each of the 11 hypnotic tracks is entirely transparent, resulting in a glass-bottom boat ride that's both cathartic and uncomfortably voyeuristic.

The tempos might not ever exceed mid-level, and half of the songs might exceed five minutes, but the record is anything but a difficult listen or tough to wade through.

Ten years since Rocket's first full-length, the sextet still sounds like they're on a live wire with an endless power source, as inspiring here as ever before.