This is the most enjoyable album of Warren's and Nate's careers to date, by a long shot, and it's among Snoop's most enjoyable as well.

While their songs still maintain the loose intimacy that was apparent on their debut AM, the music has matured to reveal a complexity that is rare in pop music, yet showcased perfectly on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

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

The band manages to retain a good deal of their trademark zaniness while producing what might be their most focused and polished work.

Once again Cee-Lo has recorded a peerless album, except this time he's recorded one that should connect, or at least deserves to.

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

The songs here often found their way into the group's tours for Blackberry Belle; this probably accounts for how much they resemble Twilight material, even as the original shape is maintained.

Spoon and Rafter has no trouble making Ryan Adams seem like more of a farce than he already is, and it's deserving of at least half of the attention given to anything released by Wilco.

Underscores that the band still has more vitality and ideas than most other artists associated with that [electroclash] trend ever did.

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.

It's a little artier than Heathen, but similar in its feel and just as satisfying.

Granted, Nelly's rapping here is more restrained and insubstantial than ever, but when you have a cast of collaborators like this, the actual rapping is beside the point -- these are fun songs, plain and simple, and wonderfully catchy to boot.

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.

A solid heavyweight of ten skillful tracks, each one more unlike the other in form and feat, yet similar in ample amounts of prowess and poise.

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.

So Jealous is the most satisfying album Tegan and Sara have yet made.

Andrew W.K.'s debut found meaning in partying, but The Wolf sounds like a party about finding some meaning in life.

Handsome Boy Modeling School succeeds where so many compilations fail. It's a great album from start to finish.

Like a guided tour through the last 20 years of guitar rock.

Impresses on the same level as the best of his career.

It never feels as urgent as his prime work, but it's at once his most accomplished and visceral record as a veteran rocker.

The Libertines is an accurate, sometimes uncomfortable reflection of the band at this point: more scattered and unstable than they were on Up the Bracket, but also more ambitious and more interesting.

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.

Welch and Rawlings are at the top of their form and continue to make the best Americana recordings without resorting to drenching their albums in guest stars, but by writing and performing heartfelt songs that speak with a clear and undeniable honesty.

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

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

Get Rich isn't quite the masterpiece 50 seems capable of, impressive or not. But until he drops that truly jaw-dropping album -- which you know he will -- this will certainly do.

Nothing short of astonishing.

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.

It may not be an album that's as funny or timeless as The Transformed Man, but Has Been is every bit as bizarre.

One of his most consistent and accomplished albums, sounding better with each repeated play.

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.

It's a satisfying, carefully crafted representation of their career to date.

2004's early front-runner for art rock album of the year.

Chutes Too Narrow's breezy subtlety is less accessible than the Shins' debut, but that doesn't mean the album lacks great songs.

Confidence bursts throughout, and for a band that has been around seven years and has never released a studio full-length album until now, achieving nearly epic-like status is quite impressive.

Like faith, these songs require patience, as their almost mantra-like arcs take their time to fully form.

If it's a relatively minor effort, it still sounds like the work of a major artist, and there's lots of pleasure to be found in it.

13's strange, frustrating combination of expert musicianship and self-indulgence reveals the sound of a band trying to find itself.

Afrodisiac is Brandy's fourth consecutive durable showing, fluffed out with a few innocuous — if still very listenable — filler moments, but it is stocked with a number of spectacular -- and emotionally resonant -- singles that wind up making for her most accomplished set yet.

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.

Although the duo didn't record nearly enough material to justify checking out quite so soon, Sung Tongs is a striking record, a breath of fresh air within experimentalist indie rock.

Because of the emphasis on brevity and variety (and especially quality), the album's over before you know it and you're left feeling hungry for more Korn.

The dank emotional caverns of Bubblegum offer some territory well worth exploring for the strong-willed.

The record does sound good when it's playing, but [its] conservatism is what keeps HTDAAB earthbound and prevents it from standing alongside War, The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby as one of the group's finest efforts.

K-Os doesn't necessarily pursue Rebellion's themes far enough. But give him a break -- it's only the cat's second album.

If you sort of liked the first record but wished it was more interesting, that it had more punch of both the sonic and emotional variety, then your wishes have come true.

From the first few minutes of RUOK?, it's clear he's begun another shift, from the dense sampladelic dance of Actual Sounds + Voices to a sparse, haunted style that leaves much to the imagination but still displays acres of production prowess.

While a little more depth in their songwriting would make them unstoppable, the Futureheads' first full-length is an undeniably exciting debut that just gets better with repeated listens.

Welcome to the North finds the Music's ambitious blend of post-grunge and space rock much hungrier and angrier than its predecessor.

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.

At base, Contino is a reasonably entertaining and sometimes quite compelling combination of slower dance aesthetics translated into rock & roll terms and sounds. It just isn't the end of the world, that's all.

It's not so much a return to form as it is a simple return, Morrissey picking up where he left off with Maladjusted, improving on that likeable album with a stronger set of songs and more muscular music.

One can't help but feel that this is still a transitional album in general, but at least they've overcome their Garbage fascination and seem to be delivering music more in tune with their attitude and style.

While Restless is not the crowning achievement many predicted, it is X to the Z's most-consistent effort to date.

It's too club-centric, too fashion-obsessed, too willfully weird to be a No Doubt album... a glitzy, wild ride that's stranger and often more entertaining than nearly any other mainstream pop album of 2004.

Fans looking for his next big statement might be let down at first listen, but MM..Food? is as vital as anything he's done before and entirely untouched or stymied by the hype.

