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.