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

Goodbye to Language is a powerful, intoxicating album and one of Lanois' best works in at least a decade.

Woman + Country is somewhat of a grower--it's so purposefully hazy it seems to pleasingly fade into the slipstream upon the first play, but those repeated spins reveal the deep craft at the heart of Woman + Country, deep craft from both the songwriter, his producer, and musicians.

This feels modern but in a distinctly '90s fashion: the melds and mashups of club music and psychedelia forecast a future straight out of 1996.

The writing is nothing earth-shattering; in fact, it's rudimentary and formulaic almost without exception, although they still come up with a couple of winners ("I'm Coming Home"), and lots of tunes that would easily pass for understandably forgotten oldies.

Irreal's minimalism is an uncompromising and often riveting testament to Disappears' integrity, which seems to be the only constant in their music.

The Third Chimpanzee unmistakably feels like a side project. It's intriguing to hear what sounds and moods he can create outside of the context of his band, but even compared to the more fully realized MG, the EP merely sounds tentative. However, it's worth noting that the striking cover art was painted by Pockets Warhol, a capuchin monkey, which is fascinating.

Jacksonville City Nights still ranks as one of Adams' stronger albums, not just because he's returning to his rootsy roots -- after all, this isn't alt-country, this is pure country -- but because it maintains a consistent mood, is tightly edited and well sequenced, and thanks to the Cardinals, has the easy assurance of Cold Roses

Voice of Ages is a good Chieftains recording; its solid performances easily outweigh its duds, but it feels like something less than a 50th anniversary celebration.

Cronin could have just kept cranking out the same album over and over; that he chose to take a risk and go big showed some real guts. That he was able to make it work as well as he did shows some real skill and should make anyone who liked the first two albums really happy.

Great Vengeance and Furious Fire is too uneven to be great, but its handful of fantastic singles makes for an extremely promising debut.

This isn't Local H's best album, but it's certainly their most daring and emotionally naked, and the results are truly impressive.

Stars and Satellites manages to find that elusive balance between workmanlike precision and 3:00 a.m. vulnerability.

The rapper is an excellent tour guide through this warped landscape of thrills and chills, and even if Rocky remains the A$AP Mob's most obvious and outgoing choice, there's an argument to be made that the more interesting one is Ferg, a Trap Lord if there ever was one.

Throughout Perfect Abandon's nine vocal songs, Brosseau's unhurried delivery transports the listener from her own world into his seamlessly.

While not his most consistent crop of songs, light brushes with Steely Dan-like jazz-rock and bolder synths add flavor to a still distinctive sound that's likely to be welcomed by fans.

One might reasonably expect that a more mature edition of Belly would seem less fiery than what they delivered back in the day, and the craft of this album is all one could hope for, but there's a bit too much drift and not enough clear focus for Dove to qualify as a true return to form.

The charm of Danse Macabre lies in how Duran Duran seem unencumbered by expectations: they're lying back and having a good time, resulting in a record that captures their silly and serious sides in equal measure.

The beats are excellent as well, loping and stuttering and falling over each other in Madlib's best Drunken Master style. Although there are plenty of instrumentals, at least three-quarters of WLIB AM: King of the Wigflip is given over to vocal features.

The album sounds huge and intimate at the same time.

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

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

This is international music, not intended merely for Kinky's native Mexico. Actually, it's more intended for trendy music cultures such as those of Europe and the U.S. -- a sort of Spanish update for the early 2000s of the late-'90s electronica/rock sound associated with groups like Prodigy and Primal Scream.

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.

Not bad for a placeholder EP.

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.

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.

Even though Wet from Birth occasionally gets tripped up on its own ambitions, it still has its share of enjoyable tracks.