On the surface, there's not much different between this album and its predecessor, but the songs are stronger, sharper, and the performances are lean, muscular, and immediate.

By turns breathtakingly radiant and heartbreakingly melancholy... the record is both comforting and challenging, its placid surfaces masking poignant meditations on resignation, dislocation, and loss.

Wilderness is another absolute gem.

It's breathtaking and essential listening for all fans of electronic music.

Like just about everybody else these days, Murphy's more skilled at creating isolated tracks than making full-lengths, even though this particular full-length has few weak spots and unfolds smoothly as you listen to it from beginning to end. The bonus disc, containing all the stray single tracks, adds a great deal of value.

An utterly mesmerizing and magnetic album, almost unfair in how incredibly ambitious and impressively pulled off the whole thing is.

Woman King is too short to be considered the high point of Iron & Wine's career -- it certainly points in that direction, though.

Perhaps the only match for the cerebral weirdness and eventual beauty of Mars Volta's lyrics is their music itself.

Somebody will really have to pull off a miracle to top Nashville as far as intelligent, honest and entertaining guitar pop goes in 2005. Or any other year.

It's the best kind of pop album imaginable. It can be enjoyed on a purely physical level, and it also carries the potential to adjust your worldview.

Perhaps it doesn't have the kinetic energy or sense of adventure that mark the genre's true classics from No Dice till Girlfriend, but Alternative to Love also exists in an era that's enamored with the past and doesn't take many risks, and on those terms, it's the perfect power pop album for its decade.

Out Hud have, in a roundabout way, developed into the most original dance band on the planet.

They are so good, so natural on Lullabies to Paralyze that it's easy to forget that they just lost Oliveri, but that just makes Homme's triumph here all the more remarkable.

From the songwriting to the production to the performance, the whole package that the Books present with Lost and Safe works wonderfully and makes for a very rewarding listen.

If hip-hop had existed in the days of the Filmore, Woodstock and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Edan would have been right on the bus.

There's less brooding menace and more giddy insanity -- without ever giving way to total chaos.

Everything on In Case We Die, from the intensely sweet melodies and vocals to the widescreen production, delivers the kind of playful pop majesty that Fingers Crossed's best moments hinted were within Architecture in Helsinki's grasp.

It's a gloves-off catharsis occurring in real time for the gifted singer/songwriter, and it leaves a mark on the listener as well.

The mix of the old, the new, and the unexpected... makes Live at Earls Court one of the most successful albums of Morrissey's career.

The First Lady is terrifically balanced in its distribution of club tracks, midtempo grooves, and slow jams.

Wedding might not be Oneida's most way-out album, but it's as satisfyingly restless as anything in their catalog.

It's personal, it's cryptic, it's hilarious -- it's Laughter's Fifth, and Sam Jayne is definitely some kind of genius.

Celebration Castle confirms what anyone who heard Laced With Romance suspected -- that the Ponys are growing into one of the best and most powerfully pleasurable rock bands of their generation.

Madlib has formed a tighter frame around his productions than ever before.

Mezmerize doesn't fail to be unique.

It not only eclipses the first Gorillaz album, which in itself was a terrific record, but stands alongside the best Blur albums, providing a tonal touchstone for this decade the way Parklife did for the '90s.

This may be the band's most self-assured sounding work yet -- their music has never lacked confidence and daring, but now they sound downright swaggering.

This is her finest moment yet.