Even when there are plenty of other bands working in a similar style, Q and Not U remain more distinctive and harder to classify than many of their peers, which makes Power an exciting album and proof that the band has variety and vitality to spare.

It's hard not to wish that the album had a bit more of the quirks and muscle that gave Breach its backbone. Without it, Red Letter Days isn't quite as forceful, but it is accomplished, melodic, and attractive.

Moorer, besides being good at penning lyrics, is smart enough to write catchy hooks.

It's possible that The Meadowlands might be a "better" album if it were more focused and logical, but there's something to be said for its immersive, stream-of-consciousness approach.

It's more focused than Want One and as such packs more of wallop both musically and emotionally.

The Chain Gang of Love is far more glossy and layered in melodies compared to Whip It On's gray-colored coolness.

From its aggressive metal and hardcore overtones to lyrics that rail against societal ignorance and a world gone wrong, Chuck is a few steps ahead of the smirking, jocular anthems that populated Sum 41's previous output.

Franz Ferdinand reveals more depth and more new directions than their previous work suggested.

God's Son isn't quite the masterpiece is could be -- mostly because Nas is so self-involved, sometimes seemingly intoxicated by his kingliness -- but it's surely one of the most remarkable albums of the Queensbridge rapper's highlight-filled career, just a notch or so below Illmatic and Stillmatic.

The most challenging work of Björk's career.

Mt. Eerie is a truly stunning album, managing to be deeply beautiful and unnerving, as well as deeply thoughtful, without ever seeming pretentious or heavy-handed.

Like its companion recording, Nino Rojo is about the shared delight of new encounters with music and language and is an adventure in the hearing.

At its best sounds like a suicidal combination of Blur and the Divine Comedy.

Rhythm and Gangster is right up there with his best while being riskier than anything before it.

On this 11-track masterpiece, so full of adrenaline and swarming moods, ATDI has created one of the most infecting and mind-blowing rock albums in a long time. While most of the tracks are of the more aggressive edge, this is undeniably the band's most focused and well put together and, therefore, best all-around album yet.

If you know Sexsmith's work, then you already have a good idea of how good this album is, and if you don't, this is a fine place to get acquainted.

As fun as all of this is (and the lip-smack glam of "Music Is the Victim" is very, very fun), the Sisters' revisionism can also get them in trouble.

The Eminem Show is essentially a holding pattern, but it's a glorious one -- one that proves Eminem is the gold standard in pop music in 2002, delivering stylish, catchy, dense, funny, political music that rarely panders.

The most surprising thing about the album is that it sounds exactly like classic Steely Dan, but without feeling dated.

While there is much good music here, there isn't much that adds to Nirvana's legacy, nor is there much that's revelatory.

While the artifact quality and live vibe of this music come as no surprise, the show band emphasis of Trey Anastasio suggests that this artist may be placing a little less faith in the voodoo of improvisation and more in the payoff guaranteed by musicians who can tear up the same charts night after night.

This is a comeback record to be proud of; it not only sates the appetite of those fans who felt Linda Thompson left the scene too abruptly, but it is also the British folk record that everyone interested in the genre has been waiting such a long time for.

The Magnificent has an incredible range; Jeff does it all well, even when moving from soulful R&B ("Rock Wit U" with Eric Roberson) to basement hip-hop on the very next track ("Scram" with Freddie Foxxx).

It's beautiful, weird, and difficult to love.

The group sometimes sacrifices immediacy for angular melodies and riffs that don’t catch hold. On balance, though, One Beat’s musical progression is still extremely impressive.

Many of their B-sides are just as good as their album tracks, so it's terrific to see them collected onto a single disc. But a number of factors make it somewhat disappointing, not the least of which is that Complete B-Sides is available only as a U.K. import, due to U.S. licensing problems.

An all around flavor of melancholy as the loose guitars and laid back current result in the labeling of "Rainy Day indie."

Although it is never overpowering, Dusty Trails is too well crafted to be reduced to mere background music.

The band's best record in some time, and for anyone not a purist, it's possibly Morcheeba's best ever.

While the album lapses occasionally with a couple of patches of redundant production, Date of Birth is a strong follow-up from a crew who keep it real by nature.

In the same vein as Saint Etienne, Ivy, and Emiliana Torrini, Autour de Lucie casts a spell.

With You're the One, Paul Simon is back on track, writing and recording timeless music that keeps him on par with Neil Young and David Bowie, but in his comforting familiar way.

Dead Media thankfully brings the focus back to personal matters, and it sees a breath of fresh air introduced in the form of analog synthesizers and audio experimentation.

Though Variaciones Espectrales might be too noisy to work as background music for some listeners and too experimental for the dancefloor, it's another accomplished, fascinating slice of sound/beats exploration from this consistently pioneering artist.

This all flows well and is quite a good piece of mood music, yet there's no hiding that for all their political stances and past reputation, Cornershop doesn't really have all that much to say this time around, nor have they delivered more than a handful of songs to have all this stick.

The album is as streamlined as a mix set.

Ladytron's most interesting aspect is their mix of retro songwriting with distinctly modern themes.

A spellbinding tribute, with a commanding presence and sustained intensity that most songwriters can't manage even with their own material. Like a reverse version of Bob Dylan and the Band's The Basement Tapes, 'What's Next to the Moon' turns songs that were loose, irreverent, and even silly or one-note in their original readings into songs of timeless beauty and depth, their passions, pains, and torments made agonizingly palpable.

A collection of songs that are as clever and intelligently crafted as they are danceable.

Bette is a tasteful album that showcases Midler's expressive singing but avoids her excesses.

It is the combination of street tales, social criticism, and self-awareness that made him a unique artist, for whom the term gangster rap truly does not do justice.